FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

The packhorse Bridge at Wood End on the road down to Count Brook Mill (Stew Mill) is within the manor and so qualifies for this topic (note the low parapet so as not to interfere with the panniers on the horses). Not only is the bridge a reminder of the ancient trade routes that criss cross the town but there was a pirate corn mill just above the bridge on the Black Brook, to give it's old name. There was a period in the early 18th century when the established mills couldn't cope with the amount of grain that had to be ground due to the rise in population. Technically illegal, these 'pirate mills' were built to cope with the demand and were often the subject of litigation. The mill at Foulridge complained bitterly about Wood End but it survived until better transport conditions made it redundant as ground corn could be imported by canal.

[Stanley]

I've always found County Brook fascinating. The steep fall of the beck from the moor and the reliability of the supply means that it was the ideal site for water power and if it had followed the usual rules round here it should have developed into a small industrial village. As it was it had three mills, Midge Hole, Wood End and the Stew Mill but due to the building of Whitemoor reservoir which interfered with the flow they all failed except for the present day County Brook Mill. They even had a chapel at Mount Pleasant!



The chapel is now a private residence.

[Stanley]

One forgotten corner that is hard to illustrate is how lucky we are in Barlick to be outside the mainstream of modern traffic. I used to go regularly to a farm in Scotland at a remote place called Crawfordjohn and they had a saying; "Into Crawfordjohn, out of the world." After observing the outside world yesterday I can tell you that this applies to Barlick as well!

[Stanley]

This is Dam Head in 1908, we can date it precisely because of the building works on what is now the site of St Joseph's church. The salient fact about this image is that before 1900 there was nothing beyond the bridge except Dam Head cottages. There was an explosion of building driven by the success of the textile industry, I believe Ribble Terrace on the left was built by the Co-op but would have to look it up.

[Stanley]

An old postcard of the Parade of shops on Gisburn Road.

[Stanley]

Hardly surprising but health issues are uppermost in my mind at the moment. We used to have a small isolation hospital at Bank Hill and there were proposals to convert Bank House at Coates into a 'Cottage Hospital'. I was always struck, when in Northfield, MN , that they had a local hospital and the town is roughly the same size as Barlick. I know all the arguments about economies of scale and specialisation but can't help still believing that in an ideal world, the old concept of the small local hospital for non-complicated cases is human scale and very friendly. Ah well.....

[Tizer]

We have community hospitals in towns in Somerset, all recent builds in the last 10 years or so and they're great. Of course you still have to go to the big ones for mores serious stuff but then they send you to the community one to recover. Martha has one nearby in Shepton Mallet. Of course no sooner were they built than we started to hear threats that would be closed down in favour of the big hospitals. We've been to the big Exeter Hospital when my Dad was there for about a month and it wasn't as pleasant as the small ones and it's difficult to get to, right in the middle of the city.

[Stanley]

I have always said that the excellence in human terms of a hospital is in inverse proportion to the size of the car park......

[Stanley]

Wellhouse chimney demolition in 1976. The stack at Wellhouse was notable for two reasons, it was the most massive stack in Barlick and stone built with very large blocks. I have an idea that it was built by Abe Heaton but would have to search the archive to make sure of that. The other matter which I consider remarkable is that the whole of Eastwood Bottoms is very bad bearing ground being deep alluvial silt. There were endless problems with subsidence as building the mill progressed, many walls had to be pulled back and rebuilt as the work went on. However, the massive stack never deviated at all to my knowledge, it stood firm and straight. It was shortened at some point in the 1950s I think and this was it's final demolition. It was taken down until only a 40ft stub remained.



Here it is being finally levelled in 1981 by N&R of Todmorden. They used their big Liebherr tracked back hoe for the job. You can see it on the left of the picture.

[Stanley]

Another stone chimney, Butts Mill, being demolished in 2005 by Peter Tatham of Milnrow. The chimney was hexagonal and built using limestone. In about 1870 it was given a 40ft brick extension to get enough draught to burn the inferior coal from Bracewell's Ingleton collieries but I think this was removed in the mid 1950s.

[Stanley]

Fernbank was the last felling.

[Stanley]

Bancroft chimney is reasonably safe, it is part of the Scheduled Monument and is protected by law.

[Stanley]

We got Peter Tatham in to refurbish the chimney when the Bancroft Trust took over and he made a lovely job of it as usual. Here's the head of the stack after he had worked his magic.....

[Stanley]

Another major Forgotten Corner that is very hard to illustrate is something I commented on in a series of BET articles, the great store of civic pride and cooperation that quite obviously exists in Barlick. The vandalising of litter bins and dog poo collection points is a very minor facet when you look at the other, beneficial activities in the town. We would do well to recognise this and foster the efforts of the volunteers.

[David Whipp]

Thanks for comment about volunteers Stanley. Team reported you were inspecting work at back of bus shelter yesterday.

Don't know if this has been posted on here previously. I picked it up from Gus's 'Now and Then' fb page.

[PanBiker]

Windy Harbour.

[Stanley]

It's in the gallery as 'Bancrofts 1950'
Yes, I was taking notice, I noted one improperly dressed person in shorts vanishing into the undergrowth at the back of the accountants. Going for a pee?



Gus' pic of the old bus shelter. It's a forgotten corner now.....

[David Whipp]

Pee - as if!

Attending to a forgotten corner of the Windle and Bowker property - their fenceposts on the boundary had succumbed to age and n'er do wells were creating a track over the planting to the hidey hole at the back. I was putting a couple of posts in to re-erect the fence.

May discourage other people peeing in future!

[PanBiker]

Another forgotten corner and could also be described as a Windy Harbour. It's the 105th anniversary of Roald Amunsen's 1911 expedition to be the first to reach the South Pole. Google Doodle celebrates the achievement of him and his team today.

[Stanley]

David, I apologise. I couldn't resist it. It was the sight of two short fat hairy legs vanishing into the undergrowth wot did it!

Worth flagging up here that in my research into Windy Harbour I found that the reason why this is not an uncommon location name particularly in the NW is that they were way stations used by drovers and pack horse trains. I like that....



Here's a really obscure Forgotten Corner for you.... It's a rail chair made for the old pattern of bull-head track used by the LMS before flat bottomed rails came in. I saw it in 1979 being used at Ouzledale Foundry as a weight used to put pressure on the moulding boxes when pouring molten iron. I don't know if this was originally cast at Ouzledale, it could have been because the railways tended to order batches from whoever was most competitive. What it reminds me of is that in 1956 when I was at Sough my dad visited Forecast Foundry to deliver two boxes of white chalk they had ordered from us and he was scathing about this because as an old foundry man himself he said they should have made their own by drying lime slurry on the hot iron and using that. He also commented on the number of old rail chairs that were being used as moulding box weights. He said he asked about it and they told him that in the early days of BR, after nationalisation, someone made a mistake in ordering rail chairs and sent out the specification for the obsolete bull-headed rails instead of the current flat bottomed variety. The foundry was paid for the job less the scrap value of the chairs which they kept. Hence the fact that they were so common as weights. This may have been the genesis of the LMS chair at Ouzledale as well.

[Stanley]

Many of us will recognise the bridge over the former Rainhall Rock limestone quarry which was installed to preserve a right of way to Gill Church, lost when it was submerged in a tide of waste when the Council used the quarry for landfill of domestic waste.



But how many know that the original use of the land which we now know as Victory Park was also a domestic waste landfill? If you walk down Stock Beck and look where the flow has undercut the land on the playing field side you'll see the tell-tale white shards of Keiller's Dundee Marmalade jars embedded in the soil.

[David Whipp]

The football pitches at Victory Park are reputed to be the best drained in Pendle. That's put down to that area being made up of landfill with a lot of ash in it.

Over the years, the pitches themselves have been vertidrained and had sand added to improve drainage still further. There's a significant difference in the drainage from one side of the side line to the other.

[Stanley]

That doesn't surprise me David, a large part of household waste was ash in the days of coal fires and there was no packaging. Nearly all waste went to the ash pit via the fire so in terms of organic waste they were very clean. That in itself is a forgotten corner. If you didn't do this the ash pits soon started smelling and people knew this so they were very careful. Even empty cans went on the fire!

[Stanley]

In the days before the Local Board took over waste and night soil collection the task was farmed out to private contractors who collected the waste and disposed of it. I have a record of two Bracewell Brothers who farmed up Esp Lane having the night soil contract, they collected it and spread it on their land. Very good for soil fertility but it got to the stage where they had too much to deal with and complaints were made to the Board about 'noxious effluvia'. Shortly after this the council took over the collection and this was the genesis of the late 19th century conversion to a water carriage sewage system which survives today. The subject of sewage disposal is fascinating if you like that sort of thing!

[Bodger]

Our collector was a local farmer John Battey , known locally as "Johnny shitjack"