OneGuyFromBarlick

Farming equipment hasn't always been obtained by spending money. This is a bull trough, made this shape so that the bull could roll it around as a plaything rather than destroying it. You didn't buy something like this, you found a suitable stone and chipped it out with a hammer and chisel.

Tripps would say this is spooky. I've just seen in an astronomy magazine an image sent back by one of those `rovers' on Mars. It show a rock shaped just like that but with no grass inside or outside, of course, and everything red in colour due to iron oxide content. The NASA folk believe that it was formed by wind erosion - yes, the wind is only slight but even it can do a lot of erosion over millions of years.

Talking of that, did you know that pebbles in the Sahara Desert are often triangular? It's another effect of wind erosion. The wind is deflected around the sides of the original lump of rock and gradually shape the front of it to be a bit pointed. Eventually the pebble flips round to expose a different corner. And then again. And again, again.. and that's how you get a triangular pebble.

That one started life at Little Stainton and when I had it was in the middle of the lawn at Hey Farm.



I was looking at the first edition of the 25" OS map of Stone Trough at Kelbrook and noticed something that has escaped me until now. The old road from Kelbrook to Foulridge is called Dark Lane. I know of a Dark Lane at Earby but wonder whether the name has a meaning?

Pumping test on a 100ft deep borehole at Paythorne in 1946. Martin's plumbers were there and Newton Pickles is stood next to the boiler. Even as late as this, the way to get power to a remote site could be to take a boiler to it and fire it.

The clashing gate on the path through Wellhouse Square garden fronts. Notice that there isn't one on the path through East Hill Street fronts. This is because when Wellhouse Square was built to provide housing for Bracewell's new mill the Wellhouse Street end wasn't built up and was open fields so the livestock had to be kept out of the gardens.
By the time East Hill Street was built c.1850 this was no longer the case and so no gate was needed.
Incidentally, the stones on the clashing gate are obviously second hand and I have spent hours trying to imagine what their original purpose was. Stone can speak if we allow them to.....

My Mother. A very happy woman in 1982. Not forgotten....

Hopwood's Bracewell Hall round about 1900.

According to members of the Bracewell family this image of old Bracewell hall taken in 1850 was done by William 'Billycock' Bracewell who was an amateur photographer as well as a textile manufacturer. Shortly afterwards John Turner Hopwood of Blackburn bought the Bracewell Estate and built the new hall.

This image of a group of yarn twisters at Butts Mill in 1880 is reputed to be the work of Billycock Bracewell.

In 1909 political posters were a bit more direct than they would be today!

A view of Barlick possibly about 1930. We have gas holders and a full complement of mill chimneys!
(And Hey Farm still has its mullion windows....)

Those were the days! Long gone now I'm afraid.

One of the most enlightened government policies ever introduced. Long forgotten now.....

Yes I remember the school milk.
Would be hard today, with so many kids having intolerances and allergies.
.
Where do they all come from?

What's wrong with us nowadays Cathy? Something as simple as giving a child a drink of milk becomes a problem.

Stanley wrote: ↑21 Mar 2024, 03:30

One of the most enlightened government policies ever introduced. Long forgotten now.....

Aye, another tragedy stopping the benefit that Maggie Thatcher was responsible for.

I remember when I was milk monitor at Gisburn Road. There was orange juice for the lactose intolerant kids. However only an odd one in a few crates of the dozens delivered each morning.

Sid Demaine with the new barn he was building at the tannery in 1976. A solid building made from old electric poles and secondhand timber.

That reminds me of the double garage my dad built with his brother when I was a kid. No telegraph poles but all scavenged timbers - there was a lot of it about in those days after the war. Later he got a space nearer to our house, took down an old single garage and rebuilt it on that bit of land.

It was a very popular method of improving farm buildings at the time Peter. A lot of work was being done on electricity distribution to outlying farms and there was a lot of reject and secondhand poles about. The Beeching Axe meant that wooden railway sleepers were plentiful and cheap, many were sawn into planks.



The barn and midden at Hey Farm in 1967. Typical of many farm outbuildings in the area, they were reaching their sell by date in the mid 20th century and farmers were looking for the cheapest way to improve/replace them. Second hand poles and reclaimed timber was a very economical and popular way to go.
In my case at the Hey the decision was made for me when the Council bought the barn and some of the land to widen Manchester Road.

One of my favourite Earby images. probably about 1900. The Con Club is there and in the trees the Old Grammar School. The tin tabernacle was there because the church over the crossings was a recent build, Earby came under Thornton in Craven parish. It was demolished and sold off, part of it survives in Skipton.
I often wonder about those kids, how did they fare in the Great War?

Collieries had the same respect for their engines as textile mills. This was the winding engine at Chatterly Whitfield Colliery in Staffordshire.

At one time these were possibly the most famous sweets in the North of England. They are still in production and so this is not exactly a forgotten corner.

Is this a forgotten corner these days?

Cliviger Drift Mine in 1983. Working conditions weren't the greatest......

I looked it up on Mindat which my `go to' web site for all things rock and mineral... Mindat