Tape recorded on 14th July 1978 at Vicarage Road Barnoldswick. The informant is Newton Pickles and the interviewer Stanley Graham. The numbers in brackets are Uher digital count. ‘R’ denotes Respondent.
This tape is intended as an introduction to the tape recorder both for Newton and myself, being the first tape we’ve made. I’m giving it a number in case there’s anything that turns out to be interesting on it, in which case we shan’t erase it. Now, where when you born Newton?
R-10th March 1916.
And your father’s name?
R-John Albert Pickles.
And your Mother’s name?
R-Sarah Elizabeth Pickles.
Yes. And she was born at..?
R-Born at Carleton and came to live at Earby as a young girl.
What did her family do?
R-Well, they worked in the mills, the textile mills; her brother was a tackler and they all worked in the mills more or less all of their lives.
And your Father’s family?
R-They were cobblers, cloggers and shoemakers. They originated from Lothersdale and came to live at Kelbrook and started a little shoemaking business.
Any idea what date they came..?
R-I haven’t, I haven’t the slightest idea.
How did your Father first come to the engineering?
R-Well, from going down to t’Sough to watch his Uncle Jim run the engine. His Uncle Jim ran the engine at Sough Mill, that were me Mother’s brother, no, me grandma’s brother.
That would be Sough Bridge Mill.
R-That were Sough Bridge Mill yes, and he ran the engine there.
What sort of an engine did they have?
R-It were a Roberts tandem, a very old one. Gear drive, direct, spur wheel and pinion. Aye.
And where did your Father first go to work?
R-At Henry Brown and Sons at Earby when he left school at 14. Oh, can we start at the beginning again there? It’s wrong is that. When me father left school they wouldn’t let him go into t’engineering, and they sent him to Sough Bridge, and with being a bit of a clever scholar at school he got a job in t’office. And while he were working in’t office he used to run away and not go to his work and go to Lothersdale to his uncle Dan’s, he still lived at Lothersdale. So they had that much bother with him they said “Well, what do you want to do?” He says “I want to go to Browns at Earby.” So me grandfather went to see our Mr, Old Mr Brown at Earby to see whether he’d take him on as an apprentice and he did and that’s how he got to Earby, to Henry Brown and Sons and that were old William Brown, the old man of all that started the business in the first place. So I think I can make a guess at that, it were 1887.
That’s when he first went to Earby.
R-That’s when he went to Earby, aye, to work for Browns. It were 1887 and that’s when Brown started business, in 1887 at Earby, just doing textile machine work, spinning mill, in Victoria Mill at Earby. It were all spinning then and they’d most of that sort of stuff, looms and spinning machinery and all that sort of stuff, no heavy engineering.
That’s it. Have you any idea how Henry Browns started?
R-I haven’t, I haven’t Stanley, No.
The first record I have I think it is about 1887
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R-It were 1887 when they started up Stanley but I’ve no recollection why he started or how he started at Earby, and they were in Albion Street.
So your father started as an apprentice?
R-There, at 18.[John Pickles was there 1903 to 1906. SG]
How long was he there?
R-Well he stopped at Earby while he were 21 and he used to watch these millwrights coming out of Lancashire you know, from Nelson and Burnley and working on the engines at Victoria Mill and working on the engine at Sough and that, and he used to go and watch em at weekends. He thought “Eh, I’d like to work at one of them shops..” But anyhow, he didn’t get to Burnley Ironworks, he got a job as maintenance foreman at Victory V at Nelson, at t’toffee factory and he stopped there one day. He used to tell me about going that morning and the first job he got off the manager was to make a guard for the gas engine, they’d a big gas engine to run the toffee shop and he wanted to turn some studs to fasten this guard on to the machine, on to the engine. He said I just took one look at the lathe tools, he said he’d never seen anything like them in his life, they were just like shovels. So he says to the manager, is there anywhere around here where there is a smithy where I can get these lathe tools drawn out? The manager says “Lathe tools drawn out? They did for the other chap they’ll have to do for you.” Well, me dad said, they haven’t to do for me I’m finishing tonight! Now in the middle of the afternoon that day that engine broke down and the place was stopped. Well of course Johnny went to look at the engine and from what I can understand the exhaust valve were bang so he takes the head gas valve out and puts it in the lathe and straightened it and got the engine running again. Well, he finished at teat time and before he went to bed somebody arrived from Nelson to Kelbrook to beg him into going back and starting again but Johnny wouldn’t go back and start again. No, he said, I’ve finished. So the morning after he set off and walked it to Burnley, to Burnley Ironworks and he saw Harry Metcalfe, I think he were manager at Burnley Ironworks then and he says “Is there any chance of a job?” “What can tha do?” “I’ve served me time at Browns at Earby” “Aye, all right lad, I’ll give you a start.” And he got put on a lathe making muff couplings, you know, ordinary shed shafting muffs. [1906 to 1908]
He’d only been there a week and he were thirty odd in front of the chap that was boring them. So the foreman came to him and said “Look here Johnny, we can’t do with this, There’s a new lathe coming, a four foot faceplate lathe and as soon as it’s in and running I’m going to put thee on it. He said he’d happen been there a month before this lathe was in and running and he was only one among a lot of lads then tha knows and they got this lathe running and the foreman says 2Right Johnny, I want you on this lathe”. The first thing he did was turn all the eccentrics for Brook Shed engine, all four, they were building the Brook Street engine at that time. He finished them and they gave him the governor stand and he thought I’m not half coming on here! He turned the governor stand and made a good job of it, it were all moulded at the bottom you know; he used to go and look at it regular, he used to rub it with his bit of waste whenever he went in to work on the engine years and years after. “I turned that Newton” he’d say and if I understood him right, when he’d finished that governor stand they put him on a bigger lathe and he turned the connecting rods, and there was some work in them, it were 800hp that engine you know, cross compound.
Roberts?
R-It were Burnley Ironworks.
(200)
R-Burnley Ironworks, double bow connecting rods, up into t’middle. Big diameter holes in’t centre. With no collar they’d got to blend you know? He turned them and then of course they went into t’slotting shop to have the ends done, he didn’t do them. The foreman came to Johnny one afternoon and said “Johnny, will you do a night on’t wheelpit?” Johnny says “Of course I will.” So they put him on turning a flywheel at nights, they were turning a flywheel for a breakdown job, somewhere Rawtenstall way. It had 25 1 ¾ “ ropes on it and they used to carry the tools to them grinding wheel on their shoulder. They were 2 ½ “ square cast iron tools, they were chilled cast iron tools made at the same time as they cast the wheel but cast on a chill so they were harder than the metal in the wheel. He said it used to take that wheel 2 ½ minutes to go round once when it were on’t wheelpit and he was on it for six weeks on nights. Then they put him back on his lathe again for normal bevel wheels and normal….what were going on. He’d been there a year when young Willy Brown came to Kelbrook one night and asked him if he’d come back and be foreman at Barlick, they’d bought this shop at Barlick. He said he couldn’t refuse and so he came back to be foreman at Barlick and that were it, he never moved no more. [1908]
The shop they bought at Barlick was that….?
R-It were William Bracewell’s, the old Billycock’s mechanic’s shop that belonged the mill.
At Wellhouse Mill.
R-At Wellhouse Mill and t’Butts, it were mechanics shop for both mills in them days.
That’s it, yes.
R-Browns bought it when the mill stopped with all the machinery in. That’s just the bottom shop up yonder Stanley, you know, where the smithy is.
Yes, you say Brown bought it when the mill stopped.
R-When the mill stopped and everything was being sold they bought it and the Calf Hall Shed Company bought the mill. And that’s where he came to be foreman.
Yes. And what did they call ‘The Mechanics Shop’ at Wellhouse. Is that where you are now?
R-That’s the place we are in now.
Which was it, do you know which it was at Wellhouse that was called the Joiner’s Shop?
R-Aye, it were where it was the old laundry, where we are now.
That’s it, aye.
R-And we used to have all the lathes in there and all for turning bobbins for spinning.
That’s it yes, and then it was turned into a laundry.
R- And that was turned into a laundry.
And it was a laundry till…
R-Well, oh till 1940, early on in the year and then Barretts came out and we were getting busier and busier with war work and we went into it to put some planing machines in there for planing tank sides.
And you are still in there.
R-We’re still in there, yes.
That’s where the big machines are, yes. So your dad went back then to Earby as the foreman?
R-He came back to Barlick as the foreman, he didn’t go back to Earby any more.
That’s it, Barlick, that’s it. Now, when Browns moved up to Barlick they started to do heavier jobs?
R-Not really, no, it was still all textile machines, loom work, millwright, and a bit of millwright work but not a lot.
Yes, by millwrighting you mean like shafting….
R-Shed shafting and that sort of thing but not a lot, never got up to’t bevel wheel stage or owt like that. Now of course when me father came back from Burnley Ironworks he didn’t want to be just messing about with looms and stuff, he wanted to get into it like he’d been brought up in that last year there. Then things kept cropping up like Wellhouse’d be broken down, sommat wrong wi’th engine and he got going to that and up to t’Butts, it’d be broken down and of course it all built up off that you see. He’d had experience at Burnley with em and he’d always been interested in’t engine job of course with his uncle Jim at Sough, he’d run Sough many a time for his uncle when he were off sick and that’s how it all started getting going, it built up and built up off that you see right up to Henry Brown and Sons going bankrupt. But that weren’t caused by the machine shop, it were caused by the slump after the first world war when they built that big foundry on Havre Park, you know, and the foundry just dropped off in 1928 or 29.
Where was that foundry?
R-Where Jack Gissing is now on Havre Park bottom. My father designed that foundry.
That was a foundry, that big brick building?
R- That was a foundry, that big brick building were a foundry right. And me father’s idea was to build that up and get it running as a foundry and then build another bay on it and take all the machinery from Wellhouse Mill into there and make it one complete unit and that’s where they slipped up, Browns slipped up, because Browns
(300)
only had one thing in their minds about that, they were scared that if they came out of this shop here and went on to Havre Park that somebody else might step in here and it were the biggest mistake they made were that. There were nobody round here could compete with me father.
And at that time they’d be doing a lot of work for other people like the Calf Hall Shed Company.
R-Oh heck aye, well you’d all these other mills started being built; Crow Nest, Barnsey, Westfield, Fernbank. Well me father were in at them right away, I mean he couldn’t handle the shafting and the engines but he were in for the tape room drives and the donkey engines. They made about 48 of them donkey engines like you have at Bancroft, all of one batch and that’s when he started advertising for more men. You know just as the 1914 war started, nineteen thirteenish, he got this donkey engine job he drew it all out at home at night and made all the patterns you know, without wage, just to get the job. He made all the patterns and he designed it.
Now I‘ve heard you mention an old engineer, Shepherd was it, that worked at Wellhouse.
R-No I can’t… there were a mechanic, he was still knocking around Barlick in my time, Pete Bilborough who used to work for Bracewell’s and I liked to listen to him when I were a lad and he called in at the shop.
That’s the fellow, what was his name again?
R-Pete Bilborough. Aye, the rest of his family, I think they went into the coal business in Station Yard. (Coal Yard) They had a business there for donkey’s years in my time.
Yes. William Bracewell’s were the same family that owned…..
R-They owned Burnley Ironworks as well; they were all the same family.
And old William Bracewell, Billycock they called him, came to Barlick in, I believe it was about 1830.
R-Aye, about 1830.
I haven’t nailed this down yet; he actually came away from the foundry business to Barlick…
R-To start these mills
As a manufacturer.
[Later research shows I was wrong here. William Bracewell was the son of Christopher Bracewell of Green End at Earby and he came to Barlick and set up business in King Street as a manufacturer putting out work to local weavers. In his obituary in CH 21/03/1885, his place of business is given as 24 Church Street and the date about 1835]
R-To start these mills, he were more interested in manufacturing.
Now, were any of the beam engines in Barlick Bracewell engines to your knowledge?
R-No, they were Yates and Thom engines. There were two engines at Wellhouse and they were Yates and Thom’s.
They were Yates and Thoms.
R-They were Yates and Thoms and I’ve heard, if I understand me father right, it was a Yates and Thom that were in Butts as well before that big Musgrave were put in.
How about Clough, do you know what were in at Clough?
R-Well, that at Clough, as far as I can go back, that engine were miles too big for Clough and they took it out and it went to Whalley.
That was the beam?
R-The original engine as far back as I can go were horizontal and they took it out because it were miles too big and it went to Whalley and that new Burnley Ironworks were put in. Now what the beam engine were at Clough I don’t know.
Yes, well, I’m not even sure there was a beam engine.
R-No and I’m not, I think that engine at Whalley’d be the original engine at Clough.
[Later research shows this is wrong. There was an engine installed at Clough in 1827, too early for a horizontal. SG.]
And do you know what that was?
R-It were, I don’t know what make it were now Stanley and I worked on it many a time. It were a great big thing of about 900hp and it ran backwards way round they said when it were at Clough, but it were a source of trouble.
The original engine that was put in at Clough was roughly 1845. Could that engine be that old?
R-I don’t think so.
So it’s possible that there was an engine….
R-I think there’d been a slip-up at Clough. It’s possible that they had a beam engine in at Clough and somebody bought this one, I’m referring to the one that went to Whalley, second-hand somewhere and put it in at Clough and they found it were uneconomical with being miles too big. And only having one boiler they decided that they’d have a new start and put a new engine in and that’s when that little cross compound were built. (1913)
Yes. The thing that makes me think there was possibly a beam engine in at Clough is that I’ve come across a record of William Bracewell in about 1860 when the slack time was on, they re-boilered both Butts and Clough and the boilers they replaced at both mills were old pan boilers. And so they’d be very low pressure and almost certain for beam engines.
R-They’re for beam engines. But I can, whatever work I used to do at Clough and I used to go knocking about in the old engine house, I could never picture a beam engine in that place, I could picture that horizontal that went to Whalley so that building must have been altered if there had been a beam engine in.
(400)
Yes, well it’s only conjecture really.
[Later research shed light on this: There was certainly a beam engine in Mitchell’s Mill in 1827 because it was insured by Sun Insurance (Registers. Vol 161. CR1060008-1827)for £200. This engine ran until 1879/80 when a large second hand Furneval engine was installed because the new Clough Mill shed had been built and the old engine couldn’t cope. In 1891 a report in The Cotton Times stated that the Furneval had been stopped and the beam engine restarted because loom numbers were down, however, they had to go back to the Furneval because the beam engine was ‘too tight’. In 1900 the Furneval engine was sold and re-installed at Judge Walmsley Mill at Whalley where it was converted by Ashton Frost from the original specification: Single cylinder condensing, 33” bore X 6” stroke, 38rpm. To: A tandem with new corliss cylinders rated at 300hp. Flywheel 16’ diameter and 14 ropes. It ran 900 looms and the engineer and maintenance man at the mill was George Garratt. It looks as though Clough was run on the old beam engine from 1900 to 1913, supplemented by the water wheel?]
R-Aye, we’re only guessing at that.
Yes, that’s it and in 1913 at Clough they put that little ticky tock…
R-Well it were a beautiful little thing were that. Oh, it were grand, it ran at 90 revs a minute, you couldn’t indicate it on your own with having spiral indicator wheels on. You know it had spiral wheels for the string and you couldn’t catch it by yourself.
Like a fusee?
R-Aye, you couldn’t twist it round on your own.
[For engine spec. see 18/AG/03]
Right. Now get back to your father. So your father then is in the position where he’s working in Barlick for Henry Brown..
R-For Henry Brown and Sons.
And they’ve built the foundry down at Havre Park?
R-Havre Park. [Later research gives a building date of 1922.]
Which is now Gissing and Lonsdale’s place.
R-That’s right.
And then this is where Henry Brown started to run into trouble.
R- He ran into trouble in't slump, the machine shop were always busy but the foundry were losing money.
Now by the slump, what do you mean?
R-Well, the slump in 1928/1930. It were very bad you know. But the machine shop were always OK. I got that off me father, they’d always plenty of work, they could keep going but the foundry wouldn’t pay its way at all. And not only that you see but the Building Society were wanting their pound of flesh out of the foundry and it were the Building Society that foreclosed on him. And when it all came out it had no need to have happened you know, he paid 19/6 in the pound when it were all finished off. [Paid 97 ½ % of debts. SG.][CHSCMB reports petition in bankruptcy of H Brown and Sons on 16th October 1929]
When they liquidated it?
R-Yes, they paid 19/6 in the pound. So anyhow, everything finished you see. So me father thought I can’t sit back and do nowt, I’ve got to make a living, so he went to Kelbrook and borrowed £500 off an aunt. He set off with that, with Stanley Fisher, that’s Walt’s father, my partner now, and they went to Keighley and bought a lathe with a twelve-foot bed, a ten-inch centre lathe, screwcutter. They got permission to put it in the old Moorhouse’s warehouse at Wellhouse, there were no looms in it tha knows, they’d all gone out of business. And he put it in there, and we brought a six inch foot lathe from out of his workshop at home [Newton means foot driven, a treadle lathe] Fred Windle across here [Windle’s garage on Vicarage Road] lent him a gas engine and a welding set, so they could run for a bit of overtime you know, weekends and that. [This was because the shafting would be stopped in the mill when mill wasn’t running.] Watsons lent him a drilling machine, garage up here, Rupert Holt that were the blacksmith at the end of Wellhouse Road lent him one of his forges
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so they could get the blacksmith back and get him working. Stanley Fisher never played at all, within a week Dennis Pickles was back, within another week Leonard Parkinson was back and the first job he ever got on his own was to recog the bevel wheel at the bottom of the vertical shaft at the Corn Mill for Cramp Hoyle, Jim Hoyle. That’s how he started and that’s more or less how I started, I’d be about 11 by then. And it were “Come on Newton, let’s get down yonder!” on Saturday and Sunday and “Do a bit of sweeping up there.” You know and he had his own office man then and all. This went on for oh, two year happen and it gradually built up, he got a bit more tackle but there were plenty of work coming in. Till one day, Teddy Wood, he were the secretary of the calf Hall Shed Company, he came to see me dad, they were ready for selling all the machinery out of the original shop you know, out of the mill. He says “Now then John, I want you to go up there and mark every one of the machines in that shop that you want because we can’t do with you out of business and all these mills stopped.” So I went with me father that Sunday to mark them machines and he said “Put a cross on that Newton” and “Put a cross on that.” They must have come sometime that week to see me father while I were at school and I know when he came home at night he said “Right, we’re going back to the old shop, there isn’t going to be a sale. Calf Hall Shed Company have bought the lot just as it stands.” So I goes back in the old shop next week. He told me that if I wanted I could go in and help Dennis who was in there at night turning some bevel wheels. And that was it, he went back in his own shop and he just paid rent on the machinery and the buildings. Within two years he’d made enough to pay em it all back and believe it or not, every machine in that shop and everything added up, even the iron in the rack, came to £940. So how much would that be today?
[20/11/1929 the Calf Hall Shed Company buys Brown’s machinery and stock off the Trustee, R S Windle and resolves that it should be let to ‘a company to be formed’ at 6% per annum rent. Next mention I have found is in September 1932 when J A Pickles and Son is named as company in Wellhouse machine shop. In July 1938 Johnny buys the machinery off Calf Hall Shed Co. for £500 and the minutes record that they were converting to a Limited Company’. The next mention in the minute books in April 1939 refers to them as Hy. Brown Sons and Pickles Ltd].
And a lot of that machinery is what you’ve got today.
R-yes, and a lot of it off course, like the big break lathe, is what me father and Stanley Fisher made during the 1914 war. I didn’t want to part with that.
What do you mean by ‘break lathe’.
R-Well, that big break lathe that I’ve got down in the laundry now, that with the four foot face plate on, it’ll take 18 feet between centres and three feet over the saddle. Well, me father and Stanley Fisher made that lathe on nights during the 1914 war for turning gun bases on for Yates and Thoms, they couldn’t buy one so they set to and made one. They wouldn’t let them have one you see, they said if you’re capable of making one, get on and do it, so they made it.
Now tell me, something that’s struck me about it, your father had taken over the business and the business actually was…
R-Well, he went under John A Pickles and Company then.
That’s it.
R-Browns weren’t in it at all. Now then, after we got back in the old shop and I’d started working regularly then, I got fourteen and I were working full time and things started getting busier and busier. Me father couldn’t cope on his own so he asked Mr Brown from Horton if he’d come back to work in the office and that and he brought him back into the business. Now that were only us working in the office for quite some time and then things got busier and busier and we got an extension job at a mill and he floated, he made it into a Limited Company and made the name Hy. Brown, Sons and Pickles Ltd. And that’s how it gets its name.
Which mill was the extension at?
R-County Brook, first extension. Aye yes, first extension.
County Brook, that’s it.
R-He floated it into a Limited Company with equal shares and that’s how it stood up to this last year. Well, that’s it.
Now then, so you were working for your father…
R-I was working for me father.
And that’s at 14 years old.
R-Right, well we got, just as it happened it were, it might have been lucky, I hadn’t been going so long and I were working then and all at once they went on to four loom and six loom all these mills.
That’s it, the more looms system.
R-Well, with going off four looms on to six looms it slowed em down didn’t it? And they had to put bigger pulleys on the looms to slow them down. Well we got an order one Saturday morning off Anthony Carr for two thousand pair of loom pulleys. I was in’t shop sweeping up that morning when Anthony Carr came in and told me father to make him 2000 pair of ten-inch loom pulleys. Good grief, I’d never heard anything like it, 2000 pair of pulleys, we’ll never turn them in this world. Anyhow, Kings at Skipton… but me father came back on Sunday and started knocking some wood pulleys together, got them across to Ashby at Ouzledale and they made some aluminium castings off these wooden ones. He got them back, Dennis and me father turned them up and polished them and then one set, no, two sets went to Ouzledale and two sets to Kings at Skipton and they started bringing loom pulleys in at 90 pair a day..
That were Ouzledale Foundry up Forty Steps?
R-Round by Ashby’s, yes, up Forty Steps. Browns were in there you know for donkeys years before they built Havre Park. I forgot to tell you about that bit, Browns had the foundry at Ouzledale.
Were they the first to use it as a foundry?
R-No, I don’t think so, they called him Watt and Brown found him some money and they went in partnership [C. 1903/04. SG] under them circumstances and they carried on until White died and then Brown carried it on. And then of course they came out of there and built Havre Park [as a foundry] after the 1914 war. But to get back to them loom pulleys, they started coming in to the tune of 70 to 90 pair a day, castings, and me father said “it doesn’t matter Newton, we’ll have to get into this”. He learned me to turn them and that was the first time we ever got any carbide tipped tools. He’d read it in a catalogue and they were making these tools in Germany and there were an agent in England and he sent for four. He put me one in me lathe and that tool turned loom pulleys from seven o’clock in the morning until half past nine at night, six days a week, half past five on Sunday and it were never taken out of the tool post for a fortnight. We could turn 120 pair of loom pulleys in a day, two of us and the tools were called Wimets.
That’s it, Wimets.
R-Wimets, the original carbide-tipped tool.
And was that roughing straight off the casting?
R-Straight off the casting.
So you’d have the sand and all the skin to cut through?
R-The Lot, the lot.
You were doing well.
R-There were nobody could turn them pulleys like we could, not even the loom-makers. You know he weren’t daft weren’t old John, he designed the patterns so that we could put them on a dummy faceplate as a jig. He made the pattern with two church window arms, arches in you know, and four round holes about so big and we’d two lathes with a jig on the faceplate. After they were bored we used to shove them on to different size bushes and there were two pegs on this jig and they were perfectly true, nipped up with a big wing nut. I could turn a loom pulley in about three minutes, that were turn it across the top, Take the back edge off and face it down the front, a ten-inch loom pulley. And then we got an order from Blackburn for 1000 pair at 12”. And I think altogether we turned about 13,000 pair of pulleys before we’d finished and it put me father on his feet. He’d above £1,000 in the bank when we finished the job.
Well done Johnny.
R-And that kept us going, that and the first extension at County Brook which came on after we finished the pulleys and that’s what started it all off.
When you were learning, most of your work would be inside the shop, you wouldn’t get out?
R-Not necessarily, no. I used to go out with the men at weekends, Len Parkinson and Dennis and them at weekends. [Dennis was no relation to Johnny. He was shop foreman all through the Second World War]
Week ends, that would be maintenance?
R-Maintenance at engines and bevel wheel, shafting jobs and of course in the meantime I was spending all me time with Billy Watson down here, which I’d done since I were ten year old, 1200hp engine.
At Wellhouse?
R-At Wellhouse, and I spent all me spare time with Billy Watson the engineer when he came to this engine. He came from Rochdale did Billy and he were only a young chap in his twenties when he came, and of course I palled onto him with him being interested in as a lad. I used to come down here and start it up before I went to school and all that carry on. I was late and getting into bother but I didn’t care, that engine came first before school.
How old were you then?
R-About twelve.
So you were more or less running the engine when you were twelve?
R-I could run that engine before I finished at school, he saw to that did Billy and he taught me to indicate it and I used to want to come, he would say “If you want Newton, you can come back tonight and we’ll just have a look at these valves.” It weren’t me father that learned me all me steam engine skills, it were learned through Billy and meself.
That isn’t the fellow that gave you the watch is it?
R-No, that were Billy Webster at Brook Shed at Earby.
I thought it was a Billy!
R-Right, but we were following all the, besides the machine work we were doing here we were following all the mills in Barlick and at Earby as well then. We didn’t go any further afield, no farther than Foulridge in those days. We’d fourteen mills at Barlick and twelve at Earby and Sough and Dotcliffe, we were following all them engines. Of course, I were only trailing on at the back in those days.
So you’d know all these engines round here?
R-I knew them all.
You knew them intimately.
R-Now then, as you get older and things get busier you start to shove your neck out a bit, such as me father like and I remember him saying to me one day “Newton, do you think you could go to Crow Nest Shed, to Arthur Dobson, on Saturday and lift the connie (economiser) damper? It’s rubbing on the bottom and the damper regulator won’t work it.” I said, “I’ll have a do.”
Johnny, “It’s a mucky job tha knows, more for a lad than such as me going.” I said “Aye, I’ll have a do.” So he must have made arrangements with Arthur Dobson, the engineer at Crow Nest Shed, and he could swear could that chap. I daren’t start saying what he said, and we went down and one of his lads helped me and we went in and I looked at it and it looked a monstrous thing. It were eight feet high and about four feet wide and [a pin] about three inches thick at the top that went through the floor and had a square on and one at the bottom, it had a footstep that it swung on and it had all worn and the damper were running on the bricks. So I thought well, from what me father says, if you get a heel [fulcrum] strong enough and a lever long enough you can move the world. So I says to the lad, “Fetch a bloody bar and a lump
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of wood and let’s see whether we can lift it up.” Of course, we soon found out that wood wasn’t strong enough so I says “Fetch a loom weight.” Between us we managed to lift it up and packed it up on some bricks and got the footstep off. Then I went up to the shop and cut a piece of plate out and made a washer. We’d no acetylene cutters that I could use then like so I cut a lump of plate with a hammer and chisel and then I put it in a lathe and made it into some sort of a round thing and took it back and stuck it under and found it wasn’t enough. So I’d to go back and make another one hadn’t I? By dinnertime I had the damper so it would swing about with the damper regulator. “All reight?” me dad says when I went home, “Has ta finished?” I said “Aye”, and he said “Champion. tha’d better go and get washed now hadn’t ta?” I were like a nigger minstrel. Well, me mother went mad when she saw me. So about a day or two after, I remember it as well as if it had been yesterday, he asked me whether I could put a half inch valve on at Berry’s at Foulridge. I told him I’d have a do and he said here’s the valve and some Stillsons, so I get on me bike and off I went to Foulridge. I landed at Foulridge and they only used the boiler for heating at that particular place. It were only a little boiler. I looked at this boiler all rusted pipes, it were up in a corner. Of course, as soon as I put the Stillsons on, they were about a yard long instead of being fourteen inches and I twisted everything right off. So I’d to bike it back to Barlick and cut a new piece of pipe. I thought I was in a right mess. I screwed the pipe and took it back and it fit and we got the valve on and that’s how it all started, going out on me own. Oh, and I mended a wringing machine or two for the old women in the town. There were a chap down by the Syke down Gisburn Road who made torpedoes, Old Nat we used to call him, me father says “Oh Newton, I’ve another outside job for thee.” I says “What’s that?”
[Side one of the tape ends here but if I remember right he had to put some new bars in the grate under the oven to get the torpedo bloke going again. By the way, a torpedo is a sort of Barlick Cornish Pasty!]
R-Well, like I were saying, I was getting between 15 and 16 now when we started to go to mend these big outside jobs, you know, wringing machines and baker’s boilers and gas ovens and that sort of thing. I got interested in motors, we had an old wagon made out of an Austin 20 car. Of course, the chap that used to drive it were always late to catch his train at night to get home, he lived in Nelson. They called him Jack Wilkinson, he were a welder. One night he asked me to put the wagon away in the old stable where we kept it. I’d never driven it before but I drove it down the yard and put it away. I’ll never forget it, I got it into the stable with big shifts and little uns with the engine running and got a bit near the wall. This pushed the starting handle into the dogs, you know how it were Stanley with dogs in those days, and it [The starting handle] ploughed a groove in the wall. That grooves in there today, that circle up at that end, of course, I never did that any more. Then me father found out I were getting interested in motors, I nattered him a bit about a motorbike. I don’t where he got it, I think he bought it off old Fred Windle, It were an old heavy two stroke and he gave ten bob for it. I played with this motorbike at home of a night in’t joiner’s yard and that sort of thing with me mate Bob Fort. One day me dad asked me if I knew a bit about motorbikes, I told him I could make it run as he’d heard it running. He said there’s a chip shop up Park Road, they have a gas engine and it won’t go, get thyself off up there. So I went up to this gas engine and had a look at
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it. It were only a little un , I looked at it and….
Why would they have a gas engine in a chip shop Newton?
R-It were on the potato peeling machine, like pan-scrubbing stuff inside, like you put on sand rollers you know, and they put the potatoes in to scrape them. It wouldn’t start. I looked at this thing and I couldn’t make moss nor sand of it. I thought well, It happen wants the valves grinding in so I took all the valves out of it and ground them in. I still couldn’t understand how it worked, I couldn’t find the sparking plug. Now this here thing at the back, it were all burnt and I thought what’s this for? So I thought I’m not going to be ignorant, I’ll take it off. So I takes this here pot off the back, it had asbestos inside you know, it had a pipe up about as big as your finger. I took it up to the shop and asked me father what it was, He said it was what makes it run, the ignition tube. So I asked him what it did, me motorbike had a sparking plug and a magneto on. He says forget about that, this engine hadn’t got one. He said that what was wrong with the engine was that the ignition tube had a hole burned in it. I saw then what happened, they lit this burner below the tube, that got it red hot and when the engine squeezes the gas in the cylinder the tube made it go off bang! He says that’s it, you’ve got it, now off you go. So I made a new bit of pipe, screwed it in and off I went to put it all back on with this little oval flange and turn the gas on and lit it. I says “wait while it gets red hot tha knows before tha tries to start it and it’ll go like the clappers.” I’d done a good job there, I got a bag of chips and off we go back to the shop. Now, I got towards sixteen years old, I’d just gone sixteen and things didn’t half start moving; me mate Billy Watson that were the engineer at Wellhouse, his wife had died in childbirth. Now then me father says, we’re in a bit of a mess now Newton. Walter’s father had left us, he’d gone to run the engine at Moss Shed. Me father said do you think you can manage this engine? He’d run it when Billy went home at dinnertime and he ran it all afternoon. I told him I thought so , I’d been there long enough so he put me on to it and I was there six weeks. I had 2,300 looms running off that engine, and I’d no trouble, I had a fireman, a good fireman and an oiler.
What was the fireman’s name?
R- Billy Wood. Later he became Bob Fort’s father in law. He knew how to run it really but he couldn’t run the engine and three boilers as well so I got the engine. One afternoon I got a bit clever with this job, I had grease lubricators on the crank pins.
This were a Roberts.. It were a Burnley Ironworks, that’s it.
R-It were a Burnley Ironworks, a pair of tandems. We’d had a new engine at one side, it were put in in 1926, one side were modern and one side were corliss valves on the high pressure but a slide valve on the low. Anyhow, this afternoon, usual time, three o’clock and it were time to fill your crank pin lubricators with grease. You screwed them off and you had a grease tub and a spoon. Fill the lubricator, like butter, pat it on till it were full and then wound it back on with your hands, then you put your worm drive in which were a click and then you put your catch down which were worked with a ratchet to drive the grease through. I did the new side and went round to do the other side. All force of habit. I went down into the boiler house or else out into the yard and I thought That engine’s running slow. So I dash back upstairs and I had the New Side crank pin stinking red hot, not warm, stinking red hot, it were fizzling like a chip shop. So I stopped the engine and thought I’m in trouble now. I thought well, I’ve watched the others and what they generally do is get a hose pipe and couple it on to a tap and lucky enough there was already some hose pipe coupled on a tap next to the main bearing. So I got one of them squirting away on to it and it was sizzling and cracking and banging and I was scared. In a minute or two I hear the engine hose door open at the bottom of the steps and footsteps came up towards the crankpin from the bottom. I’m frigging away squirting away and I look round and see this hard hat come above the railings [Johnny always wore a bowler hat], I thought hello, me father’s here, I’ll get a bit of help now. He just looked round and said what’s up? I said I’ve a crank pin hot. Oh it is hot and all he said. I said It’s bleeding hot! Ah well he said, tha’s getten thiself into trouble, tha mun get thiself out of it. And that was all the help I got off Johnny. Well I thought, I’m in a right mess now aren’t I! I’d 200 weavers or more out in the yard waiting of the engine starting. But in a minute or two there’s another chap comes upstairs, it were Leonard Parkinson, I could hear him coming. Now then Newton, what’s to do? It’s crank pin hot Leonard. Well then, let’s slack it back a bit and get going.
Who was Leonard?
R-Leonard Parkinson were our foreman fitter after Stanley Fisher left. He were a nice chap were Leonard.
That was one of your own men?
R-Yes, one of us own men, he’d worked for me father since 1914.
Do you think Johnny had sent him across?
R-Of course he’d sent him, aye of course he’d sent him Stanley, he wouldn’t leave me like that with the blinking mill stopped. So we found some spanners and Len slackened it back about…
How old were you then Newton?
R-Sixteen.
And the engine stopped and all the weavers out in the yard…
R-The engine stopped and all the weavers out in the yard shouting to know whether we were stopped for the week. They loved to be stopped for the week.
I know the feeling well. [SG was engineer at Bancroft in 1978]
R-Well anyway, it’s a rotten feeling. We slackened it back a bit and then Len said “keep that water going Newton.” He stood over it while I got going, he were no engine driver, he could work on them. So I got started up and he stood over the crank pin and we worked through till closing.
What had actually caused it Newton?
R-Wait a minute, we ran through while half past five and then Leonard says we’d better come back tonight and we’ll take those brasses out and refit them. So we came back after tea and we refitted the brasses. Len said he’d be in at seven o’clock in the morning. I started up at seven o’clock the morning after and it were stone cold, it were all right, we was on us way. I’d had me breakfast, I’d stopped from half past eight while nine and I’d got going again, I was stood over that crank pin, I never left it you know besides doing me other work. Me father landed in and said Now then Newton, what happened yesterday? I said I didn’t know. He asked whether I’d left the catch out. I said I hadn’t, I knew I’d put it back in and the only thing I could think, they were big heavy catches, was that I’d flipped it over with me finger and it had hit the top of a ratchet wheel tooth, they were brass wheels about six inches in diameter, and it bounced off the corner of a tooth, acting as a spring. You know how a ratchet wheel goes to a feather edge, it must have hit the feather edge and bounced back and that’s all I could think. I knew jolly well I’d put it back in. Johnny told me to lift it out and try it now. I did it and it bounced right out and dropped over again out of drive. That’s it says me dad, we’ll cure that this weekend. He got out his ruler and put his hat to the back of his head and measured the wheel. Just count the teeth, I don’t know how many there were, about 57 or 60 it doesn’t matter and off he went, a little pencil out and his book and he drew a catch and a wheel and off he went. We’ll remedy this at the weekend. On Saturday morning, down comes Dennis [Pickles] at half past nine to stop with me. Newton, get your breakfast and then come back. He were a good turner were Dennis, he were no relation, he were a lad that me father had started as an apprentice straight from school. He says we’re going to alter this, you’ll have no more bother with these catches. What they’d done they’d made two new catches, the wheels were half an inch wide and they’d made two catches a quarter of an inch wide, one were shorter by half a tooth pitch. Now when you filled your lubricator you put them both back and when you tripped them in you put them both in and if one caught the edge of a tooth the other one didn’t.
So you..
R-We never had any moiré trouble with them up to taking them off and fitting oilers.
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Those greasers would feed up a pipe that comes right up the crank…
R-Up a pipe straight into the crank pin.
So that greaser was up at the crank pin end?
R-Just to the crank pin.
The only greasers I’ve ever seen were the one that fed up a pipe along the connecting rod.
R-Roberts always put them on, Calf Hall had them on and they’d a big central pillar with the lubricator on you know. And what happened at Calf Hall one day, It got hold did that quadrant pipe. Noel went to lubricate it and it seized one Monday morning. It picked the lubricator up and threw it round. Edwin rang up and said you’d better come down here, there’s a hole in the roof! It had broken the pillar off at the bottom, it would be about four and a half inches in diameter, a cast iron pillar, and the engine picked it up, whizzed it and threw it through the roof of the engine house.
So there’d be a big modification?
R-We bored em out and put em on oil. The original greasers went up the outside, up the connecting rod, not through a hole in the crank pin.
That’s it, yes.
R-They used to pipe up the grease from the cross-head to the crank pin but if the cross head got a bit slack it got all the fat and the crank, the poor old crank didn’t get anything.
I think I’ve heard you say it was a bit of a mess fitting the pipes over the swelling in the connecting rod.
R-Oh it were, oh Christ it were on a Roberts engine. Well we did away with them at Calf Hall, we bored the crank pins and fitted oilers. At Wellhouse, things got better after that, I were in about six or seven weeks on me own there. Then I went back to me work with me father. The engine job was just coming into its own and one particular thing stands out in me mind to this day. I got old enough then, I was old enough to get a license to drive the wagon and we were on with the church clock at Kelbrook the day I got me license. We rebuilt that clock, took all the dials down, rebuilt them, put new finger shafts in and all that and we were there for many a week, a good job for us were that. But just after that job finished there were a big splutter one morning and all I knew were that Clough was stopped. I were on a lathe doing something and in the middle of the afternoon me father came down and told me to run
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him up to t’Clough. So I went out and got the old wagon and off we went to t’Clough and there were Leonard and Dennis Pickles with the engine stopped and they’d the low pressure valve lids off. They said to me father we can’t make it run, it just does half a turn and then it starts to come back. Well me father says, put the lids on and let’s try it. So they put these two lids on and me father asked them if they’d set the eccentric 90 degrees forward to the crank and they said yes so he said it should run. So they put the lids on and I just stood back you know, I mean you spoke when spoken to in those days you know. I stood outside the engine house door watching with the engine driver and they barred it round to starting position and put the steam on and it just went from the starting position to the other centre and then came back to its starting position. I thought what a funny road to run a mill, this was more like a pumping engine than a rotary one this is, reciprocating. So I’m looking at this engine and I says to me father are you sure you’re right with this 90 degrees forward to the crank with this big eccentric? He says they all run 90 degrees forward even without setting the valves. I said this’n waint, it wants to be 90 degrees back from the crank. He said whatever for? I said what about this double rod in the middle, when that goes there that goes back doesn’t it? It’s the engine, it’s wrong way round , one engine’s trying to go one way and the other’s trying to go in the opposite direction so naturally the high pressure wins and it comes back eventually to where it starts. He says, 2That’s it, I’ve finished with bloody steam engines, tha knows more about this job than we do!” Dennis Pickles went up the wall, he said what the hell do you know about steam engines, a bit of a lad but Leonard Parkinson quietened him down. Newton come here, it won’t take us five minutes to try it, the blocks were already up. He said just loosen them screws and we’ll move this eccentric. He says to the engine driver bar it round until the crank were at the other side. “Tighten it up now, nip it up.” This would be about half past three in the afternoon. There were six or eight set screws, I can see it now, reaching in to tighten up on to the dogs. We nipped it up and you could tell it was the right way because you could see the dog marks where it had been before. Me father says to the engineer, go on George (George Hoggarth, Newton made a mistake and called him Albert. One of George’s relations corrected this twenty five years later.) , try it now. It were off like a bloody Waltham watch, ticky tock, ticky tock. And me dad says that’s it, I’ve finished with the bloody engines, I’m having nowt more to do with them, if tha wants me now tha’ll have to ask. And that’s when me engine fitting started.
[We stopped for a minute because Newton had thought about something he wanted to include at this point]
R-I’ve just bethought meself about the first day I started working on the pay-roll at fourteen years old, when I left school at Easter [1930] When I got there at morning, at seven o’clock like with me father, he said now then Newton, I’ve a right job for thee now, there’s a lot of pinions to cut on that little milling machine. It were already set up, they’d been cutting already, they were about an inch and a quarter in diameter with about twenty teeth in and there were hundreds of them there. This old milling machine just ran with a belt off the shafting, it had no traverse on’t table and they put about six of these pinions at once on to an arbor at once on this dividing head that me father had made at home. You wound the cutter through with a ratchet on the end of the table and I can remember as plain as owt doing this as the snow blew under the door. I thought By God, this is a worse job than I had when I weren’t working here! Anyhow we got through this here and then there were t’money. I started off with a big wage with being used to the job before I started, I had 12/6 a week. But this 12/6 a week went on until I were nearly 19 years old! [65p.] Till one day I says to me father, here, isn’t it about time I had a bit more money? Well, he says, your mother’s been on about that, you know I didn’t board or owt. I just give me mother 12/6 a week and she gave me two bob pocket money to go to t’pictures with and buy me Woodbines. Well he said, if tha wants any more money tha’d better go and ask Willy Brown.
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So I went into the office and knocks on the door and cap in hand you know, in them days that was how you went in, Come in he says and there he was sat in his swivel chair facing the window at his desk, I can see him now, he just spun round and says What dost a want? Well I says, there’s Bob and there’s Jack Parkinson and there’s Walter and they haven’t been here as long as me and they have loads more money than I have. Well, how much hasta? I said I’ve 12/6 a week like I had when I started and I’m going out to all these engines and bevel wheels and such. I think I’m entitled to a bit more now, I know that this isn’t a wealthy firm and I’m working for me father like so I know it doesn’t really matter about being a bit less than the others. Hold on he says, I didn’t realise tha’d only 12/6 a week, haven’t I put thee up with the others? No I says, I haven’t had a blooming halfpenny! So he gets to the safe and gets wages book out and he says look here Newton, sit down. I could put me cap back on then. By gum he says, thart reight, over three pound due, that’s it I said, I were only 2/6 under the full rate and I were only 19. Of course, when you come to think about it after he had brought me up to my time he had left it two year. Oh, it were a real do, me spending money went up to three bob after that!
Anyhow, another experience wi engine fitting at Sagar’s Quarry at Salterforth. We put a new suction gas plant in for the big National Gas engine that ran the quarry, it were about 30hp.
Was that running off town’s gas?
R-They ran it off their own, off coke. Now the plant was all supplied by National Gas and was laid there in the yard. It were a week’s holiday me and Harry Brown had to get it in. That were Willy Brown’s son. He’ retired now and lives at Horton, he’s about seventy. [Newton was 62 when we did these tapes. In 2000, when this transcript was put on disk, he’s still alive and living at Dam Head with Beryl his third wife and is 84. SG.]
We get this thing built up, you know, with them suction plants you light the thing up and wind a fan and it’s supposed to make gas. Well we laiked about with it all day, it were th’end of holidays, Friday and we couldn’t get a cough out of the engine. I were fed up of winding th’engine round onto the compression stroke, then you pumped it up with a pump on top you know, a bit of compressed air and it should go but it didn’t. There were no town’s gas to prime it and I were fed up of this thing, I wanted to get home and have some holidays. Well, it gets to Saturday tea-time and we still hadn’t fired the bloody thing up, we’d been pumping the engine and winding the engine and we were both buggered. I said there’s somat not reight with this thing Harry. Nowt o’t sort he says, it’s us that doesn’t, it’s nowt that we’ve done. Anyway, on Sunday his father came wi’ him, that were Willy Brown, him that gave me more money. We pumped while eight o’clock on Sunday night, it were summertime and a bloody good job or we’d ha been up and down wi’ a candle and we’d burnt I don’t know how much coke and there were a stink of gas all over but there were nowt getting inside. Well, I said, It’s pretty obvious isn’t it, we’ve pumped since Friday, it can’t be getting any bloody gas, it ain’t even gone puff! We’d taken the big sparking p[lug out you know. Well we decided to uncouple the gas pipe, I said it’s about time we uncoupled seat! I were getting reight crammed and they were getting crammed back at me ‘cause I were only a lad. So we uncoupled the gas pipe didn’t we and they hadn’t put a bloody hole in the packing. So Newton knocks a bloody hole in the middle of the packing with his centre punch and puts it back on. I says, try it now and th’engine went like a bloody rocket. Aye, Browns don’t like to talk about that.
Anyhow we had another experience in the quarry and I think it were only the year before or the year after we went up to a steam crane in Tubber Hill Quarry [Loose Games at end of Lister Well Road?] Me father says tha does that crane and Harry’ll help thee. He were a good mechanic, there’s no doubt about that.
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What were the crane, a Smith Rodley?
R-It were a Scottish crane, Glasgow built and it had Stephenson’s Link Motion for the valves. Well, we took all this engine to bits and we brought it to t’shop and we re-bored it, made all new pins for the link motion, new valve pins and new piston rods and we had it back together the following Saturday in the quarry. I says to Harry on the Saturday night, It won’t run! He says what the bloody hell do you know about it. He were like that because he’d been in the army, all right I says, leave it! We hadn’t permission to light the fire and get steam up in the vertical boiler, we had to wait till Monday while the man came. I lands to me work at Monday morning after th’holidays and I got jumped down me throat as soon as I got in there. Me father’d get in there a bit sooner nor me wi’ having one or two holiday jobs on. Get theeself off to yon bloody quarry he says, your bloody engine won’t run. I says I know damn well it won’t run. Why? Well he didn’t know how to set valves did he, they’re all at t’bottom , t’ports are all wide open at t’top! Well I got reight in it, he never said a word to him [Harry] not one bloody word got said to him. I had to go up to t’quarry and face old John Sagar and get t’lids off and screw t’valves up into t’middle, he didn’t understand the reversing part of the business. So I got ‘em up and within an hour I got it going and it run like a bloody sewing machine. But it were me that got in bother not him, never said a dicky bird to him, he says I should have had the sense not to let him do it. Now them weren’t sort of ways I got tret.
Ah well, you were getting to become one of the gaffers you see.
R-Aye, must have been. I used to like to work wi’ Harry. He were keen on motors and he built himself a motorbike out of nothing. He bought a Clyne engine, a “V” twin you know. He built a modern machine, it were miles more modern than what they were building in them days, it were up to today’s standards for being modern in construction. He built the frame and everything. He turned the brake drums out of a piece of nine inch shafting and I used to go all over with him on that. I remember one
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particular time we were working at Dotcliffe Mill at Kelbrook, it were at t’back end of summer, it were coming cold weather and we were shifting drums [Pulleys on the shafting in the weaving shed. SG] We always got on like a house on fire, I know we were working bloody hard and in’t middle of Saturday afternoon he says to me I’m bloody sick of these drums! I said Aye, and I am. They were all staked on you know and you’d to calliper them to get them true because the engine wasn’t running. You’d to mark them wi’ a piece of chalk tha knows. We shifted ‘em past hangers, it were all rough shafting, it weren’t turned. Oh he says, come on, let’s clear off for half an hour. We got on’t motorbike and I got on the back and the next thing I knew we were off round Hawes and Leyburn! It were ten o’clock on Saturday night when we got home. We’d had nowt to eat and I were bloody frozen. I’d nowt on only me jacket, he had a blooming great motorbike coat on.
We set off again to go somewhere, I think it were off up to the waterworks, up to them engines up at t’waterworks. Tubber Hill borehole. Harry says I’ll just call at Savages [Fishmongers and greengrocers opposite Commercial Inn on Church Street. SG] will you just nip in and get me fish that’s ordered for tonight, he used to get it for [his father] they lived at Horton. So I just nipped off the motorbike and went in the shop and got the fish and I get back on the pillion but before I could get the fish tucked into me pocket he let the clutch in and I were left on me arse in the road wi’ all the folk walking down to t’market! He got right to t’top of the park before he bethought himself I weren’t on t’bike. There I am sat on the edge of the flags waiting of him coming back.
But anyway, we can get on a bit further now, I’m getting a bit older and I think the biggest job I ever had on me own before t’war were up at the waterworks. I’d always worked at t’waterworks for Dick [Wilfred Dixon], I’d run the engines, fired the boilers, done the bearings up on the bore hole pumps and the crank shaft bearings on the big pumps. I’d done ‘em for years, it were my job were that.
Now in 1939, they had a big pile-up. One of the buckets came off one of the deep well pumps which are 96 ft down. As it jammed it broke the spur wheel which were eight feet diameter and eight inches wide. It twisted the engine crank shaft and bent it and it bent the crank shaft that worked the pumps, this was six or six and a half inches diameter in the journals. There were a pair of flange couplings on about three feet in diameter with six bolts in and two and a half inch keys and it twisted them half way round the bloody shaft when it jammed. It were a Timkins engine on the shallow well, about fifteen inch bore and two foot stroke and they ran it to a very fair speed because it were very low geared and it didn’t half do some damage, it were unusual because it had Meyer cut-off gear on it, they never altered it but it was there. It smashed the eight foot spur wheel, it smashed it into pieces. The engine on the deep well was a Burnley Ironworks single cylinder. Me and Bob [Fort] carried all the bits outside and there weren’t one piece we couldn’t lift by hand and that wheel, when it were bolted together, it weighed over two tons. I got that job and me and Bob went up to it, father ordered the spur wheel, Roberts cast that [William Roberts, Phoenix Foundry, Nelson] and we machined it. I have some photographs somewhere of that wheel, it were the biggest thing I’d ever turned up to then were that, five feet had been the limit you know more or less. And me dad just left me to it. It took us five weeks to get the bucket out of the bore without damaging the bore down in the with two inch draw bolts and girders across the top trying to pull it up. Now these buckets were constructed rather foolishly in my idea, to be working so far down. They were fourteen inches in diameter and ten inches deep. In the middle of it there were a bronze bucket and then on the outside they had a wrought iron ring and this was bored tapered and it fit on the bronze bucket and it had a nut underneath. I don’t know what their idea were of making it tapered but what had happened, they used to take these buckets out every two years, they used to do this job themselves. Pull the rods up, look at the buckets and put them back. If the buckets wanted repairing they used to bring them to the shop and we used to put new outer rings on and then send them back. Well, what they’d done, they’d taken them out that often and there was nothing wrong with them that they’d run ‘em for four years. What had happened, one of them had rusted and it rusted thin and then it split did this taper ring and of course, when the bucket went down, the ring stopped in the bore didn’t it. The bucket expanded it just like a an expanding mandrel and jammed it solid. Anyway, it took me and Bob a fortnight at least to move that bucket and when we did move it, we had that much tension on. Me dad borrowed a hydraulic jack off Roberts for us and what with that and all the draw bolts and girders we had on the well top, just like you’d draw an ordinary wheel off a shaft, but it were ninety feet down. It went one afternoon and all us tackle jumped up in the air about ten feet wi# the tension we had on. It’s a good job we weren’t hanging about when it went. You know we’d a big spanner on and a ten foot pipe and we were walking round like a blooming horse on a mill tightening these draw bolts and pumping the jack and it went! They jumped about ten foot did them girders.
That’s with the stretch you had on the rods?
R-That’s with the stretch we had on the rods.
They’d be steel rods?
R-They were steel rods and we’d elongated all the bolt holes to twice the diameter of the bolts , we’d all them to renew when we put it back. I’d be there altogether about six months.
Did you go down? How did you know exactly what was wrong?
R-I went down t'well and took the clack box lids off so I could get inside and have a look with a light.
How wide was the bore, how wide was the well?
R-Oh it’d be eight feet in diameter and it’s 96 feet deep then of course you’ve got a 300 feet borehole as well. Now how did I get down, They kept the bore hole pump running 24 hours a day to keep the well itself empty, you know, the head of the well, we kept that empty and I went down there.
One particular day when we were putting it back together I’d been down all morning and it got to dinner time and they shouted down Are you coming up for dinner? And I said I’d stop down, I’d got the valves back in there was only the lids to get back on. It was a hell of a big lid, I should say it’d be four foot be two foot and I had it on another set, another jinny [Set of lifting tackle. SG] You were on one jinny which was a small one and a bosun’s chair and you [had a signal rope] used to pull once for ‘up’, twice for ‘down’ and three times for get me up quick! I wanted a different spanner of some sort and I shouted but they couldn’t hear me so they stopped the bore hole pump and I’ve never been as scared in me blinking life. In the bottom of the well there were bits of rock juts up you know and I used to get off me bosun’s chair and stand on them. All at once the water started boiling up between these bloody rocks and I was never as scared in me bloody life. I screamed out and I heard the labourer, Henry, he came from the gasworks and he stuttered. I heard him shout Get the bl…bl…bloody engine running, he’s going to be drowned! The water got up to about here and I were trying to climb up a two foot pipe, sticking to it. The big delivery pipe off the pumps. Anyway, they got the engine running and it held it and then it went down. Of course, they’d to bring me up then, I were bloody wet through. I had to go home and get changed. But by gum, I’ve never been as frightened. Silliest trick in’t world, silliest trick in’t world to stop that engine.
I should think so.
R-But that were the biggest job I’d done on me own up to that time, I got it running before we finished. We used to go over to a little mill at Barley, Narrowgates Mill Company and by gum they were a good customer were that mill. They run 70 loom and they had a National Oil Engine.
They’d have a boiler at one time?
R-Aye but they had this National Oil Engine, it were a pretty new engine when we went the first time. Now then, it were a silly drive, it were cross ropes. If you’ve ever seen a cross rope drive it’s a bloody education. What happens is the ropes rub together and it wears the buggers away. They were having to re-rope it about every six months. So old Adam Hargreaves that were’t boss says to me father Can’t we do owt Johnny with this blooming rope drive, we’re allus broken down wi’ it. You know it’d fray half a dozen ropes in the middle of the week and they’d to send for the rope chaps to it. Me father says we can, we can put a bracket on that wall and a bracket up on this wall and a spur wheel there and a spur wheel there and it’ll probably go round the right way won’t it Newton! So, Narrowgates, we gets off there one Saturday morning, me and me father and we takes all the particulars, get some spur wheels drawn out on a board, Dennis makes some patterns. Dennis Pickles were a bloody good pattern maker, makes a pattern for this and one for the other with a hunting tooth in. They’d be happen 70 and 71 teeth, six and a half inches wide and about three feet six inches in diameter and we get them wheels cast. He made a bit of a drawing on a lump of paper for a five inch shaft to go across this here place. So I get on with that now I says. Well I hadn’t finished at the waterworks so I’m on with that at night turning the shaft and what not and then the spur wheels landed and I get on with them and then this damn great wall bracket lands and we get on with that. Anyhow, I got out of putting up the wall brackets, Jimmy Moseley and Harry Brown went to put them up. Now me dad says, we want another rope pulley now don’t we. We found out that the bottom pulley grooves didn’t match them at t’top so a rope pulley landed on to the job with about ten inch and a half cotton rope grooves to turn in it. We’d no boring mills in them days so I had to turn them in the lathe so I gets that job and I’m courting at the same time and it were getting on to 1939 then.
I’m going to stop you here.
THIS TRANSCRIPT DATED 11 SEPTEMBER 2000/SCG