Bank Edge View

[David Whipp]

Hope that's rhetorical, Stanley; I haven't a clue.



Squirrels can often be seen flitting through the trees round our way. It's not often they are still enough for me to get a picture, but yesterday one obliged!

[Stanley]

Just a little know fact which might trigger someone. Actually, thinking about it I was wrong. Hardisty was at Craven View Cottage. It was the Thunderbirds that were at Higher View. That's what they called the three eccentric looking characters at Gisburn Auction who ran a small cattle wagon from up there.

[David Whipp]

Moon seen over Barlick this morning.

[Stanley]

A bit later and you'd have got these.....

[David Whipp]

My moon pic was about 6.30. Was I too soon or too late? (Or did I look out of the wrong window?!)

The North West Balloon club are having a meet at Thornton Hall Farm this weekend (strictly, it's a pilot training event). The club may use some of the launch sites in Barlick over the weekend. Very good weather for them!

[Stanley]

I saw six balloons around 07:30 as I walked back from the butcher’s.

[David Whipp]

Caught the balloons on camera this morning. It looks like one of them even managed to land at Barnoldswick's International Airport! (The purple one beginning to deflate.)

[Stanley]

You bagged more than I did this morning!

[David Whipp]

From Friday. Gisburn Road School's junior building. One well insulated roof on Leonard Street still showing the frost.

[Stanley]

A white frost is a dead give-away for insulation levels.

[David Whipp]

Newfield Edge, 18th April.

[David Whipp]

Building at sewage works used for welfare facilities and office, I think. This was refurbished during the autumn and winter.

[Stanley]

An oft forgotten but essential corner of the town.

[David Whipp]

Leaves on the Town Green trees are very noticeable above the roofs of the Avenues this morning.

[Stanley]

The trees and the grass are really moving now. It's beginning to look like a good Spring, no real set-backs yet!) Cross your fingers....)

[David Whipp]

This one is from a couple of weeks ago; the old boilerhouse at Bankfield. In front is the last surviving insitu hen hut of my dads (long since used by an allotment holder).

[Stanley]

Every now and again I get a chance to pay tribute to that wonderful man, Wilfred Spencer. So here goes!

THE DECLINE OF THE HEN PEN

by Wilfred Spencer

To my mind few sights are more truly and essentially typical of the Industrial North than the hen pen. I'm not speaking of the trim geometric and soulless acreages of well-disciplined paling and wire netting which for a time supplanted the genuine article. These were a degree better than our latter-day egg factories, but were still utterly lacking in the rugged individuality which is the hall-mark of the honest northern artisan and his projection of himself into his rugged, individual and honest hen pen.

They are not entirely departed, though, and if you have a taste for stark reality you can find ugly clusters of them bestriding the ginnels and snickets behind the terraced houses. I did say ugly, but there is something engaging and intriguing about this kind of ugliness. In some curious way it has integrity, and it doesn't - not in the slightest - affect any pretence to be other than what it is. These hen pens do however reveal more of their owners than they perhaps realise.

The fence of each pen is almost invariably black with oft-repeated layers of gas tar, but the half concealed shape of the underlying wood often reveals its origin to have been in the cotton mill. The weaver or tackler who keeps hens seems to have little difficulty in laying hands on sufficient scrap wood from the mill to keep his boundaries in order, though with due regard for the uncertainties of the future, he will do what he can to make this wood last as long as possible. This is where the gas tar comes in handy. Cheap (or so it was) and easy to get hold of, it is liberally applied to every exposed surface. If there is any left the brush is dragged over the wire netting: in fact, the pen is not so much painted as engulfed. The roof of the hen hut, where successive layers have cracked and shrunk above the original felt, looks like the back of an ill-favoured crocodile.

This black hide covers an incredible variety of shapes some of them vaguely traditional. There is probably scope here for a regional survey of unique architectural interest, for the favoured type of hut does vary from district to district. But each is, unmistakably, a hen hut: Its narrow band of windows near the floor, and its the entrance, or "pop 'oil" for the birds being its hall mark. This entrance has a somewhat medieval look about it, Norman arch and wooden portcullis with a narrow board reminiscent of a drawbridge sloping up to it.

What goes on inside I'm not so sure. Men in cloth caps disappear into the man-sized entrance with tin bowls and later emerge with eggs, but for aught I know there may be other goings on. There is little doubt that the hen pen is, for many a wife-bound weaver, a refuge and a haven. There was something finely Northern in Priestley's opening of "Good Companions" where the hero is described as gloomily reflecting upon the emptiness and futility of life from the vantage point of his friend's hen house door. In his hen pen a man can be alone and, should the mood be upon him, brood. It is true that the scene of his contemplations may be littered with bits of household jetsam, the discarded slop-stone, the tired rocking chair, the dolly tub or the out-dated mangle. But these he will have diverted to some new, unlikely, but ingenious use in his more energetic moments, and his contemplation of them may bring some solace.

A friend of mine who is getting on now, and whose brother had become a national political figure of some eminence, once said to me - expressing a deep and rich philosophy – “Our Tom were allus studying and bothering 'isself wi' politics: but, tha knows, Wilfred, I 'ad my 'ens” The ulcerations of a hectic public life had shortened his brother's life many years earlier but for him the hen pen had brought its own reward.

[‘Tom’ was Thomas Shaw, Minister of Labour in MacDonald’s first Labour cabinet. Jan to Nov 1924.]

[David Whipp]

Crisp and clear this morning - a touch of frost.



Spot the difference.

[Wendyf]

The wind turbine is back up.

[David Whipp]

Spot on Wendy.

[PanBiker]

You should have a go at "Spot the Ball" Wendy!

[David Whipp]

The growth of leaves on the trees is probably the only difference to spot on this one. Just to the right of Holy Trinity you can just glimpse the blossom on the trees in front of Ash Grove; part of a magnificent display this spring.

[plaques]

David have you ever thought of using your photographic talents to give us a "walk about tour" of Barlick. I'm not asking for anything spectacular just the everyday scenes of roads and buildings. Its amazing what you see in a picture compared with walking along a street. I think Wendy has proved this point in spotting that the turbine was back in place.

[Stanley]

Dead right P. In time all pics of the town are valuable, we see just what has changed.

[David Whipp]

Plaques, I've not got any talent for taking pictures... but take a lot and choose the best! I agree we only 'see' a tiny amount of what our eyes behold as we go about.

Clear, sunny view out of our attic this morning. My favourite picture shows the shadow of our house and next door's. (Should stress that the athletic looking equipment is very much in next door's camp.)