OneGuyFromBarlick

Largely in the 1990's - but of course not at the same or any similar establishment.

Do I take it then that your wife's friend was facing inwards when on duty, protecting us.

My big lad nearly bought a house in Darley - so I did quite a bit of visiting the region. I noticed there was no shortage of Land Rovers with pairs of policemen in them, cruising around the area at a fairly leisurely pace.

I got a copy of James Bamford's 'Body of Secrets' (ask Stanley he's got one too). from a charity shop in Harrogate at the time. Time to have another look.

Sideways on if you will with a small gatehouse. The Darley Dale Radio Club operated from within the base they had one of the smaller buildings on the site for their "shack". All members were from the base so all American. We used to talk to them quite regularly from our clubhouse on the Rolls Royce Sports Ground in Barlick. Sweetness and light until you ask a perfectly innocent and valid question for radio amateur licence holders which kicks off the paranoia. We all had to send our details about a month in advance, designated cars, make, model, colour and reg. Who would be driving and who were the passengers. Any deviation from the agreed arrangement and we would be refused access.

Not sure if they are still active, nothing comes up on a Google search, but maybe that is by design.

Crazy thing was we had a club visit to a RN submarine control centre not long after. Our lads showed us just about everything and explained the VLF systems for long range underwater communication. They had some huge antennas, miles of wire strung round on the adjacent hillside. Different world. They had a light up display showing where all our subs were, or where they said they were.

The circumstance I referred to was on the 1980s also Ian.That was when there was a permanent protesters camp outside the perimeter.

One long forgotten corner (thank God!) is 'Air Raid Precautions'. To many this automatically conjures up the image of the Air Raid Wardens, volunteers who's main job was to make sure that black out regulations were strictly enforced ("Put That Light Out" became a national joke) but were also a key part of response to bomb damage and working with Civil Defence to care for survivors. They performed a valuable role in reporting bomb damage and acting as coordinators of rescue efforts.



Signs like this appeared on walls.They directed anyone needed to fight a fire to a source of water. These were often circular metal tanks built up from mass produced sections and were easy to erect and fill. However, other water sources could be accessible river banks, mill lodges or ornamental lakes. Any body of water where a fire engine could get close enough to drop its suction hose in.



The object of interest in this image isn't the engineer but the dark object to the left of his chair. This is one of the heavy galvanised square buckets that were issued to be half filled with sand and used with a scoop on one end of a long stail, there was a hoe-like blade on the other that could be used for dragging the burning incendiary out of a corner to where it could be scooped up by the shovel on the other end and dropped into the sand in the bucket.



This was the other item of fire fighting equipment issued to households. The Stirrup pump and bucket. The pump was double acting and produced a narrow but quite powerful jet of water to fight a fire.
We also had the full time Fire Watchers who kept watch at night from high vantage points and reported any fires.
All long gone thank God but worth remembering.

Poster art can be a very powerful clue for changing attitudes and hence forgotten corners. Daniel Meadows pic of wartime posters in Bancroft warehouse. How things change! These wouldn't go down very well at the moment.



Unrestricted foreign travel by sea, old style, 1920 version.



And by air. All these are forgotten corners at the moment!

This slogan wouldn't work in the US! Large poster on the embankment at Primet Bridge at Colne.



The advertising hoardings on Station Road in 1892.



An official bill poster and town crier in Thetford during the Great War. Unusual because it is a woman but I suppose that was because all the men were on the Western Front.

I don't get about much so I am not sure of my ground here but I suspect the day of the advertising hoarding and the bill poster has gone. Time was in a political campaign you booked up all the hoardings you could afford. Now you set on a bunch of young geeks and flood Tinternetwebthingy. (Apart form the side of campaign buses of course)
Come to think perhaps they have been replaced by those white vans with a structure on the bed to hold a large poster. Why have they survived?
So today's forgotten corner is the bill poster and the large advertising hoarding.

Large advertising hoardings are still around, perhaps not as many as there used to be. The one at Primet Bridge is still there. When we were children one of the games we played on journeys was to each pick an advert and see who counted the most. As most of our trips were around Leeds and Bradford there were plenty to count! Another game involved cars and recognising makes and models.

I wondered what would happen to similar groups. I saw the Craven Flagcrackers when i visited the town a few years ago. Thanks Panbiker for identifying them for me at the time..


Looks like they have gone too. Is no one brave enough to stand up to this nonsense?
I guess not as livelihoods could well be threatened by failure to be' woke'.

Tripps wrote: ↑30 Jul 2020, 10:08 I guess not as livelihoods could well be threatened by failure to be' woke'.

When social media gets involved it can be lives that are threatened rather than only livelihoods.

I came across this M.Phil thesis written in 2013...
`‘Blacking Up’: English Folk Traditions and Changing Perceptions about Black People in England' LINK

Probably not the right thread for this now. Perhaps some kind Mod could move it to Forgotten Corners - because that's what it is rapidly becoming.

Thanks for the link Tizer - a lot to go at and I wouldn't even have thought to look.

Sorted.

Good man - thanks. Alarm set for 7.30 pm.

Tripps wrote: ↑30 Jul 2020, 10:08 Is no one brave enough to stand up to this nonsense?

They must have heard me - I didn't expect this. . .

"As a team we have discussed the use of black face makeup in great detail and have come to a unanimous decision that this will continue to be part of our unique mining tradition, removing any part of our costume will take away the mystique of who we are. The dances were devised by local miners. Since they all had permanently black faces on working days, from the outset it became an essential part of the tradition that they also performed with black faces. This tradition has now been maintained continuously for more than a century. It has no connection with ethnicity nor any form of racial prejudice"

Splendid!

I think I first mentioned these guys and gals when we came across them at Malham Treasure Hunt a few years back. They stopped the traffic while they dance as they need the room in the road. The baiting stick man who announces the dances shouted to the waiting cars, "this next one is a traditional dance which originates in Derbyshire, it only lasts an hour"!

Have a look in The Flatley Dryer for today's forgotten corner...



The small double ended containers for tea and sugar that used to be in the bait tin of almost every working man. This was before the days of tea bags and all the employer had to do was provide a source of hot water.



At Bancroft it was this boiler supplied with live steam and a large stone sink. The bucket on the right was for the used tea leaves and it was used for scattering on the concrete floor when sweeping up as it laid the dust. It used to stink!
In the early days the management charged workers a penny a week off their wage for use of the boiler and I once did the calculations and worked out that it was the most profitable piece of equipment in the mill. In my time the payment had been discontinued, I think during the war. It was in use right up to closure.

I'm amazed that even in the 70's the factory inspector didn't shut you down for a refreshment installation like that. We have to be a lot cleaner than that up at the Clarion for boiling water. We are inspected annually.

It worked Ian and never caused any trouble. The Inspectorate always took the view that as an anachronism, a steam driven shed like Bancroft was going to close very soon and why should they be the ones to put 150 people out of work? We had a clean accident book and a good record in all other respects. No complaints from the workers (and they were a feisty lot!). They call it common sense and that's a forgotten corner these days.

No need to put anyone out of work or shut the firm down, they can just put a mandatory notice to improve on.

They can be topped up using a smartphone now

Now you've made me feel really old. (probably because I am). I remember when it was an (old) penny (or usually two or three) in the gas meter under the stairs. A chap used to come round now and then, read the meter, and emptied the box - counted the pennies out on the bottom stair, and issued a small refund there and then.

It's a lot better system now - isn't it?

Makes me think of the quote "man had never lived at a level of technology below that which was available".

Ian, they could do that then. Problem was Boardman's wouldn't have spent the money so that would have been closure.
I can remember putting a shilling in the gas.
I once had a meter at Hey Farm that ran backwards when I was welding, never did the sums but I suspect it was cutting my bill down.
I remember them putting a new gas meter in at the sawmill at Sough and the gas cost trebled overnight, they were running the gas engine off Town's gas. They got the old sawdust gas producer plant working again!

One of my mates told me yesterday that the current extensive works in Town Square were because it was subsiding into the old Co0op cellars underneath. I don't know if this is true.



The old Central Co-op building certainly had large cellars, here's one that used to house the gas engine and generator they had for electricity supply when it opened in the days before mains leccy. The Majestic had a similar set up in 1915. Newton once told me that his first outside job was repairing a gas engine that drove the potato peeler in a chip shop. Many businesses and some private homes had them. Arthur Entwistle told me that has dad had one in the front room of their house on the Croft which powered a room full of woodworking machinery. His dad used to get scrap wood from the Maypole Dairy and make it into wooden toys which he sold at Xmas. (He also slaughtered goats in the bath upstairs...)
Gas engines and private enterprise were alive and well in those days! How many wives would accept a gas engine in the front room today?



Come to think, I am just as bad. I have a working lathe in the front room. Good job I'm not married!

Stanley wrote: ↑04 Aug 2020, 03:27 One of my mates told me yesterday that the current extensive works in Town Square were because it was subsiding into the old Co0op cellars underneath. I don't know if this is true.

Yes it is Stanley the centre of the square has been subsiding for years. Another issue was that some of the flags they surfaced the square with were delaminating and causing a trip hazard. They are replacing them with a different type of flagstone. Lets hope the backfilling is sorted now its had nearly 30 years of settlement.

Thanks for that Ian. A very common problem if back-filling and consolidation is not carefully done. At Dee Mill they had the same problem plus septic water leakage when they back-filled the old lodge without taking precautions. A very expensive thing to put right.
All sorts of funny things can happen when a large building is demolished and a site cleared. When Ellenroad was being demolished I asked Shepherd's surveyors (The builders of the new factory for Coates) if they had re-checked their levels after the site was cleared. I got some funny looks but later one of the surveyors told me that it was a good job they did as in the centre the ground had heaved three inches. I knew this simply because I had listened to Norman Sutcliffe the demolition boss when he told me why the access tower they had left standing because there was no plunder in it was leaning outwards, all down to heave in the ground.



You can see the lean in this pic I did. Knowledge like this is often forgotten.