FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[PanBiker]

2009 is 13 years ago! The current view shown in Kevs post is how it is now.

[Stanley]

Just a snap taken in Colne Road in 1982 but the date means it qualifies as a forgotten corner, 40 years ago. What had grabbed me then was the fact that Bancroft stack had just had two coats of double boiled linseed oil, the standard treatment for brick chimneys. Ideally it was repeated every five years but that interval is almost certainly another forgotten corner!

[Stanley]

Ellenroad engine on April 19, 1987. It was the first day we opened the house to the public to let them in to see the size of the job we had taken on board. We had just completed the initial clean up and made the house weatherproof. That makes it a forgotten corner. This was the first of many such days and was seen as vitally important to the overall project. 35 years later you can judge for yourselves how successful we were.

[Stanley]

This image is of a forgotten corner because it shows one of the last weavers in Barlick working in Bendem's shed at Wellhouse Mill in 1982. Note the two large electric motors mounted on the wall which each drove a lineshaft. These were the last of the Wellhouse looms and when Bendem's finally finished this was the end of weaving in Barlick. Even the worn flags in the floor point to an industry that was worn out.....

[Stanley]

The contents of a tackler's pockets. I asked my mate Ernie Roberts to empty his pockets and this is what we found. In case you're wondering, the Fox's Glacier Mint was to console a weaver who was having a particularly bad day! No wonder the weavers liked Ernie... A forgotten corner now. A few simple tools like this could keep a weaving shed busy!

[Stanley]

Her Majesty's Troop ship Empire Parkeston. The boat that took me across the North Sea for Service in Berlin in 1954. Built 1930 by Cammel Laird at Birkenhead and scrapped at Spezia in 1962. This was the regular Harwich to the Hook of Holland boat for many years.

[Stanley]

Once a common sight in the back streets of the town. The top cast iron door is for the coal hole, the bottom is for access to the bucket of a privy from the street. Gradually, over the years, time and alterations destroy the evidence. I found these in 1979. I think they are a forgotten corner now.

[Stanley]

The back street behind the surgery in 1982. I'm pleased to say that since then it has been tidied up but I think you can see that it had sunk to a low level 40 years ago!

[Stanley]

Today's forgotten corner is a long way from Barlick. Many years ago on a walk near Arisaig on the West Coast of Scotland I came across this ruin of a house that had evidently been abandoned during its construction. What was even more intriguing was the fact it was in the middle of a garden populated by some very rare and unusual species of plant. So I did some digging....
I found that the house had been started by a wealthy man who was a plant collector and for years had been stocking the large garden below the house with exotic plants. Unfortunately her lost all his money in the 1929 Wall Street crash and the house and garden were abandoned and left to grow wild. It is under the care of I think it was Aberdeen University. The garden is about 2 miles South of Arisaig and if you are ever in the area it's well worth a bit of a furtle.

[Stanley]

It's going home time at Bancroft Shed. The engine has stopped, the looms are silent and the weavers are heading home. Another day's work is over. It was a good routine and something that everyone understood. It and the shed are now a forgotten corner and some of us regret the loss of the certainties....

[Stanley]

The Weaver's Institute in Frank Street in 2006 before it became the Post Office. At one time this was the shared headquarters for all the textile unions in Barlick.

[PanBiker]

Also the HQ for Barlick Labour Party. I was secretary at the time, we had some good events there over the years. I ran the branches litho printer from the board room, the big table was ideal for knocking up 6,000 sheets of A4. We had to budget 1,000 sheets over for 5,000 finished leaflets as the Gestetner litho, had a sightly warped main shaft which led to a certain amount of attrition on the paper requirements. It was usually after midnight when I could knock of a printing session as you had to clean the ink feed and all the rollers and down.

Before the advent of affordable computers we ran election days from the main room on lots of trestle tables using multi part reading pads. One for each street all arranged in alphabetical order and all hand written during the run up to polling day. We ran Coates ward from one end of the room and Craven from the other.



Sally and our Jack on the campaign trail for Mike Hindley during the Euro Elections, (now there's another forgotten corner).




A couple of years later with Gordon, David Blunkett and Offa.

[Stanley]

Homework at Hey Farm in 1977. The two survivors are nearing retirement age so this is a forgotten corner!

[Stanley]

One of the advantages of life as a steeplejack is that you get the benefit of views like this. In 1986 Young Ronnie Goggins was demolishing the redundant stack at Mons Mill, Todmorden and I wanted some Bricks for Ellenroad chimney head. Mons was built using brick from the Newhey brickworks so they were ideal. In those days I thought nothing of climbing to have a look at the top of the chimney and this was the view up the road towards Burnley. You don't get the same idea of how uneasy the topography is in the Todmorden Valley from the ground but from a height it is obvious.

[PanBiker]

Homework at Hey Farm in 1977. The two survivors are nearing retirement age so this is a forgotten corner!

I wouldn't have thought that could ever be regarded as a forgotten corner Stanley.

[Stanley]

It was 1979 and my mother had complained that her little house in King Street looked shabby. I had a word with John Northage and he saw to it that it was brightened up. He warned me that stone paint spreads like a rash! He was right but mother was delighted.
(I bought that house for £2,300.... That's another forgotten corner....)

[Stanley]

The waterwheel at King Mill at Colne during demolition of the mill.

[MickBrett]

King's Mill intact. It was said to have dated back to 1670.

[Stanley]

Coates Wharf. A quiet spot on the canal now but in its time one of the busiest places in the town. Apart from having a lime kiln and burning lime for export it was the unloading point for many tens of thousands of tons of coal for the mills. Even when the railway came it still handled much of the coal.

[Stanley]

Mike Clarke's image of Salterforth wharf in the 19th century when it was the main transport link for coal to Earby before the railway. Although it's on the same elevation as Coates Wharf, it was never used for Barlick coal because the roads to Barlick were all uphill due to the local topography. The route to Earby was far easier and for many years was very heavily used by two wheeled coal carts carrying two tons of coal at a time. As soon as the railway arrived Salterforth was largely redundant.

[MickBrett]

While my daughter and her husband were visiting we got talking about Rainhall Bridge and they were both amazed when I told them that the bridge had not been demolished and was still intact beneath the ground.

Tony does a lot of walking in that area and I told him he'd probably walked over the bridge without even knowing it.
Would it be possible for someone to post an aerial shot showing exactly where it is so I can pass it on to him?

Thanks

Mick

[Wendyf]

Does this help Mick?

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[MickBrett]

It certainly does, Wendy. Many thanks

[Stanley]

What a resource that woman is! Nice one....
Mick I think it's wonderful that the kids fly 3,000 miles and learn something about their home town due to Oneguy. That's a nice one as well!



The bridge in 1978 as the tide of waste approaches from the North. Interesting that even at that late stage a large section of the bridge parapet on this side has been rebuilt. It would of course have still been a designated right of way and someone had a duty of care.

[Stanley]

The mechanism of the church clock at Carleton's St Mary's church. One of my informants on the Lancashire Textile Project, Horace Thornton, was verger at the church and told me he once showed Johnny Pickles the mechanism which was reputedly made by a local farmer. Johnny said that the freewheel mechanism incorporated in the movement was the earliest he had ever seen. I'll bet that's a little known fact in Carleton!