FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

Moss Mill chimney at Rochdale in 1979.

[Stanley]

The boiler house at Ellenroad in 1988. I am always surprised when I look back at the scale and depth of the work we did at Ellenroad and I doubt if many even think about it today. For instance, two of the pillars holding the concrete roof up were defective so we simply made new ones out of heavy walled pipe before installing the new heavier foundations.
Would I take up the challenge again? No way! It was an enormous task and no wonder Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council let an unqualified bum like me attempt the job. Mind you, I proved them right in the end....

[Stanley]

When I was a lad, the Robin Hood boiler fired by coke from the nearest gas works was the standard method of heating public buildings, churches and schools. There was always a cellar complete with caretaker and a faint smell of coke fumes..... They were very efficient for the time and served us well.

[Stanley]

"The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley."
You are looking at a disaster. We found a contractor to install the Whitelees Pit and accepted his quotation. I went on holiday for a week and when I came back found this. The firm had started digging, hit running sand at about 3 feet and had panicked shoving anything they could find into the hole and pouring concrete in. Then they left the site and abandoned the contract.
We had to clear up and find a way out of our mess. Look elsewhere on the site for what we did. All a forgotten corner now but at the time it was an interesting situation!

[Stanley]

If any of you have read the Grapes of Wrath you'll know about the great migration west to California to escape the Great depression of the 1930s and the dust bowl conditions of the Mid West and you will remember the grape stalls on the side of Route 66 which were a welcome source of cheap fruit for the migrants. When I drove up Route 66 in 1998 I found stalls like this one in Missouri on the side of the original route of the road which is now replaced by the modern interstate.
This is one of the original stalls that sold grapes and as such is now a forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

The IOM ferry at Fleetwood in 1977.

[Stanley]

Thanks to John Burlison for this image. This is a souvenir PC issued by Platt's in 1929. Ellenroad was used as a showcase by Platt's for their latest machinery. In 1929 the great spinning mills were riding high on an artificial boom in the trade. It was not going to last, See 'Lancashire Under the Hammer by Ben Bowker who was the editor of the Lancashire Daily Post and one of the most perceptive critics of the industry.
Long gone now of course.

[Stanley]

Very few people knew that a section of the second storey floor under the Teagle Hoist at Bancroft Shed was removable. This was to allow the drums from the tape machines to be lowered down to the cart race below if they needed to be moved for any reason.
This pic was done during demolition when the drums were removed in one piece when the tape machines were scrapped as they were mainly copper and were more easily dealt with whole.

[Stanley]

The new flywheel for the Bishop House engine made by Roberts brothers in 1949. The man in the suit on the right is Arthur Pickles I think.
For the full story behind this see Newton Pickles' evidence in the Lancashire Textile Project on the site. His father's firm, Brown and Pickles, had the job of getting Bishop House Mill in Burnley back into production after an overspeed smashed the engine. Possibly the only full account of such a task extant.

[Stanley]

Built in 1872 by the Blinkhorn Chemical Company and 367 feet tall it was intended to disperse the acidic fumes from sulphuric acid production but failed and three years later Dobson and Barlow took over the works. Reduced in height twice due to safety concerns the chimney was finally demolished in 1967.
Think of the confidence needed to build a brick chimney like this. Could it be done today?

[Stanley]

The 343 feet high brick chimney at what used to be Simon Schwab's dye works in Middleton, Greater Manchester in 1976.
It was redundant at the time and I was attempting to restrain my friend Robert Aram who wanted to buy it. I succeeded and in 1979 demolition started by another hand. It turned out to be a process fraught with difficulty but by 1980 it was gone and is now long forgotten.

[Stanley]

My first sight of the Ellenroad engine in 1988. Did they really expect that anyone could resuscitate this sleeping giant? A forgotten corner now but I still don't fully understand what gave me the confidence to take the job on. I can only surmise that I was desperate!

[Stanley]

The lineshaft from the engine in Bancroft weaving shed. This powered all the looms in the shed from the cross shafts. Just one part of the complex system of shafts, gears and ropes that transmitted motive power from the engine to all the parts of the mill that needed it.

[Stanley]

Once upon a time manufacturers were so proud and confident that they made ornate nameplates and fixed them on their products. William Roberts nameplate on the Bancroft engine.

[Stanley]

Lord Charlie Shuttleworth with an impressive woman at the opening of the refurbished barn at Gawthorpe Hall in 1979. I don't know why but this image has always fascinated me. I suppose because the ladies dress sense is so strange......

[Cathy]

My first thought was that she is wearing a Pinafore over her outfit. Maybe she had a messy job to do on the day.

[Stanley]

I doubt it Cathy, these were very well-heeled people!

[Stanley]

Maureen Thomas' father Jack. He lived in retirement at Newbiggin after working for over 50 years in the local coal mines which extended out under the sea. He said that to mark his 50 years the NCB gave him a 'sustificate' and when I asked to see it he showed it to me, nailed on the coal house door in the back yard. That seemed to say so much about his attitude to his life's work.

[Stanley]

Cooke's Explosive Works at Penrhyndeudraeth originate from 1865 when explosives were manufactured from guncotton, starch and india rubber in an area now known as Cooke's valley. The site covers twenty-eight hectares (70 acres) and RT Cooke bought the area from the Ministry of Munitions in 1922 and it was sold to Imperial Chemical Industries in 1958.

By the 1970s the factory supplied ninety per cent of the explosives for the coal industry in the form of nitroglycerine-based explosive products. Work ceased at the factory during 1995 and in 1996 the surviving structures were mainly of light timber construction that was surrounded by concrete walls. The works retained some mixing and incorporating mills, and cartridging machines, although by 1999 the site had been cleared and landscaped.
I used to carry powdered Barytes into the works from Glasgow. It was used as a filler in the manufacture of Gelignite.

[Stanley]

Lynette Lithgow at Granada in 1987. I met Lynette when I was doing some TV work with David Moore at Quay Street. She was a lovely woman and became a friend of both Mary and myself but see this for her shocking death. (LINK)

[Stanley]

Pete Seeger singing at a demonstration in support of El Salvador in the United Nations Plaza in New York. 1981. It all seems so long ago and far away. I suppose that's because it is......

[Stanley]

As suggested by Pete on the day that Moon Face lost the seat......

[Stanley]

I bought this socket set in about 1960 and it has served me well. Over sixty years later it is just as good as it was on the day I bought it. Just out of interest I looked up a similar Elora set today, would you believe £779.00? 12 guineas looks cheap! Definitely a forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

1991 and the Whitelees engine is almost ready to run after a manic 3 months working against the clock when I installed it with the help of Cecil Hufton, a pensioner and volunteer at Ellenroad and two lads from the apprentice school in Rochdale. The job was complicated by the fact that the Council Planning Department had lost the scale drawing of the engine they had done at my request and all I had was what turned out to be a defective drawing of the engine. My dad always said that there was a providence that looks after drunken men and idiots. There is and it worked overtime for me!
Looking at this now I wonder at the confidence needed to even attempt the build. I wouldn't take it on now.....
A forgotten corner!

[Stanley]

This was the only guide I had (apart from the parts of the engine themselves.) Frank Wightman's drawing of the engine in its original house at Littleborough. This is splendid but has a major flaw, he missed out the raising blocks under the trunnion bearings which meant that the height of the engine on the drawing is ten inches lass than the truth. There was only three inches clearance between the top of the stroke and the boiler house roof so this was a serious matter. What follows is unbelievable but true.
On the day that I had to sign off the drawings at Peter Dawson's office (He was my architect), I asked for one modification, that was to make the pit a foot deeper. Peter asked me why and I had to confess I didn't know, all I knew was that if needed it would be easier to pour an extra foot of concrete in the bottom of the pit than take a foot out. This was long before we found I had a problem.
I have no explanation for this, as I said yesterday, there's a providence that looks after drunken men and idiots. It was working overtime that day! On the day when we first ran the engine for the Coates Directors and guests Peter and I smiled at each other. Nobody would have believed our story.