OneGuyFromBarlick

Stanley I hope you don't mind me asking where the term Kit came from, I only have memory of milk churns, and one old timer who always called them cans.

My dad always called them kits when he used to produce milk (he gave up milking in the early 70's and farming altogether in the early 80's), no idea of the origin of the word and google for once is useless. I suspect its local dialect.

Lots of people call them churns but a churn is the specialised container you make butter in. We called them cans or kits. The origin is probably the Middle Dutch word 'kitte', a jug or tankard.



My old TK Bedford at West Marton waiting to tip a full load of 85 12gallon kits. We used galvanised steel kits. There were two sizes, 10 gallon and 12 gallon. Some older kits were 15 gallon and the conical railway kits were 17 gallon. A 12 gallon kit weighed 48lbs empty and 168lbs full. I used to do at least two loads a day before going onto depot delivery of bottles. We had muscles in our eyebrows!

Thankyou for your kind explanation, nice picture of TK I have a few of them in my die cast collection nice to see a real one.

Pluggy wrote:My dad always called them kits when he used to produce milk (he gave up milking in the early 70's and farming altogether in the early 80's), no idea of the origin of the word and google for once is useless. I suspect its local dialect.

I am also a farmers son from Paythorn but had never heard the term Kit suspect you are right it is very local, Stanleys explanation sounds good,just googled it myself not a mention of kit, just the universal Milk Churn not to be confused with a Butter Churn.

Gone but not forgotten. King of the Road, biggest in Barlick. Maximum length and a joy to drive. My last wagon and I did 110,000 miles in my last 12 months.

'O' type Bedford JTB 517 delivering milk at the West Marton Dairies milk depot on Wellhouse Road in 1957. The small building is still there in 2013.

Do you mean Valley Road, Stanley?

I was going to say the same, my adventure playground when I was little lad.

No, it's Wellhouse Road, in what is now Gissing and Lonsdale's site. My understanding is that Valley road starts at the shorp right hand bend as you are coming towards Barlick. Have I got that wrong?

My memory is that wellhouse rd was tarmaced by then, our milkman used to keep his horse and float just off the bend opposite Boltons decorators shop it would be about that time he let me sit on the horse when I received a cowboy outfit for Christmas

I remember the milk storage and the kits on the platform outside on Valley Road. The picture looks like Havre Park and Ethel Street in the background. The road was still stone setts in the 50's and the old Air raid shelter was still accessible just before the milk depot. The road ended at the bottom of Stuart Street and there was a cinder path through to Long Ing with hen pens on each side. The other end of the path came out by the farm which is where the Silentnight car park is now.

Sorry, you're both right of course! My brain clicked back in gear this morning and yes, it was on Valley Road! And yes, at that time it was setts. In about 1960 WMD gave up on this depot and used part of the old barn at the bottom of Vicarage Road as a depot.



This is Wellhouse in about 1890 when the Calf Hall Shed Company bought it from the Craven Bank. The engine house at the left hand end has been demolished as part of the sale agreement was that the bank would demolish the old engines and CHSC would install a new engine and house to make the mill more attractive to the market should CHSC fail in their payments and the mill put on the market again.

Wellhouse chimney being demolished in July 1976.

Click to enlarge the plan. The dotted line is the course of the Bowker Drain along Eastwood Bottoms. The by-pass has been obliterated by the development down there and I often wonder what has been done to make sure the drain doesn't cause any trouble in the future.

The access pit in Eastwood Bottoms from which Wellhouse Mill drew the water for the dams. This was in 1982, it has since been lost under the landscaping. (They never asked me, I wonder if they knew what it was? If they thought it was just a field drain, think again!)

The town well embedded in the wall of Gisburn Road CP school.

Not Barlick, this was at Higher Mill Helmshore. Two men from Kenyons at Dukinfield splicing a new drive rope on the drive for the mules. They were the same two splicers that put three new ropes on the governor drive at Bancroft when I was engineer there. They tell me that some cotton rope drives are still used but I doubt if we will ever see them in Barlick again.

Canal cottages behind the Anchor Inn. About 1890?

Stanley indicating Bancroft Shed engine in 1977. Definitely a forgotten corner. Nobody will ever indicate a working engine in Barlick again!

Stanley wrote:Stanley indicating Bancroft Shed engine in 1977. Definitely a forgotten corner.

Certainly is, Stanley.

Please can you explain what indicating is?

David, indicating an engine is the process whereby you obtain a diagram of what is happening inside the cylinder during it's stroke, a time/pressure curve. What you see above is one of my Dobbie McInnes indicators in its mahogany box. The gubbins in the box is the springs for various pressures, the scale rules for measuring the curves and the tools and string you need to connect the indicator to the parallel linkage you fit on the engine which enables you to connect the indicator to the cross head and get the requisite scaling down of the distance travelled to give the correct rotation of the drum on the indicator. The drum has a piece of 'metallic paper' on it, in effect paper with a mild abrasive surface. The brass stylus on the pressure arm of the indicator traces a faint line on the paper and gives you a curve for the pressure at different points on the stroke.
Well meaning theorists have written large volumes about indicating but most of it is tripe written by people who have never run an engine. The diagrams are a useful guide and can flag up problems with valve events but a good man has only to listen to an engine to know if it's OK. In particular, with rope drives, if the ropes are swooping smoothly from the flywheel to the second motion with no flapping and flogging you can be pretty sure you are somewhere near right. I used to indicate Bancroft about every two or three months just as a check on my ear.
The thing that always strikes me now is the quality of the indicators and their box. God knows what it would cost to make one of these today. A thing of beauty and a joy to use! (And I have three of them....)

Fitting the parallel linkage to the Bancroft engine before indicating it. 1977.

When the shed was being demolished at Bancroft I noticed these pin-ups on one of the cast iron pillars. There were many more and when the shed was working I'd never noticed them. Very poignant reminder that human beings worked in the place and left their mark on it. If you look carefully you'll see a leaf pattern on the pillar. A small reminder of the original paint job in 1920, never painted since. They survived after 60 years.....

I can't watch an Alan Ladd film without constantly seeing the camera angles which disguised the fact that he was about 5' 6" tall. He is never shown in full shot standing next to anyone else. Made a lot of films though.