ROCK SOLID PART SIX

[Stanley]

ROCK SOLID PART SIX

21 March 2003

It’s 1921 and Jack Platt is working in Sagar’s quarries. He started in the quarry at Loose Games on the top of Tubber Hill but was often sent to Salterforth Top Quarry on the left hand side of Salterforth Lane, the one that is now used as a car breaker’s yard. At first he was used as an errand boy and tea brewer but as soon as he got to know his way round he was put on the stone saws to learn the job.
In the early days of quarrying in Barlick large stones for lintels, door jambs, steps and cills were cracked out of the quarried slabs and dressed by hand but by the end of the 19th century almost all of these were being sawn out of the slab by reciprocating saws with steel blades driven by gas engines. The actual cutting was done by a slurry of water, stone dust and hardened steel shot which was run into the saw cuts as the saws moved back and forth and recycled. The stone at Loose Games Quarry was soft and they could cut eight inches deep in an hour. Salterforth Top Quarry was deeper so the stone was much harder and they were lucky if they cut four inches in an hour. Eventually Jack was put in charge of the engine and saws in Top Quarry and was timekeeper as well. His hand was no handicap to him, he said that it never stopped him doing any job he wanted to do.
Jack told me how they got the rock out of the quarry face. In both quarries the stone was in beds five to eight feet thick with about three or four inches of shale between each bed. The beds could be as long as a row of houses but every so often they were divided by what the quarry men called ‘dries’ along the length, a natural formation of weaker stone. Then they would drill holes about twelve feet back from the face along the bed between two ‘dries’ and either drive wedges in to crack the slab out or use explosives. If it was over 50 tons in weight and too big for one lift they would drill another row of holes and wedge it in two. Then they would cut a large hole in the front of the slab, put an iron dog in, attach the crane to it and lift and slide it until it dropped in the quarry bottom. Once in the quarry bottom it was reduced in size again by drilling and wedging.
The iron dog was made so that as the rock fell it pulled out of the slab but occasionally it stuck fast. Jack said that a man called Scotch Bob was blacksmith and crane driver and he must have been the luckiest man in the world. His crane, with him inside it, was dragged over the edge three times by slabs that hung on and fell into the quarry bottom but he was never injured. The main man in the quarry was the ‘rock-getter’. Once he knew which type and size of stone the sawyer wanted he would know where he could get this rock on the face, he set out the drill holes and decided whether to wedge or blast. At Loose Games this was a man called Albert Roberts. Jack said he was a hard man, even in the depths of winter his shirt was unbuttoned to his waist and he was not a man to be trifled with.
When Jack was working on the saws at Tubber Hill his mate George Horrocks was with him. One day a woman came into the quarry and asked if they had a man working there called ‘Biscuit’, they told her they didn’t know anyone called that and she said his real name was Albert Roberts so George went to the top of the bank and shouted ‘Biscuit!’ down into the quarry. Old Albert straightened up right away and came up to see the woman. After she had gone he went to George and Jack and informed them that if they ever called him that again he’d chuck ‘em into the quarry bottom!
The quarries also made setts for road surfacing and points, the stones used for building house walls, these were made by the banker-hands under rough shelters in the quarry. The setts were sent into Lancashire by canal boat, there was a tramway from Salterforth Top Quarry down through the fields to a wharf on the canal just below New Road Bridge. If you look carefully you can still see the mooring rings in the bank. Whitham’s at Park Close had a tramway as well, it ran straight down to the canal behind Burdock Hill where the old boatyard used to be. The setts came down in small trucks by gravity and the empties were pulled back up to the quarry by a horse. Billy Brooks told me that at one time they had a small steam loco for this, he remembered it coming off the track once on one of the bends in the track.
It’s no wonder that quarry men were hard. Tubber Hill Quarry is on the 850 feet contour and working outside up there in winter could be cruel. The banker-hands were all on piece work and in frosty weather they couldn’t work the stone because it shattered, the cold made it brittle, so they were laid off until the weather warmed up. Jack said that when this happened it usually snowed and the men went on for the Council, snow shifting. This was a good thing for them, they could earn more than on the banks!
Weather permitting, the quarries were always busy. Barnoldswick was one huge building site from 1890 to 1920 and all the building stone came out of the gritstone quarries. Another big market was the setts for road making as dry macadam roads were phased out and next week we’ll have a look at how Jack got involved in that job.

21 March 2003