FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

Wellhouse was a massive stone built chimney. William Atkinson tells us that the 60 yd chimney was built by Rowley assisted by Abe Heaton.This pic was shortly after the mill was built in 1854. The contractor for the mill was Jim Howarth.

[Stanley]

Triggered by Wendy. Kelbrook church before 1900. Notable for the fact the turret clock has four faces.

[Stanley]

One forgotten corner which is very hard to illustrate with an image is the undercurrent of humour and practical joking that pokes up now and again in conversation with the older end. Billy Brooks told me about a tackler on his way to work at Long Ing who inadvertently walked over the rotten wooden covering of a cess pit in a field. He fell in and ever after that got the by-name 'Shitten Swimmer'. A man of my acquaintance was told one day that the pensioners in the almshouses at Thornton couldn't get anyone to clean their upstairs windows. Being a good man he shouldered his ladder and walked to Thornton from Earby. When he got there he found of course that the houses are single storey!
I shame to report that at one time I was guilty. We were in the Craven Heifer and on hearing of a pensioner with a loose slate causing a leak, one of our number said he had a ladder and would fix it immediately. We sneaked after him and took his ladder away. It was over an hour before he attracted anyone's attention.....
Is there as much of this humour about these days?

[Stanley]

Click to enlarge this pic of Maurice Windle, one of the family that ran the garage near Bankfield. I was once asked how Maurice was doing and I said he must be OK because he was still in the front seat of the hearse. This got back to him and he nailed me in the Co-op one day. He was vastly amused.

[David Whipp]

Maurice drove the wedding car when Alison's brother got married at Eastburn. After safely delivering the bride's mother etc to the church there was a long wait before he returned with the bride... when I asked what had happened, Maurice said he'd not been able to find the house when he'd returned to pick up the bride.

A distant relation, Maurice was of my mum and dad's generation; it was Maurice I asked about the 'wrong side of the blanket' family history when we found out we had an unknown branch on the family tree.

Maurice lived at Foresters' Buildings. He was very proud of the copper beech behind his house - it thrived under his stewardship.

[Stanley]

Maurice's brother Jim with the wedding car. They were famous for having violent arguments with each other! (They once squared up to each other when my mate Daniel held an exhibition of his images in his house in Bank Street. We had to separate them!) Another friend of mine came to visit me one day (Robert Aram) and when he arrived he wanted to know what was going on at Windle's garage. He had a slow puncture and called in to blow it up as he was passing. Jim brought the airline out to him but as Robert was inflating the tyre he heard shouting in the garage and Maurice ran out with an axe and cut the air line in two!
I remember his funeral at Trinity Church. I thing every car mechanic in the town attended dressed in their boiler suits. Maurice was great advocate of spraying car's undersides with old sump oil. He told me once that you never saw a mechanic's bench go rusty!
There was a photo of a biplane in their office at one time and Shirley Windle told me she had a flight in it in Barlick.

[plaques]

As a young lad I called in to their garage to see if I could by some brake parts, that was the days before the small car part shops came into being. Maurice asked what do you want lad. I explained I was intending to replace the brake cylinders but with being aluminium the nipples would be seized up. Right then, you will probable need these and these and possibly some of these. A big handful of odds and ends were rooted out of various drawers. How much is this lot then? Give me a couple of bob and bring back what you don't use. He finished off the conversation by saying " half the people who come in here don't know how to look after their cars never mind mend them." One of the old school. a lovely chap.

[Tizer]

The favourite local funeral director in Bridgwater is Mr Biffen. As well as doing his job well he happens to like old cars and also does weddings. Here's his fleet of wedding cars: LINK
And here the funeral cars (and bike!): LINK

[Stanley]

For many years Newton Pickles lived 25 yards from the garage in Vicarage Road and was a friend of Maurice. Newton had a large lathe, a Wilson, that was particularly good at facing and had a lucrative side line with Maurice who brought brake disks to be skimmed to true them up.



Newton with the Wilson lathe when it was in Wellhouse shop. When Newton moved to the smaller shed on Dam Head Road I bought the lathe off him and later used it in John Ingoe's works in Rochdale on a regular basis. A very good lathe and a pleasure to use.



Newton used the garage at Vicarage Road as his Shed. The Wilson lathe is behind the camera to the viewer's left. A forgotten corner and a great loss..... 16 years since he died last January.

[Stanley]

This nook at the top of Lamb Hill where it meets Manchester Road is insignificant but it's actually valuable evidence of the original level of the road there before 'Town Bridge', the culverting of the ford in Walmsgate, was done in 1815 using the proceeds from selling off the old Village Green where Commercial row is now. If you look in Atkinson's 'Old Barlick' on the site you'll find this on page 49.

"It is refreshing to be able to hand-down old Time stories instead of more modern history so well known to most readers. The following is one of those stories. At this time the Barlick snuff takers Fraternity was at its zenith and although this mythical band of the Old Scotch Brown snuff devotees never once advertised itself nor even registered under the Friendly Societies Act yet their affections for their object in view never wavered. On very rare occasions did these people betray themselves by the ‘Sneeze’ so peculiar to new beginners. Their Head office was ‘rent free’ at the most popular junction of the Town called ‘Lamb Hill’ and was approached by a few steps. Old Harry Hardacre was their esteemed president, an office held by him from year to year, while the vice presidents included the Rev. R. Milner (said to be a three fingers dipper), Old Johnny at Spen, old Jim Crier. and one of the Clough Tacklers while one of the guests who often found this Place was Old Ann Bennett. However, as time rolled-on, the number of members began to decrease and to the sorrow of the once welcome guests, the dear old president gave up the Ghost in 1873, aged 60 years. While the woman folk who had certain duties to perform after his death, reverently
deposited his once beloved large snuff-box in the same receptacle as his own mortal remains. While there still survives at the writer's own home a substantial proof of that little and somewhat ludicrous incident of over forty years ago."

[Stanley]

This is a 'not forgotten' corner this morning because as part of her therapy Janet and her sisters play memory games and this morning they went down Crow Row detailing all the people they knew.... Susan said Janet was brilliant! Nostalgia/memory games is a useful tool in cases like Janet, a form of 'Brain Gym'.

[Tizer]

When my mum had a stroke we went to the hospital and kept talking to her for a couple of hours even though she couldn't speak. But then she began to respond more clearly and by the next day her speech was OK again. I think that brief period of time immediately after a stroke is crucial and you can help to `reboot' the patient into `normal' mode by treating them as normal. Otherwise they might slide into a different mode and then it could be difficult or impossible to get back to normal.

[Stanley]

I agree entirely! Never assume someone can't hear you and understand.



Olive and Newton Pickles in 1976 at Vicarage Road. They are looking at the pictures I did for them of Newton's daughter Linda and Philip getting married that year. Years later I visited Olive as she lay in bed comatose and dying from cancer. Newton and I talked to her for about an hour then I said goodbye and as I was going downstairs I heard Olive say 'Tata'. Newton came out and said "Did you hear that?" It was the first time she had spoken for about a fortnight. She died that night. Keep talking to them!

[Stanley]

One long forgotten corner is the practice of laying out dead bodies in the coffin in the front room before the funeral. See Harold Duxbury in the LTP for the advent of embalming and Chapels of Rest which eventually ended the practice, though it took a while for it to catch on. Harold was the first qualified embalmer in Barlick.
In warm weather this wait for Saturday morning, (most funerals were done then to save missing work) could be bit of a problem and an overhanging table cloth hiding a bucket of strong disinfectant under the coffin was a good idea. The process is so sanitised these days that nobody has this problem.....



Harold, a good informant, totally reliable!

[Stanley]

One thing that was mentioned to me about funerals is that it was quite common, when faced with the steep slope up to the old Coates Bridge, for mourners to have to alight from their carriages and walk up the hill as they went to Gill Church.

[Cathy]

I remember a Mrs Atkinson who lived next to us in Fountain St being in her coffin and people going in to view her.
When she was alive, she would knock on our adjoining wall if she needed anything.

[PanBiker]

We have discussed this event photo of the event here on Jepp Hill before. Relevant to this discussion is the communal laying out board which was contained in the wooden structure you can see on the wall of the barn next to the Cross Keys. People in the smaller houses often did not have enough room or a large enough flat surface for laying out a deceased person until the undertaker could attend. A simple but necessary solution until the more widespread us of Chapels of Rest provided by the undertakers as mentioned by Stanley earlier.

[Stanley]

This matter of the Laying out board on Jepp Hill arose a while ago and I seem to remember that Wendy had some interesting things to say about them.
Worth reading Harold Duxbury in the LTP on matters pertaining to funerals. He told me that Briggs and Duxbury had the first Chapel of Rest but that it took a while for the practice of letting the body leave the house to take hold. For a long time many wouldn't consider it. Totally different now of course. Old habits died hard and many bereaved people regarded washing and laying the body out as a last essential service they could do for the deceased.

[Stanley]

The Isolation Hospital in Barlick in 1905 on the site of what is now the Bank Hill development just beyond Four Lane Ends on the Bracewell Road. Many references in the Lancashire Textile Project of patients having a stay there when they had a 'contagious disease'. Forgotten now but there was a proposal in the late 1920s for a 'Cottage Hospital' in the town and at one time it looked as though it could be Bank House behind Coates Mill. It never came to anything.

[Stanley]

The concept of the small hospital, often called a 'cottage hospital' is long gone these days. They are seen as inefficient and costly but in their day they were a very good asset for a small town, people friendly and easy to get to for visits. The nearest Barlick ever had was Skipton Hospital and the Cawder Ghyll maternity unit. I know Cawder Ghyll is long gone but am not sure about Skipton Hospital. I was treated there a couple of times and it was a good little unit with a free car park. That alone is a forgotten corner!
I was reading a 1953 edition of Model Engineer and saw an advert for Condor pipe tobacco, 4/6 an ounce. Expensive enough but now it is nearer £6.

[David Whipp]

The firm that built Brindley Mews on the Coates Mill (Hope Mill) site was Cawder Construction. Their first job was building on the Cawder Ghyll land at Skipton.

Skipton Hospital is still going strong.

[Stanley]

I'm glad to hear that! Is the car parking still free?

[David Whipp]

Haven't visited recently...

[Stanley]

Click to enlarge. Salterforth in 1914. Old maps are always interesting. My focus on this one is the tramways that ran from Salterforth Quarry to the wharf on the Barlick side of the New Road road bridge and the one from Park Close quarry to the canal near the boatyard to the east of Salterforth Lane. They were run by gravity with the empty jubilee trucks being hauled back up with horses. Thousands of tons of stone, mainly setts for road paving in East Lancashire, were transported down to boats on the canal by this means.

[Stanley]

This was one of the two boats built and operated by the Park Close Quarry.40 tons of setts in one load on the way to Burnley. See Jack Platt's evidence in the LTP and my articles on him.
I looked on the site for the articles I did on Jack, 'Rock Solid'. It was 13 years ago and they were AWOL, no doubt after the rash. I have reposted all twelve articles..... Could be a good read....