FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[PanBiker]

The line of that path is also shown faintly on the map that supports the LCC reporting site.

[PanBiker]

It seems to have fallen out of use sometime after the 1st Edition OS in 1853. It's not on any of the later editions or scales after 1888. I have looked at them on the side by side geo reference site:

Side by Side

[Stanley]

The period from 1850 to 1900 saw great changes in patterns of trade, transport and habitation. The growth of the factory system killed the old cottage industries. The attractions of wage labour in the towns killed villages like Wycoller and Stock. Improvement of roads killed the old pack horse and foot traffic tracks. Think of all the evidence we have of man carrying a piece of cloth on their backs to the Cloth Hall at Colne or their 'putting out' master. We forget now how unusual wheeled transport between towns was before the advent of better roads, once they were built licensed carriers were common in every town and gave regular services. Add the coming of the railway and many of the old routes became redundant.
These are all Forgotten Corners and where possible we should remember them by enshrining the old Rights of Way in modern legislation. It costs nothing and preserves an essential part of our history.



This surviving pack horse bridge near County Brook at Wood End is a good example. A direct route between Barlick and Colne/East Lancashire.

[Tizer]

In the 1950s there were still many of the weavers' paths but I expect most of them have since been closed by housing developments and by private owners of land.

[Stanley]

Drove roads and green ways also sink from sight if not used regularly. Not quite the same but I was often struck, when driving in Scotland by the way General Wade's military roads tracked alongside the modern roads but at a higher level. They had been made redundant by the modern roads.
A local equivalent is the old road from Kelbrook to Foulridge made redundant when the new road through New Hague was constructed in the valley bottom. Old Mrs Tordoff who lived on Rocky Row could remember when the road stopped at the New Stone trough pub.

[Stanley]

Very few people realise that this bridge over the old Rainhall Road Quarry which was built to preserve the right of way from Salterforth to Gill church is still there. As the council filled the quarry with household waste it was gradually buried but never demolished.

[PanBiker]

Main structure intact but I'm fairly certain the parapets have been leveled.

[Tizer]

Future archaeologists will enjoy finding it!

[Stanley]

I wonder where the water that's leaching out of the tip is going. Now there's a forgotten corner for you.....

[David Whipp]

I think it was in the 1980s that leachate got into the remaining section of little cut. The leak was sealed with clay. The top of the site is also sealed with clay to minimise water getting into the landfill. Near Ben Lane, there's a unit for burning the landfill gas produced in the tip.

[Stanley]

Sounds tidy but rain still falls on the site and it must be draining away somewhere.....

[Stanley]

There's something quite sweet about sending that PC 'With Love'. The sending of postcards is in itself a forgotten corner. The need to communicate made the post very popular. Another avenue was the public notice.



Look at the size of these hoardings on the corner of Station Road. No coincidence that there's a group of men stood there....

[Stanley]

Notice the sign on the wall of Croft House at the entrance to the coal yard. Pete Bilsborough was engineer for Billycock Bracewell but set up as a coal merchant when the Bracewell empire collapsed after Billycock's death in 1885. The coal yard was a busy place in those days, a lot of mill and domestic coal came in by rail and it all had to be delivered by horse transport. The canal wharf at Coates was another busy place but it was mainly mill coal that came in through there.



The bags held 1cwt (50kg) and many of the carriers wore back leathers, heavy leather protection against the rough surface of the sacks filled with lumps of coal. Most deliveries were in back streets directly into coal holes but occasionally they had what they called a 'long carry' at some of the bigger houses.

[Stanley]

I can't begin to hazard a guess at how much house coal was delivered every week. Guess at 2000 houses burning an average of 2cwt a week (almost certainly an under estimate) and you begin to get the idea of how many coal men there were. Monday morning was a bad day for the coal chaps because the washing hung out in the streets made access impossible. I am guessing but I'll bet that day was taken up with other jobs like coal bagging in the yard.
The same must have applied to the dust carts and other deliveries. When I was making the LTP tapes it became obvious that Monday was universally washing day! (And Friday was bath night.....)



If you keep your eyes open you can still find clothes line hooks all over the town on the old properties. This one was for a line across Wellhouse Street!

[Big Kev]

There's still one on the back of my old house at Montrose Terrace, just a single hook though.

[Stanley]

I have a single hook on mine Kev, the double hook is a bit special, the only one I have seen.
You can often see the hinge pins for the as pits as well and sometimes the pits and their cast iron doors survive.

[Stanley]

Damhead bridge in about 1908. I can remember how surprised I was in my early researches to realise that all the buildings beyond Foresters Buildings towards Gisburn (Apart from a few old farmhouses and cottages) weren't there in 1900. This old postcard is just after Gisburn Terrace was built. You can see work being done on the retaining wall at what is now St Joseph's church, at that time a tin tabernacle on the site of the present Sunday school was the church. The road isn't paved and the buildings beyond haven't been started on. By WW1 we had almost all the buildings down there that we have today, it must have been like an ant heap! A good time to be in the building trade in Barlick.

[Stanley]

Worth remembering that the late development of Barlick after 1885 was financed by the success of the new textile mills and shed companies. They in turn were financed locally and the profits stayed largely in the town. Contrast that with where the money goes today.... Between then and 1914 the town exploded and no further housing, apart from some private projects, was needed until the Coates estate was built after WW2. Investment on that scale would be unthinkable today. Definitely a forgotten corner!

[Tizer]

I'm not sure if I've said this before but your mention of retaining walls above prompted me - garden walls seem to be falling down in our village and I wonder if it's something to do with the bouts of heavy rain we've had in recent times. Builders have been doing well out of replacing the walls. The problem affects walls that have been standing since the 1960s/70s but also ones from the early 1900s or earlier. On our regular walks we began to see the walls were leaning over and it was getting to the point were I was going to ask the Parish Council to note the danger to pedestrians. But they must have already noticed and there has been a flurry of activity, knocking down the leaning walls and building new. Some other walls have had to be re-pointed.

[Stanley]

Retaining walls are inherently unstable because of course they are subject to pressure from one side. The wetter the soil the more liable it is to move and so water can be a problem. That's why well built specimens have good drainage at the base and drain holes through the walls. If you want a good example near here go and look at the Walls of Jericho at Thornton Heights near Bradford. (LINK) These are dry stone walls built to retain quarry waste and the men who made them knew their job! (Of course, being dry stone, they are inherently well drained)

[plaques]

Burnley had its Cairo Mills named after the Egyptian cotton. I wonder whether the 'Egypt' road was associated with cotton rather than Napoleon?

[David Whipp]

Thinking about garden walls falling over reminds me of campaigning in a by-election in St Annes in the early 80s when the town had an unusual spell of cold weather. The ground was badly affected by frost heave and many garden walls fell over... and that reminds me of a newly built sports centre in the same neck of the woods which, when they filled the swimming pool (built on soft ground) broke its back with the weight of water and bankrupted the developers.

[Stanley]

Ahh..... One of my favourite subjects! I first came across it when Cyril Richardson at Little Stainton got an expert builder in the make him a large rectangular slurry pit lined with breeze blocks which had reinforcing bars in the holes and then filled with concrete to make the walls monolithic. All was well until he emptied it in winter and the tank floated up out of the ground as the weight came off and eventually fractured.
I remembered this when we were installing the pit for the Whitelees engine at Ellenroad which was sunk well below the level of the water table. I looked at the design and asked Peter Dawson, my architect, to cube it up and compare its displacement to the weight of the materials in the reinforced concrete construction. It transpired that the displacement was greater than the weight so it would have eventually floated up out of the ground. I got on to the structural engineer and told him to add a concrete collar round the rim that would bring its weight up to 25% more than the displacement. It was done and the pit has never moved. Remember the Mulberry Harbour at D Day? When you calculate the displacement it is quite enormous and that's the force that Nature uses to try to regain equilibrium. You can't beat Mother Nature!

[PanBiker]

Report on the news that some of the major hose builders have developed a method based on the Mulbery Harbour principle to use as floating foundations when building on flood plains. All fine and dandy but it would be better not to build on the flood plain in the first place, a lot cheaper too.

[Tizer]

Just think of all those basements being built under expensive terraced houses in London! The local authorities are slowly waking up to the dangers, especially now that some folk are going down not one storey but two.

The councils in our area are building new housing estates on flood plains regardless of warnings from the Environment Agency. They claim they have no alternative because the local population is increasing fast. It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that the increase in population is because they're building houses. There isn't much work here (and will be even less if Hinckley C is abandoned) but people buy the houses and commute 50 miles to Bristol or Exeter because they can't afford houses in the cities.