OneGuyFromBarlick

Hi,
I found this site as I'm researching for a book on South East Oldham. Google took me to a page here (steeplejack's corner) when I searched for Tetlow's boiler works. I can see a thread but can't view the attached images. Can anyone help?

TIA

Welcome to the site Hollinwood. Someone wil help you I'm sure .there's plenty to go at. I'm sure you'll discover something of interest.
I'm from your area and knew Hollinwood well - a long time ago. The Roxy, The Queens and The Scala . . . .

PS Is this where you landed Tetlow boilers search

I too can't see the pictures. You will see that page is dated 2014, and about that time there was a problem, and the pictures became detached from the posts. I think they can be re-attached by one of the clever people on the site.

Tripps wrote: ↑19 Nov 2025, 22:27 Welcome to the site Hollinwood. Someone wil help you I'm sure .there's plenty to go at. I'm sure you'll discover something of interest.
I'm from your area and knew Hollinwood well - a long time ago. The Roxy, The Queens and The Scala . . . .

PS Is this where you landed Tetlow boilers search

I too can't see the pictures. You will see that page is dated 2014, and about that time there was a problem, and the pictures became detached from the posts. I think they can be re-attached by one of the clever people on the site.

Images can be restored but in an image rich thread such as the one you have referenced there are over a hundred pages, Each post has to be re edited to correct the image references. If you can give an idea of the page range within the topic that you are interested in it will make the task a lot easier.

I have re-instated all the images on page 26 of the thread in question.

Thanks Ian. I feel a bit responsible for causing you the work, but I recalled you doing something similar recently. However - I did a 'back of the envelope' and found that we have only about twelve regular contributors to the site, and could do with a few more. Hollinwood who is writing a book on a topic well covered here, sounded like a good candidate.

I must admit that knowing the Hollinwood area well was a factor.

I found the link interesting and the reference to Moston Mill brought back some memories. I used to play in the fields surrounding that mill in childhood - when we'd finished making half pennies into pennies on the adjacent railway line, and I found my first newt in a ditch there.

Thanks.

Perhaps the most interesting pic on that page is the plastic torch for illuminating the crawl space in front of you. I dont think such designs are manufactured nowdays - was the colour red ? most were ( ever ready blue was the other alternative )

Hi, the missing pictures are here

Steeplejack's Corner 2012, page 50

Two more pics from John of the old Tetlow boilers, there were originally four insured for 180psi, same maker and rating as the ones at Ellenroad.

Thanks, I will have a look tomorrow and correct.

Has anyone drawn your attention to 'Lancashire Under the Hammer' by B. Bowker 1928?
It contains much that will be of interest to you and below, I append a transcript of a newspaper cutting I found in the pages of my copy of the book.

THE RATES BURDEN ON BRITISH SPINNERS.

By BEN. BOWKER.

Mr. Bowker is the editor of the Lancashire Daily Post and the author of the striking
new book “Lancashire Under the Hammer” which gives a disquieting account of the
depression in the cotton industry.

Rates are bound to play a big- part in the future of the cotton area. Very many of the cotton towns were committed in days of prosperity to expensive municipal schemes. I am not condemning these schemes. I am merely noting the fact. For generally it has this significance: that while the commitment is in the past, much of the burden of payment through sinking fund and interest charges is in the present and the future.

These prosperity-day undertakings have a further depressing aspect. Not only have
they to be borne by an industry working to only 62 per cent of capacity. They will have increasingly to be borne by an industry which has shrunk in size. This means that unless relief is devised many mills will not only have to struggle under their own share of the burden; they will also have to shoulder a good deal of the burden dropped by those mills that have gone or will presently go out of existence.

Here is a pretty typical example of these two rating aspects.

There is at the far end of east Lancashire a town. of 15,000 or people dependent solely on cotton weaving. From 1900 to 1913 its marks were prosperity and rapid growth.
Just before the war it began a big new water-supply undertaking. The town, with an
assessable value for rating of £56,500, was committed to an expenditure of £230,000 on the new scheme. Up to date £108,000 has been spent, all borrowed at at least 5% interest. Year by year the rest of the £230,000 will be automatically added to the
burden.

In its heyday this town had 22,500 looms working on the production of cotton piece goods, mostly for export. With the loss of 38% of Lancashire’s export trade, its business has fallen off accordingly. Out of the pre-war total of 22,500 looms, 3,500 have gone either temporarily or finally out of action. Already 1,400 have been dismantled. Some have been shipped abroad by the second-hand loom dealers; some have been broken up for scrap iron. A further 1,700 are in near danger of the same fate. Yet another 400 are lagging a little, behind; “stopped indefinitely” is
their label.

Together these 3,500 looms represent the yield of a sixpenny rate on the whole town.
Part of this burden has already fallen on the 19,000 remaining looms some of which are working only part time. The rest is pretty sure to fall in the next eighteen months. Is it to be wondered at that in this town a weaving shed and power can be had rent free for six months by anyone needing encouragement to start?

That bigger part of Lancashire where American yarn is spun and woven affords many examples of towns in some such predicament as this. Within the next two months the well-known Hornby Mills at Blackburn will close for good. Sooner or later their share of the rate burden seems certain to fall due from the remaining Blackburn ratepayers. They paid £2,000 in rates annually. To make the loss good an additional penny rate will have to be levied on the town.

What is the remedy? There are at least four means of giving the depressed cotton towns rating relief. Their able-bodied poor must be made completely a national charge. Local authorities should be able to transfer more of their new road and road upkeep charges to the Road Fund. There should be drastic reform of local government areas and assessments with a view to fairer rate apportionment on production. There should be devised some differentiated and graduated scales of rate relief according to the power of industrial ratepayers to pay. Particularly should there be allowed rate abatement for short time workings.

One sharp reminder; big as rates are as a factor in the future of the cotton trade, they must not be allowed to obscure domestic things like the need for internal reorganisation of the industry on a big unit basis, for financial reconstruction, for co-operative marketing. In Oldham, it is said, there are mills so burdened with loan and mortgage interest as to have fixed debt charges equivalent to an extra 2d. on every pound of yarn produced. Not so much relief, but a wholesale financial clear-up is needed in places such as this.

[This is a transcript of a cutting found in between the pages of my copy of ‘Lancashire under the hammer’.

You probably knew already about the book. If not I hope it is of some use to you....

Hollinwood wrote: ↑21 Nov 2025, 16:37 Hi, the missing pictures are here

Steeplejack's Corner 2012, page 50

Two more pics from John of the old Tetlow boilers, there were originally four insured for 180psi, same maker and rating as the ones at Ellenroad.

All Images restored on page 50

I'm struggling to understand the connection between the Bowker book, the press cutting, and Tetlow boilers.

No harm done though, and Mr Hollinwood has some good photos, and direct first hand experience to go on.

The whole thread is remarkable, and I doubt the information will be found anywhere else.

much of the article has echoes in today of politics and town centres. Our municipal supplies and landscape generally was built I will say in the Victorian Era (Coal and Textiles) , (this ignores the Georgian and back to middle ages of some older cities), a bit of Edwardian charm to some, but then start in the 1920s as trams hit their high points and as noted the water and gas supplies indeed connected to the likes of Walsall's practical but out of town homes fit for heroes. The post WW2 reconstruction = Plymouth , Southampton as a couple of examples followed by the New Towns like Harlow , Milton Keynes , Skelmersdale and Livingston as examples of the era of the critall window and asbestos board under window panels and internal partitions forming a cheap build with an expensive time bomb for updating. The 1970s too brought further - unneccessary clearences of historic centres particularly the North east of England as Polson architects designed poor offices including London's Cannon Street station overbuild and probably Euston too and the arrival of the Arndale Shopping centres and so on , in town covered destinations sounded idylliic , Manchester , Croydon , smaller towns like Nelson yet they did not bring significant prosperity accross the cities, but as I have said before the likes of leeds where there were in the town centre mulitple branches of banks, building societies , the big Gas Board showrooms and the electric department shops, television hire companies abounded as the late 1960s look set to be the land of Green Shield. That we then allowed out of town shopping destinations to take out many shops and the revese of the finanical shops - and the life insurance offices over - disappearing and crown post offices reduced from the keystone of the place to cash your giro or pension.

Back to subject
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Tetlow_Brothers of Bottoms Iron Works, Hollinwood, Oldham
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/1906_Inst ... s_to_Works JOSEPH RANK, ATLANTIC FLOUR MILLS, BARRY DOCKS mention of Tetlow built boliers.
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Glebe_Mill,_Hollinwoodplus links on page


https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Whiteland ... under-Lyne The closure after 50 years in 1933 is noteworthy but the use laterby A V Roe for aircraft parts showed how the arming and military demand although costly to the goverment loans and peoples taxes did bring work back to the otherwise decaying industrial landscapes

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Ernest_Tetlow short obit

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/1891_Cott ... _in_Oldham with limited links from 1891 Worrall's Cotton Spinners Directory

https://www.highstreetbooksandrecords.c ... hur-kirby/ Book on Oldham Corporation Tramways if you fancy a trip to New Mills High Peak to buy in person. other online retailers avalible

David, the Bowker book is seen as being perhaps the most perceptive and accurate of the assessments of the district at the time when there was a false economic boom in Lancashire.

@Stanley, I wasn't aware of Lancashire under the hammer. I'll try Oldham Local Interest Centre and the internet..
@PanBiker, the images are great, thanks.
@WhyPerson, thanks for the links. I'd found some, but not all of them. There are more references in the Textile Mercury to various boilers being supplied to new mills.

As always, every new fact leads to new questions.. For example, the boiler works was quite far from a main road, and had no rail access. It must have been a big effort to get steel in and boilers out, yet they did it!

Thanks all for your help.
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H It's amazing what could be done with steam Traction engines.

While there are good reasons for making a boiler in advance and leaving it outside to settle, were some made in kit form effectively and sent out in parts to be assembled on site ?
I think some boilers were effectively mounted onto axles with wheels on and just hauled by a traction engine ( there was an episode of Sharpe once showing "luddites" or similar attacking a boiler on the move at night after the Napoleonic wars = spoiler actually vandals paid by a competing mill owner to sabotage etc rivals investments).

The Hollinwood Branch Canal
probably brought in raw materials not in the least coal and maybe iron ore or was pre rolled plate brought in ?

Re: READ ANY GOOD BOOKS LATELY?

Post by Tripps » Sun Aug 22, 2021 8:22 pm
Tried to sort out my tapes and Mini Discs this afternoon - failed.

However whilst trying, I came across My Days are Swifter than a Weaver's Shuttle by Richard Ryley. (1852), and had a dip in whilst surveying the shambles.

Nice to know a bit about nearly everything he wrote about Barlick. For example, Wm Bracewell, The New Ship, Ousel, Butts Mill, Crow Row, Forty Steps. Rev Milner etc etc etc.

Got me to thinking that Stanley picked a great, and probably unique place to launch into his new career. Just the right size, and just enough history to cope with. Wondered whether that was by accident or design.

I thought we had this on the site somewhere. Ryley describes new boilers being brought into Barlick using teams of horses.

Stanley wrote: ↑25 Nov 2025, 02:22 thought we had this on the site somewhere. Ryley describes new boilers being brought into Barlick using teams of horses.
Re: Introduction

I;ve had a good look throuigh the book, but failed to find anything about boiler shifting.
I saw this though - last performed in 1922.

Wasnt there a specific heavy draft horse breed for such things (not Shires, or Suffolk Punch as such) , there is small number being bred I think by a lady , mentioned on Countryfile a few years ago

I dug my copy out and on page 40 I found this.....
March 22nd. Went to meet the steam engine boiler which weighed 14 1/2 tons and the wagon on which it was brought weighed upwards of 5 tons more , altogether about 20 tons. It required 21 horses and 60 or 70 men to drag it up Gill Brow.
[Ken Wilson note:] This would be the new horizontal boiler to replace the old pan at Butts Mill. It was cast in the Sandbeds at Keighley (SG note: Not cast, this was a boiler fabricated using wrought iron plate.) then hauled the 15 mile journey on a large flat cart drawn by twelve pairs of horses . Whichever way the town was approached there was a steep hill to be climbed and extra help was required. One man was killed as the boiler was being installed.

I stand corrected - and you have just qualified for exemption from all further memory tests. Very impressive.

It must have been quite a sight.

From other sources we learn that there was more than just one boiler brought in around this time. People like Bracewell at Butts took advantage of the slack trade caused by the Cotton Famine to replace the primitive pan boilers which had been used in the early mills. The boilers we are discussing here were almost certainly single flued 'Cornish' boilers. First used by Trevithick for higher pressures used in his engines.