FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

The advent of recycling run by the council has killed the old trade of rag and bone man. (This pic was taken in Salford) We used to have one in Barlick called Brydon, he only had one leg and was based in Commercial Street and then on land reclaimed from Ouzledale Mill dam. We had a smaller operator called Rag Albert as well.



Pic of Rag Albert Broughton in his kitchen, Jan 1954 I think. Sent to me by Ray Jackson, November 2003.

[MickBrett]

Good information Mick, thanks. It all adds up!

Sorry, I spelt the name wrong. It's Frank Neal. Looks like Frank Neal junior was on the council (Lab) around 2000 along with David Whipp (Lib/Dem)

http://www.pendle.net/info/councilors.htm#Craven

Mick

[Stanley]

The old Baptist chapel in Walmsgate as it was in 1979. The graveyard has been 'tidied up' since but this is how it looked then.

[PanBiker]

Good information Mick, thanks. It all adds up!

Sorry, I spelt the name wrong. It's Frank Neal. Looks like Frank Neal junior was on the council (Lab) around 2000 along with David Whipp (Lib/Dem)

http://www.pendle.net/info/councilors.htm#Craven

Mick

Just for the record Mick, Frank (junior) is still about and we often bump into him when we are out on one of our escape routes up Weets which of course passes where he still lives. He is usually walking his dog.

[MickBrett]

Thanks, Ian

Please mention me to him the next time your paths cross

Mick

[PanBiker]

Will do Mick, no problem.

[Stanley]

Susan and I had a conversation on Friday about people buying ready made foods. I said that it seemed to me that were people complaining that they hadn't time to cook. Susan thought it was more likely to be because they had never been taught to cook by anyone and were frightened to be adventurous because they thought it was difficult.
If that's the case, please could anyone concerned teach kids to cook, and that includes the lads! I am so lucky to have had a mother who taught me how to cook when I was young. She always got me to help her if I was about right up to being a teenager and leaving home.
All this struck me as I knocked a casserole together and shoved it in the oven to argue with itself for three hours.....
Is teaching kids to cook a forgotten corner?

[Big Kev]

Is teaching kids to cook a forgotten corner?

Not in my family. My grandchildren are being taught by my children.

[Stanley]

Same here but I wonder h ow common it is.

[Stanley]

They tell me that at one time, when this was the gas showrooms, schools used to make use of the large demonstration kitchens for teaching 'domestic science' or whatever they called it. I can remember the kids taking baskets to school covered with a white cloth but never enquired where the actual lessons were held. I suspect this would be when the gas company was a BUDC enterprise.

[PanBiker]

My uncle Bob bought the gasworks yard and buildings around 1960 for his building and joinery business. He had wooden premises below the coal yard embankment previously, the gated entrance was just about where the junction from Skipton Road and Fearnlea Avenue meet at the bottom of Ash Grove. I still remember the telephone numbers, 2369 day 2080 night. He did undertaking as well, hence the night number. The upstairs front room on the gable was his French polishing room for the hand built coffins he made. I think I still have a promotional triangular joiners pencil which had the firms details printed on it.

We should also mention that the gable supported a linked air raid siren during WWII which I think was still in use for the fire brigade in the early 60's in addition to the one on the hose drying tower at the fire station.

[Stanley]

I think I can remember them testing that siren once a week. Would that be Civil Defence?



This lady represents a forgotten corner. This is Bunty Heap who at one time, with her mother, ran the Coronation Hotel, Vaux breweries coaching pub at Horton Lane Ends. At one time I delivered the milk to the Coronation every morning when I was picking up Horton milk. The last time I saw her was when she lived next door to the old estate office at West Marton. She represents lots of happy memories for me, including a wedding breakfast for 7/6 a head....

[PanBiker]

I think I can remember them testing that siren once a week. Would that be Civil Defence?

Half ten Saturday morning rings a bell or a siren as may be. I always thought it was just for the fire lads before the advent of the BT pagers which came a little later in the 70's I think. Fairly sure it was used as a practice turnout. As kids we always used to leg it up Wellhouse Road to watch the mad bugger who came on a motorbike and jumped off it while it was still running. It always got left on its side by the emergency phone, I think it was an AJS, had a silver tank anyway, funny what you remember!

[Stanley]

That phone has a Yarnspinners crocheted cover on it now....
I was once told that in the days when the fire engine was a horse drawn steam pumper....



Like this one in 1920 in the gala. I think it is a Shand-Mason set. The biggest problem in summer when the horses were out in the pasture was getting hold of them to harness them up. I've heard that said about the Earby engine as well. There's a forgotten corner for you.

[Stanley]

Colin Macro's cactus garden in the warehouse at Bancroft in 1977. Colin was the cloth and weft carrier helping the weavers and tacklers in the shed. His other job was to make sure the toilets had paper. He used to come down to the engine house and take a bunch of rolls of toilet paper by pulling up the corners of the fent he wore round his waist and converting it into a bag. I often wondered how many housewives had done that over the years when shopping at the corner shop!
Here's something I wrote about aprons....

APRON HOOKS
Many years ago I happened to go into John Elmer’s shop when he was clearing out some old stock. I bought a box of apron hooks off him. These were brass hooked pins about three inches long and the heads were in the shape of playing card suites; diamonds, hearts, clubs and spades. They were pieced at two old pence each and must have been on the shelf for many years. I have never seen these anywhere else but am sure that they must have been common at one time.
Over the years I have given them all away, one of them to a lady I know who now lives in St Louis. She mailed me asking a question about the hook and how they were used to make a fent into a brat and I replied to her. It struck me that this is a fairly esoteric bit of knowledge and might interest OGFB members. I’ve asked her to do me a pic of her hook for the archive. I’ll post it as soon as I get it. Here’s the reply I sent:

‘If you don't ask questions you never find anything out....  How do you think I got to know so much?
 A fent was no particular size and the weaver would sort through what was available until she or he found one the right size.  This was scrap cloth so there was no particular care taken over how they were folded etc.  As long as it was long enough to reach round the waist and give enough overlap to cover you that was all that was needed.  Most looms in Barlick were weaving 36" 0r 40" cloth so the selvedge was used at the waist and the hem and if any adjustment in depth was needed it was simply folded over at the top.  Many brats were just fastened with a safety pin and I can see where the word 'pinafore' came from.  It was a piece of cloth that was pinned afore or in front.  This makes sense when you think that if the overlap was at the front it made it easier to take a full stride.  I've also seen brats fastened by making a hole in the appropriate places and threading a piece of tackler's band (strong string) through and using this to fasten the brat.

SCG/19 February 2005

[I never got the picture.... I'll ask again!]

[Stanley]

Those of you with good memories will perhaps remember the strange episode of the emails with the subject line 'Apron Hooks' that vanished into the ether. It was almost as though junk filters were censoring apron hooks. I did a test this morning and it's not happening now, Apron Hooks is an allowed subject line. So that's a Forgotten Corner and we can all breath a sigh of relief.
(Does anyone remember when I used the phrase "I was on my knees wearing the Marigolds" and it got an enormous number of hits. We decided in the end that it must have been seen to have some sort of sexual connotation. Nowt so queer as folk!)

[Stanley]

The bus shelter on Station Road in 2004. We had a reliable clock then on the Council Offices, that's a forgotten corner!

[Stanley]

Susan at the optician's in 1977. This was Cunningham's in Prince's Street Stockport because he had been my optician since I was a lad. They are still in business but I don't know who owns it now. It's a forgotten corner but much of the equipment is still used today.

[Stanley]

The new boiler house at West Marton Dairy in 1968. All gone now of course but that isn't the reason why I have it as today's forgotten corner.
It's the chimney that gets my attention. Up until 1968 when the dairy was modernised and became a cheese factory the last chimney building I knew of was the short brick chimney at Barrett's steam laundry near the gas works. The 1968 build at Marton was notable for the fact that half way through the build the foreman brickie went down with a bad spell of Flu. He had made a batter board for use with a plumb bob to give the 1" in 3ft standard batter to the stack but had forgotten to plane a curve in the back side of the board to ensure it was always used correctly. His replacement used the wrong side and they built about 15ft before they realised they had a dog leg in the build. The outside case was stripped back to the transition and all the connecting bricks cut off. The case was rebuilt with no tie bricks for 15 feet.
Not many people know that! That's my forgotten corner and as the stack has been demolished since it will stay that way.

[Stanley]

I came across this map many years ago and it took me a while to work out where it was. It's the quarry at the end of Lister Well Lane that eventually grew to be Upper Hill Quarry under the management of John Sagar. (It was still the property of the Roundell Estate as far as I know.
The further question of course is how did it get its original name 'Loose Games'. I confess I don't know but have always suspected it had something to do with regulating 'loose games' like the early forms of ball games or perhaps knurr and spell. Was this a space set aside for such dangerous activities? My problem with that is that you'd imagine there would be a piece of level ground and that's in short supply at the end of the lane!

[Stanley]

This pic of Church Street in 1982 caught my eye this morning. We hear reports about the rise of online shopping and how it is affecting 'The High Street'. It leaps out at you here, Greenwood's was an essential shop in almost every high street in the North of England. See THIS link for a history of the company and confirmation that it want into liquidation in January 2019 and was liquidated. It no longer exists.

[Stanley]

This used to be a common sight in Barlick, a teagle hoist being used to bring beams of yarn into the preparation department of the mills. There was one firm, Baldwin and Heap of Bethesda Works Burnley who seemed to have a monopoly round here. The hoist at Bancroft was one of theirs.



Note it was driven by an electric motor so that it could be used independent of the engine driving the shafting.

[Stanley]

Blowing the boiler off for the last time at Bancroft in 1979.
High pressure steam blowing freely through a 3" pipe makes a roaring noise that can be heard over a mile way. In the latter days of the industry boilers were only blown down once a year for inspection but in the early days of the industry it was a weekly event as the chemicals available for treating boiler feed water to stop scale weren't available and the only way to keep the proportion of dissolved solids in boiler water down was to blow the water off and refill with clean water once a week. Even so, in some districts scale was a big problem.
Today, anyone running a boiler can control solids in the water by blowing down a small amount each day when the boiler is at rest so the sound of a large Lancashire Boiler blowing off for over ten minutes is a forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

My friend Daniel emerging from the toilets that used to stand at the bottom end of Letcliffe Park but have long been demolished. Today's forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

One of the things that struck me about Ernie Roberts' memoirs in the LTP was the fact that in the 1930s political meetings and rallies were a spectator sport and they always tried to attend them. From what I could make out he favoured the Conservative meetings because there was more scope for heckling.
Thinking about the present day tendency for our leaders to govern via the editorial pages of friendly right wing newspapers and comparing it with the old fashioned public meeting (or Parliament even) the great advantage is that there can be no heckling or opposing opinions to interrupt the exposition.
Opposition is such a nuisance and today is in danger of becoming a forgotten corner. The nature of governance is being changed gradually and nobody seems to be doing anything about it.