OneGuyFromBarlick

Ellenroad was only half the size of Swabs but look at the contrast in the weight of the bricks and capping on the drum. Peter had his own way of making a strong capping. He cast it in situ with copper bars and a bitumen expansion joint in between the segments. He told me a story once about seeing Furse men felling a stack at a mill that had one of his cast caps on it. He gave them a friendly warning about the fact that it might not break in the fall but they ignored him. When the chimney fell to top ring stayed intact like a giant Polo mint, rolled down the hill and broke through the back wall of the mill. Oh, and they dropped the stack on the compressor as well!

Daft I know but I still miss Peter.....

Daniel Meadows and Peter Tatham in the old boiler house at what used to be Simon Schwab's dye works at Middleton in 1977 after we had been in the flues. Those wellingtons are knackered, the unburnt oil in the dust is eating the rubber away!

A pair of late wellingtons!



Swabs in 1923.

John Burlison sent me this clipping dated December 18 1934. Some interesting facts in it. 2,500 tons a week is a big burn. It's a surprising figure because it's 165 tons per boiler per week. They must have been firing hard 24 hours a day, 35 tons in an eight hour shift was a heavy winter burn at Bancroft on one boiler.

Stanley wrote:
It's a surprising figure because it's 165 tons per boiler per week. They must have been firing hard 24 hours a day, 35 tons in an eight hour shift was a heavy winter burn at Bancroft on one boiler.

Correction: they were burning 2500 tons of coal per MONTH. 35 tons per 8 hour shift at Bancroft on one boiler works out at over 4 tons per hour, so according to that 165 tons a MONTH doesn't sound outrageous, does it?

Quite right China, I misread the clipping.

Flue dust in Swabs in 1976. Years later I found out that flue dust contains the highest concentration of Germanium known and it is well worth refining to recover it as the metal is extremely rare.

The inside of the chimney bottom at Swabs. The fire brick liner only went up about 30ft, it was 40ft across with a cruciform wall in the bottom and a separate flue branching off the main flue into each section. You can see one of the two internal lightning conductor tapes clearly in the picture.

Swabs has always fascinated me because it is so different than any other stack I have examined. Leaving apart its size, the bad bearing ground and the reported speed it was built, whoever designed and built it did a good job because there was no evidence of any repair or maintenance work on at apart from the 1923 extension and it's worth noting that it had no cracks and not a single band on it.

Stanley,
My father Ronnie Bamford worked on this chimney twice in the 1950s. Indeed, it was at this site that he severely burnt his hands. They had put chains around the top of the stack for safety (because of the stacks height). When the wind blew too strongly they would grab the chains. They turned up for work one Monday morning and sure enough the wind got up and he grabbed the chain. Unfortunately they had fired up the boilers a couple of hours before they arrived and the chains where red hot. He suffered from the injury the rest of his life. The skin on his hands was so calloused and cracked, he applied Fiery Jack to them every night in an effort to soften the skin, but it didnt work,

Thanks for that Robert. It raises an interesting question about repairs on a stack when the boiler(s) were being fired. It must have been incredibly dangerous, not only from things like your father's red hot chains but the poisonous gases. Hard men!

Robert has reminded me of something Peter Tatham said to me once while he was working on Ellenroad stack. He commented on the fact that even though the boiler hadn't been fired, flue gases were coming up and making his life difficult. He wondered whether we had been burning anything in the flues. I looked into it and realised that when Newton and I ran the engine we had to light a fire in the main flue to "Larn the chimbley to smook" we had set fire to the part burnt fuel and flue dust that was filling the main flue to within a foot of the top. I think that when they were running the modern package boiler on coal they had too much forced draught on and this was why much of the dust was in fact very fine coke. The flue burned all winter, keeping the floor in the passage warm and when it went out and we got in, reducing the level of flue dust to about 18" deep.



Newton wakening the Ellenroad flue up in 1985.

At Stanley's request Glen Mills Chimney. (When its gone its gone). How do you make a factory chimney look interesting? The date stone over the engine house

Thanks for that P. As for how you make a chimney interesting... How about India Mill at Darwen?

Lister's Mill chimney at Manningham, Bradford.

John Pope on India Mill stack in about 1960.

John Burlison has been digging again. The base of Swabs and Middleton Road in 1925.

Another one from John, Swabs in 1955.

John's pic of Swabs on 8 May 1980. Interesting in that they are lowering bricks in bulk from the top of the stack in a container instead of just dropping them. You can see the marks on the side of the stack where the skip has skidded down. No doubt an H&S stipulation because of the proximity of building and the road. The stack was scaffolded internally.

Apologies for the lousy picture but this is the first internal scaffolding inside the shaft of Swabs chimney. If my memory serves me aright, the HSE came in and made them improve it radically.

Crow nest chimney in 1978 in its original condition. News is that Hartleys are moving to part of Wellhouse and so the days of this stack are numbered.

I know you've expressed a different view on this Stanley, but the chimney may continue to have a life. One of the conditions on the outline planning consent for a foodstore was the retention of the mill chimney. Will have to see what it shows on the detailed plans when they come out.

If it is going to be kept for heritage reasons I'll go with that as long as they restore the head and get rid of the venturi.

Doubt that we can achieve that through the planning process, but who knows what's possible in future?