In 1890 the new Local Board for Barnoldswick had a big problem. Houses were being built on every piece of spare land in the town. The green fields that stretched from Newtown all the way to the new houses built behind Bracewell’s Wellhouse Square were up for grabs and decisions had to be made about building lines and the width of streets. We can identify exactly where they made these decisions because the streets they laid out are a regular grid pattern and much wider than the medieval ways. Take a square bounded by Rainhall Road, Park road, Fernbank Avenue and Park Street and you’ll see what I mean. The block between Park Road and Manchester Road is another example. The streets are straight, wide and the building line on each side is regular.
They could do nothing about the medieval streets apart from make slight adjustments if a property fell into disuse. We can still see these old streets in the middle of the town. Newtown, Rainhall Road from Newtown to Park Road, King Street, Jepp Hill, Philip Street, Butts and St James’ Square are all medieval layout. Wapping and Walmsgate have been improved by widening the road when the new Ship was built and demolishing the houses on the left side of the road above Clough Park. Townhead and Esp Lane are medieval. Manchester Road between the Dog and Tubber Hill is unchanged as is Ben Lane, the old road through Greenberfield Locks, Brogden Lane and Greenberfield Lane. These last two follow roughly the line of the Roman Road.
We can still see some remains of the old setts used for road paving. The best example I know is Hill Street from Wellhouse Street to Bank Street. The slope at the bottom end is still made of setts with the cracks filled with gas tar which was a by product of the gasworks. Strangely enough, the rest of Hill Street is concrete and must be one of the earliest examples in the town of concrete used for a road surface. Not all the roads in the town were paved with setts. Many remained as old stoned roads until early in the 20th century when it became the practice to spray the stone road with hot gas tar, spread clean chippings on the surface and roll them with the steam roller. This sealed the surface and was a great advance as it stopped the formation of dust in dry weather and mud in wet.
Once the streets were properly paved and maintained road traffic increased. At first this was all horse traffic, every trader in the town had a flat wagon or cart for deliveries. Local carriers such as the Slaters ran regular services to Skipton and Colne, the railway used horses for deliveries from the station and coal merchants delivered all the mill coal in two wheeled tipping carts either from the station or the canal wharf. Well-to-do local people had carriages and riding horses and people like Towers Singleton on Commercial Street would hire you a landau for a special occasion. The big change came after the First World War when thousands of ex-army motor lorries were released onto the home market and the internal combustion engine started its long march to domination of the world.
Faced with progress like this it is very tempting to assume that as soon as an improvement was introduced, everyone discarded the old and went with the new technology. This is a mistake. There is plenty of evidence that the packhorse survived long after the advent of the canals because it was quicker. High value, time-dependent goods were carried on individual horseback as late as the early 20th century. The horse carriers were still running to Skipton and Colne until shortly after the First World War. Local traders used horse and carts until the 1950s and the railway kept their horses almost as long. I can remember being taken to the Co-operative stables in Stockport in about 1942 to see the cart horses kept there. I remember particularly a large black stallion called Hitler! Farmers were still carrying milk down the lane to the milk stand in back kits until the end of WW2. I think that Robinsons at Standridge on Folly Lane were the last people in Barnoldswick to use one.
The advent of tarmac didn’t mean that every road was covered with it. We still see gangs tar-spraying and chipping roads every summer particularly between towns on the old roads. There are still stoned roads in Barlick, Ben Lane, Folly Lane, Lister Well, and some small unadopted streets in the town like Butts or Longfield Lane.
So, the next time you go shopping in the town you will know why the first part of Rainhall Road is so narrow, look above the shop fronts and you’ll see that these were old cottages built long before modern traffic demanded wide roads. Have you ever wondered why the road in Newtown is wider outside The Occasion than it is down to Church Street? When Matt Hartley built the building that houses the Occasion on the site of the old Co-op slaughterhouse he was expecting the rest of the road to be opened up and so gave more room for it. He did the same thing when he built his never-to-be-used swimming baths on the Croft. The narrowing of Frank Street where it joins Rainhall Road is because of the old cottages. The stretch of road from the Dog up to Bancrofts Farm is a pure medieval road and one of the best traffic calming measures we have in the town. One of these days some bright spark will decide it needs tidying up and then we shall have accidents due to speed on the hill.
There are times when the narrow streets are a nuisance but we should never forget that they were built on a human scale and it is this that gives the old parts of the town their character. The day we demolish the old property and widen the roads to make more room for traffic and modern buildings we will have completely lost the plot. They are just as important to the town as the Barlickers and if we lose one, we will be in danger of losing both and the town will be poorer for it.
SCG/29 September 2005
1066 words.
The Occasion in Newtown in 1983. Note the building line set back to give a wider street.
