Not really a forgotten corner, just that I haven't been up there for such a long time. Gisburn Old Track
However, this is, John and Mae Wallbank at Brown House on the track in 1957. Both of them dead now. A lovely couple and childless which was a great shame as they would have made wonderful parents. The farmers up there all helped each other and there were some wonderful stories.
Tommy Carter and his dog. Tommy lived at Peel House with his wife Sally and their three children.
And Sally's father, Jim 'Boss' Smith.
I think Peel House was originally a squatter's house, It only had a bit of land with it and how the Carter family survived was an enduring mystery. There were dark hints of relationships between the families up on the hillside but never any hard facts. I could write a book about that bit of road. (In fact I think I have somewhere!)
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
This is where the paved road ends at what is now known as Weets House but was always Stoops House when I was delivering groceries there in the 1960s. An elderly couple had it then and the next time it came to my notice was when a lady solicitor who seemed to have a problem with drink lived there. I remember reports of drink driving charges and eventually of a house fire. It appears to have less turbulent ownership now and is being run as holiday cottages and an Alpaca Farm.
I always thought it was a strange place to build a house, it's exposed to the weather wherever it comes from but someone evidently thought it was a good idea. If you want the cheat and get up to the trig point with least effort this is the way to go. Through the gate and a hundred yards to your right and you are there on the summit.
They can't touch you for it!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
The top end of Esp Lane where it ends at Hill Clough has always interested me because I suspect that in medieval times the lane went further and across to Coldweather. It was of particular interest to me in the 1970s because the man who had taken the tenancy of the farm already farmed on another and had the hay to get in there. Cyril Richardson was a friend of his and offered to help by making the hay at Hill Clough. That's how I came to be up at the farm with an international tractor and a mower and knocking down all the meadows in two days mowing. We were lucky with the weather and got the whole lot baled and carted into the barn before the weather broke.
The farm is well named, the fields are very hilly! Being at the end of the lane it's a good place to get away from the world.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
There used to be footpath from the field barn beyond the farm through the next field and out onto the moor over to Gisburn Track in the valley bottom. It's shown on the 1854 map I think. The footpath still should go through to the field barn but the current owners block the path and lock gates etc to bar walkers and ramblers access. There are notices just past Moor Close that say no access to Weets Hill which is true as the path only goes as far as the barn now although the footpath is clearly marked. It has been reported to the footpaths officer on more than one occasion and the owners have complied for a while then reverted to blocking access. I have noted it to the forgotten footpaths website to see if the through route could be reinstated.
The other location on that map that is a forgotten corner now is Springs Farm and more importantly, Springs Dam.
Springs Dam in 2003.
I don't know when or why it was constructed but I do know that when Billycock Bracewell was running Butts and was short of water, Springs Dam was a useful reserve to let down to keep the mill efficient by cooling the economisers. It was so important to him he rented it and spent a lot of money maintaining it and diverting water to it from Dark Well just above Springs Farm. There were interesting stories about horses falling into excavations and even when the Calf Hall Shed Company bought Butts Mill they still carried on paying rent for the dam. There is a lot of information in the shed company minute books about the dam.
Dark Hill Well in 2001.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
This has been forgotten for many years although many will tell you with certainty where it is. I'm afraid that they are most likely guessing because this location has been altered quite a lot over the years. For instance on the corner where the branch goes off the lane up to Higher Calf Hall there used to be a quarry but this was filled in and much of the surrounding ground altered by the tipping of material that had to be cut away from the hillside during the building of Butts Mill in about 1840.
The 1892 Map shows St Mary's Well as being on the north side of Calf Hall Lane just over the wall at what is now a cattle grid marked with a capital 'W'. This may or may not be true but Harold Duxbury told me that he was told by an old manufacturer (Who had good reasons for knowing where water sources were in Barlick) that the well was just over the wall of the path to Pickles Hippings on the same side as Calf Hall Mill and that it was covered with a stone flag and buried when the ground was being used as a place to tip spare soil when an extension was being done to the mill.
You pays your money and takes your choice! It's a genuine forgotten corner. (Personally I'd put my money on Harold...)
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Mentioning Butts brought something else to mind that is a forgotten corner now but was very important 100 years ago. Here's what I wrote about it nine years ago.
I think most of my readers will have realised how much time I spend in the undergrowth of fragmented evidence available about Barlick. At the moment the particular thicket is the Calf Hall Shed Company minutes and it has thrown up some more pieces of the jigsaw. You know of my interest in water rights on Gillian's Beck and I'm happy to report that things may be becoming clearer.
The evidence so far has pointed clearly to the fact that Mitchell, at what became Clough Mill, gained control of the water rights on Gillian's right back to the moor excepting of course the customary rights of Ouzledale Mill which must pre-date Mitchell's Mill. It looks as though whoever first built a water mill at Ouzledale for whatever reason, I think it was originally a saw mill, didn't see any reason to buy the water rights above the mill because at that point, sometime in the mid 18th century, there was no competition. We can date the water-powered mill at Gillians at sometime just after 1780 and by that time we know that Mitchell owned the water rights up on to the moor because the new mill at Gillians had to use the little stream flowing down from Lane Bottoms instead of the far better flow in Gillian's Beck, directly behind the back wall of the mill. So far so good, we are on firm ground.
However, I kept coming across hints that in some way Butts Mill had an interest in the Gillians water. The first clue I got was the fact that William 'Billycock' Bracewell of Newfield Edge bought the Ouzledale estate some time early after starting to build the first purpose-built steam mill in the town at Butts in 1845. I can think of only one reason for this, he had in his mind augmenting the inadequate water supply to Butts. I can't tell whether he knew about the ownership of the water rights on Gillian's Beck but he certainly had it in his mind that in some way he could divert water down to his mill. There was one further clue that I found years ago which supports this theory, in September 1932 Butts was finished as a weaving shed and there was no further use for the engine and therefore no need for condensing water. The minutes of the CHSC report that the Lea water meter, jointly owned by them and Slaters at Clough was to be removed and sold. Now a Lea meter is a device for measuring flow in a watercourse or pipe and there can be only one reason why it existed, it was to measure how much water Butts was taking from Gillian's Beck so that Clough Mill could be compensated. The next question is where was this meter situated and what water flow was it measuring?
Once Gillian's Beck had entered the tail race from the wheel at Clough it was of no further interest to the Slaters. It was at too low a level to be useful at Butts without pumping it back up into Calf Hall Beck alongside Butts and this would be expensive. I don't discount that fact that a pump might have been used at one time, there are small clues about pumps at Butts in Atkinson's 'Old Barlick'. What would be more useful and cheaper would have been the right to draw water off at the level of the lodge behind Clough and below Ouzledale because this is above the level of the Calf Hall Beck. If a pipe for this purpose existed the most logical point for the intake would be at the head race to the Clough waterwheel because this is nearest to Butts. Until a fortnight ago this was as close to a theory I had, all logical but no hard evidence.
Then I found a reference that in 1907 the CHSC were paying £2-10-0 per annum to the Trustees of the Baptist Church for the rent of 'The Dam' in the Parrock. There is evidence in the plan of Butts used in the 1887 sale document when the Craven Bank was liquidating the Bracewell Brothers' holdings of a branch of the Calf Hall Beck having been made into the Parrock, presumably to connect to this dam. When I found it I assumed that this was simply extra storage capacity for the head waters of the Calf Hall Beck to give better cooling of the condensers at Butts but then I began to think about it more carefully. Assuming I was right about there being water drawn off the Clough lodge, what was the shortest and most economical way to pipe water from there to Butts? If I was asked to do the job now I'd install a draw-off point at the clow into the culvert under Clough and lay the pipe in the bed of the beck until I had reached the open air again on the boundary of the Parrock. Remember that this is a pipe and at that point there would be enough pressure in it to carry the water to a point slightly above the level of the Calf Hall Beck and arrange a small dam and a feeder into the beck. I can't see any other reason for the dam in the Parrock.
Then another clue surfaced, in March 1915 there is an entry in the minutes: 'That Messrs Nutters, who propose to build a shed at Gillians [Bancroft Shed] be informed of the company's position re water rights'. At first sight CHSC doesn't have any rights to Gillian's Beck water beyond their customary rights at Ouzledale. I have sound evidence that the factor which enabled Bancroft to be built was an agreement on the use of Gillian's Beck between Nutters and Slaters triggered by a marriage linking the two families. This 1915 entry seems to confirm that Butts Mill drew some water off the Gillian's Beck by arrangement with Clough and it may be this which is referred to. If this is so, we are looking at an arrangement made by Billycock with either Mitchell or the Slaters before 1885.
As I always say, research changes the conclusions, this seemingly minor matter of the water from Gillians is a case in point. The jigsaw is becoming a recognisable picture. My position now is that Butts definitely did draw water off at the level of the Clough mill dam, most likely at the clow to the culvert under the mill. This water fed into a balance pond in the Parrock and from there into the Calf Hall Beck. The water meter would most likely be in the pipe at the inlet at Clough where it could be easily read by the Slaters to assess any payments. There is an occasional payment to Slater Brothers mentioned in the minutes, perhaps this was for water used to run Butts. Now all we need is the chance discovery of the pipe into the Parrock. Perhaps if and when the proposed scheme for Clough Park becomes reality? Watch this space, one of these days we may get confirmation!
Stp press. On July 21st 1915 CHSC instructed Harley and Pilgrim who were acting for J Slater and Sons to protect their interest in Gillian's water to act for CHSC as well in the matter.]
SCG/02/03/11
Later I found yet more evidence that proved that the water was indeed being drawn off and there was a balance pond in the Parrock at a high enough level to feed into the Calf Hall Beck before it entered the mill.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Long forgotten now but this pleasant house conversion at Mount Pleasant on the road down to County Brook Mill was one of the earliest Methodist Chapels in the area and John Wesley preached there at one time.
Just across the road there are the ruins of an old watermill.
This mill, Midge Hole, is to be found in the clough just below Mount Pleasant Chapel on the road down to County Brook Mill. All that can be seen now is some old walls and traces of a dam and wheel pit. The first mention I have found of the mill is in Wilfred Spencer’s papers on the Midgely Estate. Ezra Sellers took the mill over from his elder brother Marshall sometime in the mid 19th century and ran it as a power loom mill with 24 looms weaving winceyette shirtings for the Bradford market but as this trade fell off they changed to dealing with Manchester merchants. Raymond Mitchell at County Brook has in his possession an advice note dating from 1876 which shows that Ezra was sending cloth to be finished at Messrs. Robinson & Co., who were cloth finishers at Greenfield near Saddleworth. This was found when Foulridge Station was being demolished and so indicates that Sellers was transporting goods by rail. The interest I have in this is that we tend to assume that when steam came in, water power went out. This was not necessarily the case and Midge Hole and County Brook are good examples of the continued use of water power. By 1882 Sellers found it impossible to carry on at the mill as the Canal Company’s new waterman was demanding too much ‘palm oil’ to let the water down from the reservoir to suit the working of the mill. (This must have affected County Brook as well.) They moved down to Nelson where they took space in Holmfirth Mill and eventually expanded to 162 looms.
Midge Hole was in existence before the Sellers took it over but I have no information as yet on when it was built. The only pointers I can give are that the same pressures that led to the pre-1580 enclosures and a warming up of the climate increased the demand for corn milling capacity around 1600 and many ‘pirate’ mills were built. Midge Hole could have been one of these. Alternatively it could have been built to take advantage of the end of the Arkwright monopoly when his patents were extinguished in 1785. If this was the case, and I think it the most likely, it would start life as a spinning mill. One final point which has been niggling at me is that old Mr Barrett of Hey Fold told Helen Spencer that when Midge Hole Mill was demolished it was the Canal Company that did it and used the stone for their own repairs. Did they buy the mill in 1840 when they built the reservoir? Another reason to research the building of Whitemoor Reservoir.
Much later Chris Aspin who knows about these things, told me that Midge Hole was the only genuine Arkwright mill in Barlick, all the others were roving mills using older machinery.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
I have another story about a railway station and there may be someone who hasn't heard it....
"While we are on the subject of funny bits of paper, we had a customer at Wibsey near Bradford, Bob Morphet. I was in his kitchen having a cup of tea one day after delivering some cattle and I noticed a framed document on the wall that looked like a summons. I asked Bob about it and he told me that he once had an interest in a demolition firm which had a contract with British Rail for demolishing several redundant railway stations. They fulfilled the contract, got paid out and Bob forgot all about it. A couple of years later, he got a call from a man at BR who made rather a strange request! If Bob was assured in writing that the result of the court case would be an Absolute Discharge, would he allow BR to prosecute him for stealing Heckmondwyke railway station!
What had happened was that the arm of BR which had responsibility for selling surplus property had taken a client to view the redundant station at Heckmondwyke. When they got there they had a bit of a shock, it was missing! Investigation showed that BR had made a mistake when they gave Bob the list of stations to demolish and had mistakenly included Heckmondwyke. They consequently had a hole in their inventory and the legal eagles had decided that the most effective way of accounting for the loss of the asset was to prosecute Bob for stealing it, he would of course have a cast iron defence and could not be held responsible but in legal terms, the absence of the station would be accounted for. So this was why Bob had a framed summons on the wall which declared to the world that he had been charged with ‘Feloniously Stealing and Taking Away Heckmondwyke Railway Station’. Life really is stranger than fiction sometimes!"
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
That's interesting Kev. I have little doubt there is some connection. I definitely saw the framed summons. It might well be that there was more than one 'stolen' station. All I can report is what I saw and what I was told.....
( There are many strange things happen in the twilight world of demolition contractors. I have many stories, nothing would surprise me. I even know of instances that led to murder.)
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Cleckheaton only had one station, Cleckheaton Central, but it was on the Spen Valley line. Heckmondwyke had 2 stations, Heckmondwyke Central and Heckmondwyke Spen, so I'm voting for Stanley's tale! As someone who was born in Wyke where the station linked to the Spen Valley Line, I feel my opinion should count!
Here's a forgotten corner that was very seldom seen in Barlick. 17 Gallon conical railway kits used when milk had to be carried by rail from the farm.
The only time we saw them in Barlick was when we were churning whey cream from Dobson's Dairy. For some reason their stock of cans used for this included 17 gallon railway kits and the even more rare 15 Gallon kits as well.
The kit on the left is 15 gallon and the one on the right is 12 gallon which is the size that West Marton Dairies used.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
I've just realised, the kits behind John and Mae are another breed, more modern, aluminium 10 gallon cans that were picked up by Williamson's of Embsay and tipped at Dobson's Dairies in Barlick.
In this respect Gisburn Old Track was a bit of an oddity. Care of the road devolved on North Yorkshire for some obscure reason. It was connected with the fact that originally all of Barlick came under Skipton Rural District Council and for some reason when this changed to Barnoldswick control Gisburn Old track wasn't included. This spilled over into which dairy picked up which milk.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
This first edition 25" map repays careful study. Moses Lee and Moor Side are definitely forgotten corners. Even today they are isolated and must be very quiet places to live!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
About 35 years ago Moorside was a just a collection of derelict buildings. We were looking for another property and should have bought it. I had access to my dad then who would have been invaluable in a refurb. It was £28,000 at the time from memory and we would have had to live on crates for a while no doubt. It's all been redeveloped now into one main house and about 3 or 4 cottages with a large remote garage opposite. £385,000 comes to mind the last time the house changed hands. Quarry Cottages now or a similar name.
The scene at Long Ing in the 1950s as Moss Shed was remodelled before becoming the main Silentnight factory.
Shortly afterwards the old canal bridge was replaced by a modern structure. This was the start of what has proved to be a successful venture. The traffic pattern this morning at 05:00 in the town told the story, scores of cars heading for Moss Shed but none as far as I could see for Rolls Royce. I know the reason for that of course but the big forgotten corner could be Rolls as a major industrial asset to the town. That mantle may go to Silentnight and Carlson's.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Stanley wrote: ↑11 Jan 2021, 05:46
but the big forgotten corner could be Rolls as a major industrial asset to the town. That mantle may go to Silentnight and Carlson's.
