OneGuyFromBarlick

Dark Hill Well on top of the hill behind Springs Farm This was an important water source serving several farms in the vicinity including, I suspect, Springs. A controversy arose in the latter part of the 19th century when Billycock Bracewell laid a pipe from the well to feed Springs Dam which he had constructed to improve the water supply to Butts Mill. This rumbled on for a while but in the end Bracewell won as the abstraction became an established fact. Before his alterations the excess water from the well took a separate course down into Barlick and had no connection to Calf Hall Beck.

This will be the source of the beck that runs down past Hollins and Cow Pasture if I'm not mistaken and eventualy runs into Fools Syke and then Into Stock. Its culverted under various sections of Gisburn Road area.

That's the one. Problem for Billycock was that it bypassed the becks he was interested in, Calf Hall and Gillians. Nether he or the Calf Hall Shed Company that succeeded him ever owned Springs Dam, they leased it from the farm. It was put in tu collect the overnight flow down the Calf Hall Beck so it could be released during the day to augment low flows during drought conditions. This kept Butts and later Calf Hall going. There is a lot of information about it in the Calf Hall Shed Company minute books which are on the site.

Springs Dam in 2005. When the Calf Hall Company had it they let the fishing on the dam each year to a Bradford club. It must have been attractive for them to come so far and I suspect the fish were trout. The company occasionally got into trouble with the club when they cleaned the dam and also complaints from users of the water downstream. All this is documented in the minute books on the site.

Originally the range of buildings along Commercial Street that included the shambles in the bottom storey extended as far as the path. This was the site of William Holdsworth's workshop on Commercial Street. The shop window and gable end behind is the house and furniture store that went with the business when Jack Briggs and William Duxbury bought Holdsworth out. It burned out in the late 70's. This was taken some years ago and I think has changed since. One wonders how long the remaining range will survive. At one time it housed Towers Singleton's carriage hire business and a marine store.

I took notice yesterday as I passed the path up to Commercial Street from Butts and the hen hut is still there but looking a bit more shabby.

In 1982 the stables were still standing in Butts. We forget how much stable accommodation was needed in the days of horse transport. Think of the hay and feed that had to be stored and the amount of horse muck as well!

I've posted this map before but this might be a slightly better image. Click to enlarge. Lots of interest here!

Butts Top in 1982. Jack Savage was a councillor and very interested in local history.

While I was wandering along the Harden valley in my quest for elusive Whalley abbey boundaries I twice noticed a farmer dismantling what I assumed was a disused field wall. On my descent from Bleara moor on my second search I happened to pass the spot where the farmer had been working and saw that it was a disused building. Glancing at my older map of the area later on I noticed that the building was named as Harden Hall. As theres a Harden Old House and a Harden New Hall, does anyone know the history of the Old Hall ?

I didn't know there was anything left of Harden Hall, it was demolished many years ago. There is very little known about Harden, none of the local historians have written anything about the area as far as I can discover. Whitaker in his History of Craven mentions the separate manors of Thornton, Earby, Kelbrook & Harden all being treated as one from the earliest times, so perhaps there was once a manor house in Harden.
The Thornton parish registers show that there were a number of families living in Harden from the early 17th century onwards. Harden Hall was probably built in the later part of the 17th century like most of the stone farm houses up here, but there could have been wooden houses before that. It belonged to wealthy landowner William Wainman of Cowling in the nineteenth century, but in the early 20th it was bought by Earby Urban District Council as it was on the water gathering ground for the area. It gradually deteriorated and had to be demolished. I'm not sure of the date but I could find out from the council minute books if you are interested. I am constantly on the look out for a photograph, but nothing has turned up yet!
There was a time (I can't remember the date off hand) when Wainman refused to sell his land in Harden for the clough to be dammed and a reservoir created.

I've never looked in detail at Harden and Bleara-Side but get the impression that until the 16th C they were neglected parts of the moor. The Whitemoor Map (On the site) shows enclosures around Earby in the 16th century and it may be that the land holdings there were created then. Previous to that it would be a wild part of the district.

There are signs of an older, possibly mediaeval field system between Brown Hill and Kitchen Farms, with irregular ditch & bank walls forming a triangular enclosure which includes the spring that our water supply comes from.

The bottom of Jepp Hill in 1982. Echoes of the water supply before mains. Look on the right hand top corner of the now demolished back rage and you'll see two large stone corbels. These were for the rainwater tank that collected water off the roof.

These corbels in the back wall of the Cross Keys were for troughing to carry the rain water from the front half of the roof to the back where it joined with the water from the opposite trough and discharged into a tank in the yard below. This was a stable yard and they needed the water for the horses.

The Park Road surgery in 1983. The cast iron framework by Bracewell foundry Burnley was the base for a large water tank collecting the rainwater from the roof. It all went when the surgery was modernised and extended. Harold Duxbury told me that the older houses in Park Road all had wells under the kitchen and a pump next to the slopstone. Last time I saw one of those was at Burrs Mount Farm in Derbyshire in 1942.

Bracewell Hall open air swimming pool in the 1930s. Definitely a forgotten corner this summer!

Summer swimming at Greenberfield locks in the 1950s.

Funny that swimming in the canal was see as OK in the 50s but today, with cleaner water we are told it is dangerous to health. I have no doubt that the authorities are right in that it isn't as clean as a swing bath but it's all relative. The 'pool' at Bracewell Hall is in effect just a pond.....

A true forgotten corner. The wooden rollers attached to the side of the canal bridge at Salterforth. They were placed to avoid the barge towing ropes from fretting on the stonework. I have seen similar remnants of the iron work on other bridges but never the complete set of rollers.

Not just on bridges either Plaques, I can just remember the multiple sets of rollers at the wall side on the towpath and in the field on the offside bank to guide the ropes around "Roller Bends" which is a double S bend on the approach before you get to the straight and Church Pool at East Marton. There were more at the Pumphouse Bends the other side of East Marton where the canal follows a 180 degree curve on the approach to Bank Newton. It would have needed a viaduct across the valley to avoid the long way round.

The canal is rich in forgotten corners. How many people on the road above realise that they are crossing a piece of history?

My dad used to swim at Greenberfield lochs as a boy. He fell in the canal there as a lad when he had his arm in pot. So he got out as quick as he could, set the arm to where he thought it should be and let the pot dry in the sun. Needless to say, he had a bent and bumped arm for the rest of his days as a result.

That bridge at East Marton is illustrated by Wainwright in his Pennine Way. He asks users to think why it is as it is.

Richard Broughton

Richard, I met a man who was a mule spinner who experienced almost exactly the same thing. Funnily enough the twist in his left forearm made it easier for him to do his job!

Horses were so important and gave so much employment. Interesting when you read something like the CHSC minute books and around 1920 you see the emphasis switching from stable room to garages.....