TUBBER HILL IN THE 1920s.
Posted: 28 Apr 2026, 01:19
TUBBER HILL IN THE 1920s.
30 September 2002
Thanks to Ken Ridge, I have an old postcard of Tubber Hill for you this week. One of the best things about old pictures is that they contain so much information if we really look at them. I went up there to do the same shot and found it was impossible because the trees blocked everything out. This triggered me off into thinking why this was so.
The first thing I tried to do was make a guess at the date. The nearest I can get is 1923. Homelands the bungalow on the left was the home of Herbert and Clara Nutter in the late 1920s, the wall at the entrance is unchanged to this day. The road looks unnaturally white, this is because all the roads outside the town centre were water-bound macadam. This was a method of road building introduced by John Loudon MacAdam and first used by him in England in 1816. Graded dry stone was laid with large stones in the road bed and finer stone as a capping layer. A lot of the stone was limestone and so the roads look white. You can see the start of Gillian’s Lane on the right. Bancrofts and Windy Harbour, the cottages opposite the farm at the top of the lane, are just off the picture. Further up at the top of Lane Bottoms there is a shed in the field opposite the road up to Letcliffe. This was where Jim Haworth, who lived at Lane Bottoms, carried on his business. He was known as ‘The Firewood King’.
Mention of firewood brings me to the matter of the trees. Why are there no trees? Where there ever trees up here? We’ve to go back to 1442 to get a clue about this. The Duchy of Lancaster records have an entry that states that large timbers for the repair of King Mill at Colne were obtained from ‘Barnoldswick Wood’ so evidently Barlick could grow trees and was a local source of high quality large timbers. So what happened to the trees and, for that matter, Barnoldswick Wood?
We’ve got to look at some other evidence and make some inspired guesses. The 1580 map of Whitemoor shows us that there had been enclosures on the moor in the 16th century. There could only be one reason for this, demand for land. This is the best indicator we have that the local population was rising and putting pressure on local resources. One of these resources would be fuel for heating and cooking. The main fuels were wood and peat, or turfs, from the moor. If you were very rich you could afford expensive coal brought in by packhorse from Colne or possibly from sources on Coal Pit Lane above Gisburn. I have no proof that there ever were coal pits there but if not, why call it that? If you were very poor, you burned dried cow dung.
So, apart from the destruction of woods by clearing them to make arable land, the most likely reason for the decline in trees in Barlick would probably have been the inhabitants relentless search for fuel. Between 1791 and 1794 the Leeds and Liverpool canal reached Barlick and solved this problem by giving the town access to the Yorkshire coalfields. We don’t have accurate figures for the price of coal in Barlick, the best estimate we have of pit-head coal prices in 1750 is about sixpence (two and a half new pence) per hundredweight. An educated guess suggests that this would rise to about one shilling and sixpence (seven and a half new pence) in Barlick and this would be far too expensive for poor people. The advent of the canal changed all this, not only did the transport price drop dramatically now that 40 tons of coal could be carried on one boat, but increased competition drove the prices down. In St Helens the opening of the Sankey Brook Navigation drove the price of house coals down to fourpence halfpenny a hundredweight in 1759 so it isn’t unreasonable to think that the price in Barlick dropped by at least two thirds to sixpence a hundredweight which meant it was within the reach of the vast majority of householders. So, apart from the sticks for fire lighting, most of the pressure came off the trees and our landscape could start to change.
There is another possible reason for the increase in trees. As houses started to be built up Tubber Hill, people planted trees on their land for shelter and improvement. A tree growing in a private garden has much more chance of survival from the depredations of poor fuel gatherers. If Herbert Nutter planted a tree it’s doubtful if anyone would dare to go in his garden and cut it down!
So a variety of factors changed the view up Tubber Hill from the rather bare prospect in this old picture to the leafy lane we have today. Up on Letcliffe, at about the time this picture was taken, the Local Council were planting specimen trees in the new park but I’m afraid there is a problem with these, we have generated a new generation of woodcutters. The biggest problem is youngsters building fires and tearing branches off the trees for fuel. It isn’t a private garden and we no longer have full time park keepers so the fire lighters evidently feel free to what they want and we are losing our trees. Could they please use their heads and stop spoiling things for the rest of us?
Funnily enough, there is another cause of tree loss in the park. It’s caused by the employees of the Leisure Department getting too enthusiastic with their strimmers around the trees, they are ring-barking the trees at ground level and killing them. Can I suggest that there’s nothing wrong with a clump of long grass at the base of a tree? The trees would be very grateful for it!
Thanks for the comments and feedback. You can always get hold of me and I will be glad to hear from you.
30 September 2002
30 September 2002
Thanks to Ken Ridge, I have an old postcard of Tubber Hill for you this week. One of the best things about old pictures is that they contain so much information if we really look at them. I went up there to do the same shot and found it was impossible because the trees blocked everything out. This triggered me off into thinking why this was so.
The first thing I tried to do was make a guess at the date. The nearest I can get is 1923. Homelands the bungalow on the left was the home of Herbert and Clara Nutter in the late 1920s, the wall at the entrance is unchanged to this day. The road looks unnaturally white, this is because all the roads outside the town centre were water-bound macadam. This was a method of road building introduced by John Loudon MacAdam and first used by him in England in 1816. Graded dry stone was laid with large stones in the road bed and finer stone as a capping layer. A lot of the stone was limestone and so the roads look white. You can see the start of Gillian’s Lane on the right. Bancrofts and Windy Harbour, the cottages opposite the farm at the top of the lane, are just off the picture. Further up at the top of Lane Bottoms there is a shed in the field opposite the road up to Letcliffe. This was where Jim Haworth, who lived at Lane Bottoms, carried on his business. He was known as ‘The Firewood King’.
Mention of firewood brings me to the matter of the trees. Why are there no trees? Where there ever trees up here? We’ve to go back to 1442 to get a clue about this. The Duchy of Lancaster records have an entry that states that large timbers for the repair of King Mill at Colne were obtained from ‘Barnoldswick Wood’ so evidently Barlick could grow trees and was a local source of high quality large timbers. So what happened to the trees and, for that matter, Barnoldswick Wood?
We’ve got to look at some other evidence and make some inspired guesses. The 1580 map of Whitemoor shows us that there had been enclosures on the moor in the 16th century. There could only be one reason for this, demand for land. This is the best indicator we have that the local population was rising and putting pressure on local resources. One of these resources would be fuel for heating and cooking. The main fuels were wood and peat, or turfs, from the moor. If you were very rich you could afford expensive coal brought in by packhorse from Colne or possibly from sources on Coal Pit Lane above Gisburn. I have no proof that there ever were coal pits there but if not, why call it that? If you were very poor, you burned dried cow dung.
So, apart from the destruction of woods by clearing them to make arable land, the most likely reason for the decline in trees in Barlick would probably have been the inhabitants relentless search for fuel. Between 1791 and 1794 the Leeds and Liverpool canal reached Barlick and solved this problem by giving the town access to the Yorkshire coalfields. We don’t have accurate figures for the price of coal in Barlick, the best estimate we have of pit-head coal prices in 1750 is about sixpence (two and a half new pence) per hundredweight. An educated guess suggests that this would rise to about one shilling and sixpence (seven and a half new pence) in Barlick and this would be far too expensive for poor people. The advent of the canal changed all this, not only did the transport price drop dramatically now that 40 tons of coal could be carried on one boat, but increased competition drove the prices down. In St Helens the opening of the Sankey Brook Navigation drove the price of house coals down to fourpence halfpenny a hundredweight in 1759 so it isn’t unreasonable to think that the price in Barlick dropped by at least two thirds to sixpence a hundredweight which meant it was within the reach of the vast majority of householders. So, apart from the sticks for fire lighting, most of the pressure came off the trees and our landscape could start to change.
There is another possible reason for the increase in trees. As houses started to be built up Tubber Hill, people planted trees on their land for shelter and improvement. A tree growing in a private garden has much more chance of survival from the depredations of poor fuel gatherers. If Herbert Nutter planted a tree it’s doubtful if anyone would dare to go in his garden and cut it down!
So a variety of factors changed the view up Tubber Hill from the rather bare prospect in this old picture to the leafy lane we have today. Up on Letcliffe, at about the time this picture was taken, the Local Council were planting specimen trees in the new park but I’m afraid there is a problem with these, we have generated a new generation of woodcutters. The biggest problem is youngsters building fires and tearing branches off the trees for fuel. It isn’t a private garden and we no longer have full time park keepers so the fire lighters evidently feel free to what they want and we are losing our trees. Could they please use their heads and stop spoiling things for the rest of us?
Funnily enough, there is another cause of tree loss in the park. It’s caused by the employees of the Leisure Department getting too enthusiastic with their strimmers around the trees, they are ring-barking the trees at ground level and killing them. Can I suggest that there’s nothing wrong with a clump of long grass at the base of a tree? The trees would be very grateful for it!
Thanks for the comments and feedback. You can always get hold of me and I will be glad to hear from you.
30 September 2002