STEEPLEJACK'S CORNER 2012

[Stanley]

Remember me saying we gave the contractors who were putting the climbing lane in space for a depot? When they finished we won a lot of useful stuff including more heavy re-bar than you could poke a stick at. So we started by digging a trench right across the back wall and using a ridiculous amount of reinforcing in it.

[Stanley]

The concrete poured and the old girder ends taken out of the wall. Ready for a bit of bricklaying.

[Stanley]

First job was to tidy the wall up alongside the passage into the engine house. We had a professional brickie as foreman but most of the work was done by Manpower Services lads who were reckoned to be unemployable......

[Stanley]

We had to tidy up the top of the wall as well. I've always said that the best way to learn how a building was constructed is to demolish it. Look at the terrible standard of brickwork in what is left of the NW column that supported the mill. Bricks cobbed in any old way and bags of compo to fill the gaps! Remember this was a main element of the build and had three stories on top of it!

[Stanley]

Getting there in 1987. The low part of the back wall alongside the engine house passage is finished but the main event is going on in the background on the scaffolding. The 60ft back wall closure of the rope race is quietly going up.

[Big Kev]

I may be clutching at straws but; has anyone got a small 230v concrete mixer for sale (or loan) in the Barlick area?

Cheers

[Stanley]

Give B&D a ring?



It took over a year but here's the back wall completed, all sixty feet of it in one lift. The directors nagged me continuously but I'd given the job to a local builder who quoted a low price because I promised him he could use it as a filler job in between his other contracts. Fred Baumer and his son Harold made a good job and because there were long periods when the wall was left to set properly and settle, it was built in one lift. Any of you who have ever built a wall like this will know it's a ticklish job.
There was a sequel. Ten years later in 1998, my daughter Janet and her husband had bought a corner block in Perth, Western Australia. They demolished the two existing houses and built three modern units, managing the contract themselves and hiring their own labour. One day Janet was talking to her brickie and he asked her if she came from Barrowford! She said no, but close, Barnoldswick. He said that's funny, I knew a bloke from Barnoldswick, he set me and me dad on to build a big wall. Janer said yes, the back wall at Ellenroad, that was my dad! Turned out the brickie was Harold Baumer and this contract was his first in Oz after emigrating. Beat that for a coincidence!

[Stanley]

The passage up to the engine house door while Fred Baumer was building the back wall. The main flue ran under the passage and we'd protected it with a mat of timber while the rubble was dropping from the demolition but we lost the roof. The job was to get the walls tidy and build a roof over it. (At the same time we were rebuilding the flue underneath, not because of damage from the demolition but to rectify attrition over the years.

[Stanley]

The main flue under the passage was in bad condition. Over the years the wall under the boiler house foundation had subsided and bulged.

[Stanley]

By 1990 we were well into the refurb. Easy to forget how much work went into it.

[Stanley]

The refurbished main flue under the engine house passage. Note the cast iron beams and jack arches that form the roof. When I first went in it was all crumbling and full of flue dust to within a foot of the roof. We did a good job!

[Stanley]

The passage roof takes shape in 1988.

[Stanley]

Funnily enough, one of the knottiest problems I encountered was the patterned terra cotta infill for the arch above the engine house entrance. They were lost during the demolition and I only had a couple of surviving bricks. I found a local potter eventually who made us replacement tiles and we fitted them. Problem is they are not high-fired terra cotta and to preserve them they need a good coat of boiled linseed oil. I wonder if the present incumbents realise this.....

[Stanley]

I should have posted this before the above. It shows how much we had to do to repair the demolition damage to the entrance.

[Stanley]

The flue box at the bottom of the stack needed a bit of attention.....

[Stanley]

The flue box at the base of the chimney had been damaged during the demolition but we enlarged the hole to give us access for the winch that powered the hoist inside the chimney during the rebuilding of the head in 1986/87.

[Stanley]

Tom Philips and Peter Tatham doing their thing on the smallest building site in Rochdale. Ellenroad chimney head in 1986.
The steeplejacks may have noticed that the main element in the counterweight to overcome the weight of over 200 ft of rope on the hoist is part of the finial from a church steeple.

[Stanley]

While all the work was going on at Ellenroad I got the opportunity to go and have a look at the inside of the spire at All Saints Hamer in Rochdale where the weight hung on the bottom of the finial on the spire had broken loose and fallen on the bells. I never realised that this was how the cast iron (or stone) finial on the top of the spire was held in place.

[Stanley]

The weight that held the finial in place snagged on the bell framework after falling in 1987. Notice that the original connection has been replaced by the wires.

[Stanley]

The lash up of copper wire used to replace the failed supporting rod in the spire. Good job it was a cat's cradle because this meant it snagged on the framework when it fell and caused relatively little damage.

[Stanley]

Meanwhile, back at the farm.... The chimney in 1988 with its new head. Sharp eyed jacks will realise that the laddering isn't Peter's, it's Brooke Edgeley Yorkshire laddering. Peter had retired and recommended we use them. A good firm and they did a lot of work on the stack over the next two years.

[Stanley]

The last job that Brooke Edgeley did for me on the stack at Ellenroad was to refurbish all the bands and oil the whole chimney. By the time they had finished they had re-pointed the whole stack and I remember Jack(?) Brooke coming down to look at the stack and telling me I was mad and nobody would ever do a complete refurb like this again. I took great delight in ringing him up a couple of years later to tell him I had another stack for him and it was a full refurb. This was at Masson Mill.

[Stanley]

Once Peter had finished replacing the chimney head we had to rebuild the flue box at the base of the chimney. We took the chance to insert a large redundant flue door that was part of the original installation for the five Lancashire boilers in the main boiler house. The stone copings had been damaged during the demolition so we got new ones cut and installed them. One interesting point to note about the chimney is the circular structure round the base. Over the years many theories had been put forward as to why it was there and these included esoteric things like circular flues and multiple entry points to the stack. When we opened it up to repair the roof we found the truth. The original builders had evidently been aware of the water table and so put their foundations in above the normal level. This meant that the set-off courses from the base to the shaft were partially above ground level so they constructed this roofed enclosure to protect the set-offs and of course tidy the structure up. Garfield Mill to the South had exactly the same problem and solution.

[Stanley]

The completed flue box on the chimney. The door was originally at the end of the main flue on the end wall of the boiler house and is part of the original Green's installation of the economisers.

[Stanley]

The last big job on the chimney at Ellenroad. Complete re-pointing and two coats of boiled oil. Brooke Edgeley contract.