THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON 14TH OF JUNE 1979 AT VICARAGE ROAD, BARNOLDSWICK. THE INFORMANT IS NEWTON PICKLES AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right, now last time we were talking Newton, we were talking about the Crow Nest engine when the low pressure cylinder went and we’d got as far as where they’d landed the fresh cylinder and it were snowing and it was upside down on the wagon. Now, you’ve got free rein, go on from there.[Newton reckoned the job at Crow Nest was either 1947 or 1948. He was living at Vicarage Road then. He said it was the same year as the broken fly shaft at Wellhouse because they’d just finished tidying up after that job when Crow Nest went. Later research shows that it must have been 1955 because this is when the Wellhouse shaft broke. SCG]
R-So, after a lot of annoyance and a bit of bad language. We decided like we’d have to lift it off. So we lifted it off and there was no tarmac or anything under the wagon you know, it were just an ordinary muck road, and we lowered it down and put a couple of battens under it and it sunk about six inch into the soft muck under the snow. Then we’d to set to and roll it over. With big shifts and little shifts we got it upstairs into the engine house at about twelve o’clock at night, with a few storm lamps and a candle or two and a bit of electric light we had and we didn’t do so bad after that. We’d only about three days left to get it running. We got it into place and it fitted reasonably well. We hadn’t machined this cylinder, it had been machined at Heckmondwyke. I comes to put valves in to make gauges to re-turn the valves, you know, the low pressure valves were a heck of a length, they’d be about three feet long. We found out they’d bored ‘em a bit out of parallel and of course the big end were at end where they should have had lead in. So I thought this is a right how do you do for a new engine. So I were up at t’shop turning valves and I just happened to mention this thing to me father. Well, he says, You can do nowt only leave them ten thou slack up to t’bonnets. Eh, I didn’t like the idea of making ‘em slack, so slack to start with.
Can I just interrupt you there Newton, when you say they were ten thou slack up to t’bonnets…
R-They happened to be tapered the wrong way. They’d bored ‘em from the wrong side. You see when you start rebore like that, when you start boring a casting with a lot of length to the bore you naturally get a spot of tool wear. You did on, you did when using ordinary tools anyway, you got a spot of tool wear and they’d started boring them from the end they finished up at, from the bonnet end and we always bored us corliss valves from the cover end, the blank end. And then if it went smaller it went smaller up to the bonnet and when you shoved ‘em in it were OK.
Yes, ‘cause obviously you’d put them in from the end opposite from the bonnet.
R-That’s it, you could turn say, day you did lose ten thou on the bore, which I never did lose anything hardly, but they had done. If they had been the other way I could have turned me valves ten thou of taper and they’d have fit perfectly. So I couldn’t, I couldn’t see turning them valves to the small end and leaving ’em slack at the bonnet end, which meant they wouldn’t have rested correctly on the face and there’d have been some steam leakage for a heck of a long time before they wore themselves down. So what I did, I turned all the valves and I said to Harry Crabtree, me mate, Don’t put the bonnets on. I turned all valves with a taper on to put ‘em in from the bonnet end. He says, and I’ll never forget Harry, What are you doing? I’m turning the taper same way as it is. He says, Well who’s going to pull the buggers out if there’s anything wrong with them? I says, Look, we’re going to have to chance it. If there’s anything wrong with them valves we’ll have to take the bonnets off, that’s all, to get them out, we know. Him and me knew all about it. So I turned these valves wi’ a taper of ten thou less at the tail end and we put them in from the bonnet end and then put the bonnets on after. You allus get that bit of [tolerance], where you can move ‘em about, you’ve got to have running tolerance. We poked ‘em in on to the tees, all four, and nobody knew about it, they never came out again. But you know it would have been a hell of a long time before they wore down enough to get them out the other end and I’ve always wondered what would have happened if someone had gone and tried to take the buggers out. Anyway, we get it all together and at about, oh, two or three o’clock in the morning we were ready for putting the steam pipe back. We’d had to take the steam pipe down to get the cylinder into the engine house because it ran over the window. We were all getting a bit at bands end, we’d worked night and day for seven days solid and two of me labourers were putting t’steam pipe up and making joints while me and Harry were finishing the cylinder off and bits o’ pipes, drains and one thing and another. And about quarter past six, happen a bit sooner, we’ll say six o’clock in the morning, I says right, put some steam on at the boiler house. Well, they put steam on in the boiler house and I don’t know what them lads had been doing but it blew the Taylor ring clean out of one of the joints, and everyone were asleep on the floor except me and Harry.
Now one second Newton, a Taylor’s ring, that’s one of the corrugated rings…
R-It’s a joint ring, a corrugated joint ring that you put between the joints in your steam pipe lengths.
Which would you rather have, Taylors rings or an ordinary [asbestos] flat joint?
R-On a really good flat joint, Taylors but on a rough flange I wouldn’t entertain ‘em. Put soft packing in.
Did you use Hermetite on them?
R-Manganese, aye.
Manganesite, yes.
R-Manganesite, aye, I used to fill Taylors rings up with Manganesite. Anyway, Harry says Come on Newton, let’s get up on the bloody scaffold, get steam turned off and make it us self! So me and Harry set to, there’d be a dozen bolts round that flange, seven eighths of an inch and we set to, we were absolutely buggered and we made the joint.
And they’d be red hot then.
R-And it were red hot. We’d been out in the snow all week and we finished up wi’ the last joint bloody red hot, wi’ all the windows out, eh! Anyhow we got running as near as I can tell, we moved her over the first time about quarter to seven and she picked her feet up and got hold of the vacuum and she were off. I says to Sydney, th’engine driver, I says, Leave the bloody thing running, it’s seven o’clock nearly, if they want to come in, the weavers had been notified to come in Monday morning, if they want to come in they can do. So we ran on and sometime between seven and half past Sydney vanished, he went home for his breakfast and he said he’d be back in a bit. Quarter to eight there were a hell of a noise in’t low pressure cylinder, grind and grunt. I hooked the governor off, stopped her instantly. Harry says What’s that! I said I think I know what it is, I think there’ll be some core sand that’s dropped out of a corner that you can’t [get at]…couldn’t get out of the porting, and it’s dropped in the cylinder bore. We’ll have to get rid of that! [Harry says] What we going to do, take t’covers off? I said, Are we buggery! This time o’t day and been up all week, never been to bed? I says, That big flange on top…. There’s a core flange on top of the steam chest you know, same as there is underneath to get your muck out, [for the] moulders to get their muck out. I says, We’ll take that flange off Harry and we’ll put a drop of oil in and then we’ll put it back on. So we took this flange off which would be about two feet in diameter and a dozen seven eighths nuts on it, we had the blocks up, we lifted it off and we put a drop of oil in, about thirty bloody gallon! He he he! Out of buckets and I started it up meself, th’engineer never appeared so I started up about half past eight and there were a lot of sizzling and spitting and a nice greasy piston rod and all running a bit black. I says, I think we’ve shifted it! And it never, it just purred away and never ailed owt any more. So that’s when I came home for me breakfast ‘cause I said to Harry, You’re all right now, you look after it, I’ll just nip across t’road, I’ll get the wife to make me breakfast, have a wash and a shave and I’ll be back in half an hour. I might have been a bit longer than half an hour. I goes back and me mates sat in the chair, round t’corner a little, there were like a little vestibule, chair round there and a desk and he’s there in that corner and he’s hard on! I thought Oh My God, brand new engine and about £12,000 of a job running on its own! And just then I saw this cap come down the far side and just walk round the bottom and it were Jack Sneath, engineer from Fernbank. He said, No need to worry Newton, I’ve been here since you went up that yard, as soon as you walked up them steps he were asleep then and you hadn’t got out of sight! He must have come in one way as I went out the other. So I thought Thank God, he’d had plenty of experience with that sort of thing. Anyhow, I stopped there like, and Harry come home, and I stopped and nobody turned up, no Sydney, and it were another fortnight before he turned up.
Which were, Sydney Brown were that?
R-Sydney Heaton., his nerve had gone you know and he were a long time before he really came to. He’s still about.
I’ve heard you say before about engineers that got to the state where they couldn’t start their engine.
R-No, they used to come for me and knock me up at half past six in the morning saying I can’t start it, I’ll never start it this morning. [Newton is talking about Sydney Heaton here] All sorts of excuses, warmer’s been left on all night, air pump’s red hot and all that sort of carry on. I’d walk across and there’d be nothing. I’d just open the stop valve at five to seven and within ten minutes he’d be all right then, he’d say I’m all right now. Aye, especially on Monday. Oh he came across many a time and I talked to his wife, he’d had a terrible shock with that job you know. After a month or two he were as reight as rain. She said he used to get up in the middle of the night to take the dog out you know.
I know some people now….they…. I don’t know if you’re the same but if I’m sat there and there’s a sudden sharp noise…..
R-Oh…
I’m forced, I move straight away.
R-We’re all like that that’s been in this trade. You’re round, your head’s round and you’re up in a flash! Least little change.
And people say to you, By God, your nerves are bad!
R-But you’re, no, I say no I’m not but my reactions hellish fast!
That’s it isn’t it.
R-You see, that’s what it is you know.
I’m glad you’re the same because…
R- I mean you see, we’ve been at it all these years and it doesn’t matter what, or where you are, if there’s a change of noise, suddenly you want to know what it is don’t you.
Aye, that’s it, I’ve always said that you’ve spent all your life listening.
R-It’s like me walking on the floorboards and all, all at once there’s a different bloody creak and you say to the wife Oh my God, there’s bloody dry rot starting up! He He He. [This happened to Newton at home and is why he was laughing, he heard a different noise, had a look and found they had dry rot in the floor under his organ!]
Anyway, we’re getting away from it, that’s my fault, we’re getting away from it a bit.
R-I know, it helps though.
One of the things I’d like to talk to you about a bit is the difference between , I mean, nowadays anyone that [has an engine], I’m talking about amateurs and preservationists, people like that. Anybody that knows anything about engines, you know there’s a hell of a difference between running an old engine and running a new one. I’d just like you to talk about that a bit you know.
R-Oh well, when new engines were put in, like as not, I mean I never had this experience personally but I talked to these people that had gone on a new engine, if it were Burnley Ironworks or Roberts, the fitter that were in charge of that job, more often than not, stopped with the engine a few months and he told ‘em which lubrication to get and how much to give them and you know, this that and the other. Now at Wellhouse, up here when this new side were put in in 1927 I were only a lad but I were knocking about at the time and I know they started that engine up but Billy Watson started it up himself. He were a young chap that came from Rochdale on to that engine. He told them what cylinder oil he were going to use on that engine and they started it up with Valvoline and he ran that engine on Valvoline for about ten month. Then of course, the directors started grumbling at him and he had to go back on Burnley oil and he says well, I don’t know why you want me to put it back on Burnley oil. Well they said, it’s cheaper, but he said we’re only using half as much. Anyhow, they had to go back on Burnley oil eventually because the directors of the shed company were directors in the firm that were supplying the oil.
Aye, that’d be Cookes, Sam Cookes.
R-Aye, it were Cookes so it had to go back on Cookes.
Aye, but I’m thinking about things like, you know if you get a drop of water in an old engine there’s plenty of places where it can squirt out of.
R-Oh well, that’s why these fitters more or less stopped with ‘em you know to give it it’s running in period. They’d to make sure the engineers were well enough educated to make sure he didn’t start with his drains closed or such things like that you know. Lubricators turned off, because like you say, with a new engine there were no bloody room to spare for water to go up past the piston. And if all them drains were shut, bang, there’d be a broken cylinder in no time, or if it wasn’t warmed properly. [Watching] expansions….
In your experience Newton, did you ever see an engineer that had been what we’d call nowadays, trained to look after a steam engine? Or were they all, did they all come up through experience.
R-No, I only knew odd ones that had been trained to look after one. Only people that I knew like that had been brought up wi’ an engineering firm like I was and left ‘em and went on to engine tenting, mill engineering and there were plenty about you know. Such as Walter’s father at Moss and Johnny Waddington at Bradley Mills at Nelson, you know people like that who’d been brought up as millwrights. And a chap, I just forget his name, that ran a little shed on’t boundary between Colne and Nelson, he were a fitter for Roberts. There were Cockerill at Sunderlands at Nelson, he were a Roberts engine fitter. And people like that. More often than not you know, its were either father to son or if it were a big mill son ‘ud oil for his dad for twenty or thirty years and then his father’d retire and t’son ‘ud get the job. And that’s the way it were but sometimes it didn’t work out just reight neither. Father’d leave and t’son ‘ud forget to turn th’oil on and then there’d be a hell of a mess you know. I mean that happened at Fernbank when Jack Sneath gave up you see, his oiler had been with him for donkeys years. He only left him a couple of days and we were stopped with the crank pin hot and them crank pin blocks hadn’t been adjusted from 1914 up to the present day. Never had a warm bearing in any shape or form. Only been away for two days and they’d got the high pressure crank pin hot, and believe me it were hot. It’s a wonder it didn’t rive the connecting rod off at t’other end. I couldn’t get the brasses out, it were all seized up and stuck to the pin. I had to thump ‘em round the pin with a striking hammer to get them loose. Burnt themselves fast they did, aye. And it weren’t because he hadn’t the experience like, you know, wit’ engine, he’d been there donkeys years, twenty five of my knowledge. Aye, he did that. But that’s how it worked, you’d get a fireman, a two man shop. Your fireman had happen been with you donkeys years and he’d helped you and watched you and you’d shown him in case you didn’t turn up one morning, you weren’t so well. And then they’d follow on to the engine after he retired. But not so often, that case, right away. Which has happened recently of course. [Newton is referring here to SCG taking over Bancroft from George Bleasdale after working with him as firebeater. This was a slightly different case as the management had set SCG on with the intention of him following GB when he retired six months later.] If the engineer’s poorly and they can’t [get in] they ring for such as us to go and run it for a day or two till they get fireman settled down or train someone else up or try to get a new engine driver.
And that day or two can turn into months?
R-Can last for months.
That’s it, aye.
R-I went to Spring Bank and I were there two and a half years. They wouldn’t bother with anyone else.
Yes. Now then, we’ll have a rest from the engines for a minute or two.
R-Why, where are we going now then?
We’re going to do something on water wheels.
R-Oh heck!
Now then, you won’t have done a lot on water wheels round here I know, but there’s at least one you’ve worked on……..
R-Well, I’ve done a little bit like. I’ve done little things like lifting ‘em up and putting new bearings under ‘em. And putting new gear wheel segments on and a new bloody pinion.
Now just hold on, you’re going too fast.
R-I’ve done that like you know, I’ve had a little bit to do with them.
No, what I was going to say was that the main of your work round here was on steam engines but there have been odd occasions when you’ve been called out to water wheels.
R-Oh yes, aye.
Now there’s one mill in particular I’m thinking of, County Brook, you did a fair bit of work there didn’t you.
R-County Brook? We did that.
Now tell me what the set up was at County Brook, how it was driven and what you went and did.
T-Well, County Brook was a very very old mill. The bit that was left of the old mill when I was a lad and the water wheel was still running. That ran on to a shaft that ran to another shaft and there was a 60hp National Diesel coupled to it and the diesel engine governed the water wheel. They reckoned they used to get about 40hp out of the water wheel when they had water but when the water was done the engine had to turn the water wheel as well, they couldn’t knock it out of gear, there were no clutch. Then they extended that shed and we did the millwrighting for it, and put another two hundred looms in. We did all that millwrighting and pulled the engine out and National brought a new one. They went from 60hp to a hundred horse National Engine, slow running you know, not totally enclosed. What did they run at, about 130revs a minute, sommat like that, big fine engine. We put a new line shaft in, all new pulleys and then we put a 60 hp electric motor in and all just in case trade were bad and they could run with the motor, or if there were no water they could start the motor up. They were all on fast and loose pulleys were these, about seven feet with an eight inch belt on about an inch thick. They’d a real set up up there. And then we extended the place again after a few years, for another two hundred looms and a two storey building to form a cellar underneath. We did all that job but that ran separately with an electric motor at the top of the steps like, just where you went up into the shed you know.
One big motor?
R-One big motor, about a hundred horse motor.
How about the water wheel there, what sort were it?
R-Well, it were a wood construction wheel with a cast iron shaft and wooden spokes right up to the wheel segments and steel buckets which must have been renewed many many times, which we repaired once or twice. Cast iron segments, by segments I mean gear wheel, form of gear wheel round the outer edge. It’d be about twenty five feet in diameter and about six feet wide. The segments were getting worn, if one broke we’d go and put a new segment in. And oh, the pinion, you couldn’t lubricate ‘em with cylinder oil and ordinary grease, what they used to lubricate the segments with on that were gas tar, road gas tar, they found that the most efficient lubrication you could put on a water wheel. And then it started acting on, it were allus wearing teeth out in the opinion and the pinion ‘ud be about four feet in diameter. I think the teeth were about three inches pitch, you didn’t get many teeth in a four feet diameter wheel at that pitch you know. It used to wear ‘em out pretty regularly and we’d go and put a new one on. I said It’s running queer is this wheel one day to me father. He says What’s up with it Newton? Well I said, It’s reight in gear at one side but its out of gear at the other side. He said You’ll have to lift shaft up at one end and lower it at t’other to make it line up. I said, Well, if I lift it that much it’ll be through the roof! Oh, he said, Like that is it. So we went and had a look, popped a level on t’water wheel shaft while it were stopped one Saturday morning and t’bubble went out of sight in’t level like. So we had a reight look at it and found that gear side bearing had worn reight down, they were running on cast iron pedestals you know, it had worn right down through the pedestal on to the stone. So Mitchell [the owner] says Well, you’ll have to do sommat with that, we’re not doing without the water wheel. So me father gets his wood rule out and takes particulars, makes a pattern to make a new bearing but this time we put a bronze step in it didn’t we. And a hell of a thing it was and all, because I remember me and Bob Fort carrying that bronze step from t’shop up to County Brook. Wagon were out so me father says Oh, take it on the bus. There weren’t a bus so we walked all the way, he’d carry it a few yards and then I’d carry it a few to the top of, where you live, reight to the top of Tubber Hill and then there’s a gate and you go down through the field. I think we slid it down through the field on the snow or sommat. Anyhow, that’s nowt, we get this bearing in. And to hold that water wheel up, it were a bigger job than lifting any mill engine flywheel. Well, there’s no room, we made two holes in the wall through each side of the spokes you know. We put two girders in, two, about ten by six, and bolted ‘em together. Then we put some straps across and we made some inch and a half bolts and straps under the shaft and we tightened them you know to lift the wheel up. You couldn’t put jacks under it, you’d nothing only two straight walls. We pulled it up like that to get it clear of the bearings and the shaft I think was worn about two inch of taper! Were the shaft end. It’d been running for hundreds of years like that hadn’t it? So me father says Well, we can’t make a bearing that’ll fit that shaft so he got it cast on the same taper, we didn’t machine it. And me and Bob took it up and that’s how we were going to deal with it, offer it up, bring it back, do a little bit at it and try to make it fit better, So anyhow, we just dropped it down on to this new bearing you know, it looked beautiful and straight , in fact it were leaning the other way! So before we put the pinion on we decided the time had come to run the wheel, without the pinion on, for a bit, to see how the bearing went on. When we come to lower it down, penstock had been leaking and the buckets were all full on the drive side and as we were lowering it down it were trying to go round. It started to bend them ruddy bolts and by the time we’d got those bolts out they were just like, well, they’d have made a good bow and arrow out of the four you know they’d bent that much curve on them. Anyhow we got it to drop down on to this bearing and we got it running. We only put a drop of water on to get it spinning round, we’d no gearing on you know and it could go! Believe it or believe it not, water went all over the place and you couldn’t get anywhere near it, you wanted a sou’wester on and a mac like a fisherman. That bearing got red hot and it smoked and it sizzled with all that water running on it, it did that. So we shut the water out and got it stopped and I went down to the shop and me father says Well, how’s it going on? I said How’s it going on? I’ve never had a hot neck on a water wheel before! He says What! I says we’ve a bloody hot neck Johhny on that water wheel. Never he says, I can’t believe that. Bob says Well, you go up and have a look Johhny, there’s steam coming off it! He he he! And you can’t get near it for water! I must see this he says, I must see this! So we get some Victory Compound, which is red moulding sand of course, nicely dried. He says Are you going to put that on it Newton? Well, I said, I can’t think of anything else! So off we went back with this big box of Victory Compound. Johhny stood well back, well, we put the water on and we got it going. I bet within ten seconds the bugger were smoking. Whoa! He says, and water were squirting all over the place. He says, Get some Victory mixed! I said Mix it be buggered, let’s put it on raw! So we put this sand on the shaft, no oil in it or nowt, and it ground and it screamed and it squeaked. By gum, in ten minutes it were a perfect fit and it never ailed another thing. It ran right up to them pulling it out and putting a turbine in. They used to get forty horse power out of that water wheel, I mean free, as long as Whitemoor reservoir was running over, you know.
That shaft’s still up there on the floor.
R-I do believe it is, it were never sold weren’t that shaft.
No, it’s still up there on the floor is that shaft.
[It is still there as I write, November 2000.]
R-Aye good. Believe it or believe it not it smoked did that bearing.
And as it wore in it’d drop down and the gear would be somewhere in line.
R-Spot on, We put the pinion back and put some fresh fat pads on and they never had another minute’s trouble with that. But the segments were getting badly worn.
Now wait a minute, you’ve said something there, fat pads.
Yes, great big fat pads.
You put fresh fat pads on, now tell me what you mean.
R-Well, fat pads, It’s yarn and waste rolled well and truly into a barrel of fat and, well, you know, saturated. But these people make this stuff on purpose, yarn and fat all mixed up.
That’s it, Calypsol yarn, shaft yarn.
R-That’s it, well they had that, they had a tub of it for their shed shafting. We made two big pads about a foot square and slapped ‘em on about three inch thick and they run for months.
Yes, now that’s something, we’ll digress a bit here. Once again it’s something that a lot of people know nothing about. I mean they see overhead shafting in sheds and nobody ever really thinks about it. Now, at Bancroft, I mean obviously, I’ve done ‘em the way they’ve always been done and you tell me whether it was common. What we used to do, of course those were fairly small shafts, only two or three inches in diameter. We put a pad of shaft yarn in each end of the box and then fill the middle with ordinary grease and a lump of hot neck on the top and that’s the standard way of doing it isn’t it.
R-Yes, and it’ll run for blooming years.
Well, to the best of my knowledge, when I went up there, those bearings hadn’t been greased for about three or four years and the six years I was there, apart from the occasional hot neck, all I used to do was go round and grease ‘em and turn the top pads over.
R-Odd squealer every now and again. That’s it, or make a hole in the top and put a drop of oil in.
Well, we couldn’t afford any more and well, they get burnt don’t they. [the fat pads]
R-Aye, they get dry.
They get dried up and charred on the bottom but I took ‘em all out and turned ‘em over because we couldn’t afford grease! But the funny thing were that just before we finished I persuaded ‘em to buy some shaft yarn and I think there were about a hundredweight and a half up there. There were enough to do the shed!
R-There were enough to do the shed, eh aye. But you know they were’t finest way of lubricating bearings and the finest bearings for a weaving shed that had ever been done were that. Ball races were no good, useless.
Why not?
R-Useless, they won’t stand the gearing.
Aye, the vibration.
R-No, County Brook, we’ve been on about County Brook. First shed to be built after Mitchells bought it. Ernest Foulds at Colne did that job and they did it on ball races, ball bearings and they’d nothing but trouble. Every week there were a ball race to change. And some job it was to change those ball bearings you know, I mean they’d to take all the drums off and a coupling off and slide ‘em off at the end. They were ball races with a drawing collet and a couple of lock nuts on. Well, more often than not the ball race would have seized up and broken a ball and started going round in the pedestal and jiggered it and all. And when we did all them other jobs, them other two extensions, we put ring oiler bearings in all through. [First extension was 1939, second was after the war.] But I always said, even with ring oilers. I think ring oilers were less friction but they needed more looking after than what an ordinary grease box did. I did umpteen sheds in Burnley and altered these small ring oilers and put ‘em on to grease boxes. What we used to do, We used to bore a great big hole through the top cap so’s you could fill it with yarn and grease and do away with the ring altogether. I did two sheds like that in Burnley, they were that fed up of ring oilers leaking oil out on to the cloth in the looms and squeaking and screaming ‘cause they had no oil in and ‘cause some of the rings had stopped [rotating]. But we did both them sheds at County Brook with ring oilers and they’d very little trouble with ‘em.
Aye, and one great thing about grease was that if you neglected ‘em, the bearing got warm and the grease melted and dropped down on to the shaft and greased it straight away.
R-It melted and greased it straight away.
And funnily enough, I was looking when they were pulling the shafting out there. I were looking at the journals and bearings that were coming out and they were just like new, they were beautiful.
R-Just like new.
There were very few of them, there were some of them roped a bit.
R-Not much.
But not much.
R-I bet there were hardly any roped on the line shaft.
Oh no. Do you know they were perfect.
R-I bet they were like new them bearings, I’ve looked at ‘em when they’ve taken ‘em down, run all those years, 50 or 60 years and they were perfect, you try it on a ball race, you see they won’t stand any gearing won’t a ball race.
Aye, vibration’ll do them won’t it.
R-Vibration does it. It doesn’t sound right does it but it’s quite true. And of course, they’re too narrow, there’s no shaft support.
Yes, that’s right.
R-Where you get a bearing three times the length of the shaft diameter, you know you put a ball race in for about a two inch shaft and how wide is it, about an inch, a standard one.
Aye and that’s very little bearing surface, very little.
R-And it’s trying to bend with the belts pulling at it all the time and the vibration of your bevel gear at the other end and bang wallop goes your ball race. Sunderlands at Nelson, mill wrighting were, it were Pollitt and Wigzell’s millwrighting and they were ball races throughout, oh you talk about trouble there. They’d ball races up to the bevels there, we used to have pedestals in stock ready and waiting for Sunderlands ringing up, they’d a ball race gone up to the bevel wheel. What a blinking job, it were a full weekend’s job to change one of them bearings. We’d to take the shaft down you know, they’d no collared neck and we had to shrink collars on, re-turn the shaft end when the ball race had chewed it up and then shrink collars on to make them a collared neck [The collars located the cross shaft and the bevel gear on the end.] and put fat pad pedestals on. No more bother after we’d put ‘em on. I’ll bet ninety percent of them had been done after the war.
How did they stop the shaft floating with no collars on?
R-Well, they’d no collars on because the ball race were supposed to nip the shaft you know. They were like a collet inside. And these were big ball races because that shaft up at that end would be 3 ½ inches diameter where it went into the bevel wheel.
Yes, and that’d act as a thrust bearing as well.
R-That ‘ud act as a thrust bearing as well, cor there were some bother. Smashed bearings and wheels going mad you know. Aye there were that. We used to bring, take the first length down, take it to the shop, skim the end up where the ball race had been, and we had bearings in stock for it. Shrink a pair of collars on and turn them to fit the bearing, take it back and plonk it in and more often than not it was Sunday afternoon afore you got finished. Because it were a long narrow shed were that, a lot of looms and the cross shafts were a hell of a length, they were big [bevel] wheels and all. I bet ninety percent had been replaced before the mill stopped. I bet they had.
Aye, now of course the thing that followed on from water wheels were turbines, you had a fair bit to do with them hadn’t you?
R-Oh aye, I’d a bit to do with turbines, water turbines, aye.
Who had turbines round here?
R-There were a turbine, my main turbine were at that little shed at the bottom of Pendle Hill at Barley. That were a big turbine were that and it’d be about fifty or sixty horse, a slow runner.
What sort?
R-It were a Gilkes, from Kendal, a horizontal one, not a vertical one. And my first experience with that, they, I never forgot it and all. We’d hardly anything to do with it and we were reight slack, me father had been in business a reight long time on his own. And it were one Thursday afternoon before Easter. He says, Eh, Mitchell’s rung up from County Brook, he wants us to go out to Barley, there’s something gone wrong with the turbine. Now Mr Mitchell at County Brook were a chap we could do wi’ more of nowadays. He believed in using his water power or any other power that didn’t use fossil fuel, which they’re trying to get back to today. If anything went wrong with his water wheel at County Brook or that turbine at the bottom of Pendle Hill, although he could still keep running with his diesel engine, he wanted it repairing, So we went on, me and me father. Mr Mitchell were in partnership there with a chap called Adam Hargreaves, nice old feller.
What were the name of the mill?
R-Narrowgates Mill Company. We went there and went down this mucky hole you knew and Cor! It were a big turbine. It’d be about seven foot tall the casing and about two feet wide.. It’s a big ‘un is this, Aye he said, we get about 50 horse out of it you know, when we have both dams full. Now why it were so large and so little horse power, there were very little fall to it. It had only got about ten foot and it’d be a three foot pipe. Anyhow, me father says What’s up with it? To the engineer. Well, engineer, he were engineer come tackler come warehouse man come loom oiler come shafting looker-after come greaser come everything! He could do his job and all, a nice feller. He says, it just stopped! He said the engine pulled up so he took the ropes off the turbine, it had three and a half inch ropes on. He took the ropes off and got running. He says, It’s solid, I don’t know what’s up with it. Anyhow, it were insured so me father says Right, we’ll be at it after Easter. So I went with the old fitter after Easter Monday, off we went to Narrowgates mill, we started to strip this thing and some job starting to strip it, it must have been fifty or sixty years old and had never been touched, everything was rusted up solid. Big shifts and little ‘uns and after about a week we got one end off and you never saw anything like it inside. Somebody had put an old flock mattress in the dam and all the flocks had gone down the pipe into the spinner and it had jammed it up solid. It were a soldered spinner, built up out of sheet brass, a beautiful thing and it had jammed all the vanes solid inside, between the guide vanes that governed it and itself which had riven the spinner completely to bits. All the soldered plates were loose, oh what a mess! It took us about a month to get it to bits. We got it to bits and took it to the shop. No problem to, like, make a new shaft and make new guide vanes which were all bent and worn but me father says, What about the spinner?
One thing about that Newton, sorry to stop you but when you say, now you said it was horizontal, the impeller, the spinner, was that horizontal or vertical?
R-Well, it stood vertical but it were a horizontal turbine, it’s like that there at Pitlochry or that down at Pately Bridge.
That’s it, the drive shaft comes out of the top.
R-It’s a vertical shaft, now this was a horizontal one.
This is a horizontal shaft. Now then, when you say guide vanes, those guide vanes inside it, were they adjustable? Was it one of those with the linkage on the outside?
R-yes, it had linkage on the outside and a mechanical governor on.
That’s it, aye.
R-Guide vanes were inside, they’d be about, oh, eight inches wide and two feet long, curved to the shape of the wheel and one overlapped another and when they opened they let more water in and when they closed, they closed the gap.
Yes, that’s it, because those early turbines like that didn’t have governing like that, they just used to govern them by the amount of water they let down from the top didn’t they?
R-They had a governor in the penstock.
Right, sorry about that, so you’d got to the spinner.
R-We got to the spinner, we had it all at the shop, the ends and everything and we got to the spinner. Me father took one look at it and said Well, we can’t make that. Come on Newton, Dost a think the old wagon’ll get us to Gilbert Gilkes at Kendal? I says, Well, it’s got us to Narrowgates every day for a fortnight, it’ll go to Kendal! We’d an old Austin 20 made into a little wagon. Aye, well come on then! No letters, no nothing, no ring up, this is the way to do a job, off we went to Gilkes at Kendal. Oh, hell of a big place, some of the biggest lathes there I’d ever seen in me life! Come in, come in, took us into the office, ever so long since. Travelled all that way, cups of coffee, cups of tea, sit down. Where do you come from, Barlick. Oh, what you doing, a turbine at the bottom of Pendle Hill, Narrowgates. Mr so and so shouts of Mr so and so, see if you can find any literature for a turbine at Narrowgates Mill Company, Pendle Hill. That chap weren’t ten minutes before he were back, that ruddy turbine must have been in fifty years. Full pamphlets of all the lot, full particulars sizes, everything. Now then Mr Pickles what do you want for this turbine. Me father says A New spinner. Oh my God he says It’s a soldered one. Well the one looked at the other. When do you want it? Me father says Yesterday! He says Shaft’s bent like. Gilkes man says Can you make the new shaft? I suppose you know it’s made out of cast steel? Me father turns round to me and says What did I tell thee! When it came into the shop he’d told me it was cast steel and how he knew, it had no carbuncles on it. Cast steel'l rust but it stays smooth. Mild steel and wrought iron rusts with carbuncles on. He says, I told you, I told thee that shaft were cast steel not mild steel. And I jolly soon found out when I got it in the lathe to try and straighten it. Anyhow, they made that spinner for us, I think it took ‘em about three weeks. Beautiful thing when I brought it back in a big wooden box, we were scared stiff of it. You know, picture it, about what, three feet or three foot six in diameter, eight or nine inches wide, all bevelled to fit inside the casing, it’d be a perfect fit. All brass rings and shiny brass plates and every little bit soldered together. Not a rivet in it, nothing. And the only casting of course was the hub and it had all slots cast in it for the vanes to go into, a beautiful thing. Anyway we put it all back together and I think we got it running sometime in October, we were there all summer because when we started to get it back together they decided then that they’d have a new header tank, it was a wooden one. And why this flock had gone down, the wood were rotten inside and it had dropped the grate you know, it had a grate in to stop[ any obstructions going down. It had dropped that down, it must have gone down over the years. So we put a new header on made of cast iron about ten feet by fifteen. Some job making that tank you know, it were a bigger job than doing the turbine, all cast iron plate. ‘Cause you couldn’t make it in one piece ‘cause you couldn’t put it together in the little building it were in. And a new clow for the dam, so they spent some money with us on that job and we got it running and it ran right up to the mill stopping did that thing, I don’t think it ever had anything else. I think I had to put some new pins in the guide vanes, that were about all it ever had done after that right up to the mill stopping which is only a matter of what, ten years since. There were a bit of an article about it in the local paper a week or two ago.
Yes, that’s it. It’ll be interesting to see, if we get round to it, which I think we will. It’ll be interesting to see inside that turbine up at Kirkstone Quarry because that’s a Williamson, they were Gilkes predecessors, so it’s a lot older turbine but there’s no movable guide vanes on that. It’ll be interesting to see how the spinners built up on that.
R-I had another two but I never worked on them. That were at Barlick Corn Mill, that were very similar to that one at Barley, very similar turbine but they never used it. There were also one at Dotcliffe Mill at Kelbrook. Now they used theirs but I never had any occasion to repair it. Only job I did there I put a new shaft over the top of it which had fast and loose pulleys on to change it over when they wanted to run it at night for a bit of electric or if they were running any , you know, a spinning machine or owt like that. It ran a little DC dynamo as well and they just ran that for lighting, they ran all the lights for the shed of it and all you know. I never actually saw inside it but it were a big turbine were that. Only thing I did was put a new shaft in, new pulleys and strap fork and all that do. In fact I’d to cut the rope off that Albert Hoggarth hung his self on before I could start working. [Newton reckoned this was 1937/8 because he’d just started courting. Albert was brother to George who used to be engineer at Bancroft. SCG 2000.][Later research shows it was October 1932, evidence of a report in the Craven Herald, 07/10/1932.]
You’ve another turbine haven’t you, up at Grassington?
R-Oh aye, up at Lowcock’s He has two, . He has a double one, must be about three hundred horse power. It’s a heck of a thing Stanley. I couldn’t credit that turbine when I first saw it. It’s in a great big concrete tank about fifty foot square and it has all the weight of the river on it, so what horse power, we’ll say two….. I don’t want to exaggerate, it’s a double one you know, it has a spinner at each end and it’s fed from the centre so you get that feeding from the centre and then you get your vacuum. [Pull on the flow because of the drop pipe.] And they run at a fair speed do them. Now that single one of course, it’s stopped again just because he wouldn’t pay for having it repaired the first time. Silly old feller!
Lowcocks, what are they, are they still a mill?
They were manufacturers. Grand mill is Linton, make best museum in the country would Linton Mills if the silly old feller ‘ud let somebody go in and talk to him and do it. There’s everything in that mill. There’s a Newton, Bean and Mitchell engine, it’d be the last engine they ever made with drop valves, you know, a drop valve one with a tail end air pump. It ran a great big DC generator about ten feet tall. There’s two Paxman Diesels, I don’t know whether they’re six cylinder or eight now. I forget, one’s partially in pieces and t’others all together with great big DC generators on the ends. There’s a forty horse power turbine that runs a DC generator which used to light his house and heat it. It did that for fifty years, never cost them a penny and when we went to repair it when the bearings conked out he wouldn’t pay for it so I wouldn’t go any more. But it’s a marvellous set up. Then there’s that great big thing down in that concrete cellar, that’d run all the blinking lot with a DC generator on it as well as being coupled to all the shafting in the mill. They ran everything off that water, when there were plenty of water coming down the river, everything, mill, houses, looms, the lot. They even pumped water out of the river for people to drink. It’s a shame. In fact I think it’s ridiculous, I think someone wants to go along there and plonk an order on it before the scrap chaps get in there. There’s shafting up and everything.
Aye, There’s, at Narrowgates now there’s a chimney at Narrowgates.
R-It’s still up, they’ve made the mill into a big house.
That’s it.
R-Olive and I were over there last fortnight weren’t we love. (Olive was present)
It’s Hayhursts.
R-It’s a big house and he’s left the chimney on.
Yes, now that chimney looks to me like an old one.
R-It is an old chimney, there were a tree growing out of it when we used to go.
When you knew it, what sort of an engine was there in there?
R-They hadn’t one, never had one, I never knew of one, there was neither engine, nor boiler nor any trace but there’d been another shed there you know, down [the side] of the shed that was there when we went, out at the back round the field, past his office and down the other side there were lots of stones, piles of stones and old foundation ruins. I thought there’d been another shed there at some time and the engine and boiler must have run, you know been more looms than what they had and it must have run that lot. But there were no sign of that boiler and engine at all.
It’s a very old chimney and it’s in a…..
There were just a sign of a boiler house with an arch, now it has been made into offices has that building and rag stores underneath. That engine must have been somewhere up there. We never could fathom it out where it had been, we couldn’t. There’s just one interesting thing while we’re on about Narrowgates. When we went there first, that ‘ud be the first job we ever did, he had a hot crank pin on his diesel engine, that’s when Mitchells were partners Now later on in it’s life, Adam Hargreaves paid Mitchell out and ran it on his own as a family business wi’ his grandson and his daughter. Now then, they had a cross rope drive in there. From the turbine it ran up on to the first line shaft, the engine were in the next room, an eighty horse power National diesel that ran on to the same shaft with fast and loose pulleys, although the turbine drove by ropes. Now on that shaft there were about a four foot diameter rope pulley, now that ran from there into the shed on to another rope pulley. Now believe this or believe it not, It had cross ropes on. Now can you imagine a cross rope drive….
Rubbing against each other…
R-Listen a minute! One pulley for inch and a quarter rope and t’other bloody pulley for two inch ropes, he he he! It used to be re-roped every month, I think Coopers at Nelson used to make a fortune out of that job. It used to be re-roped every month, you couldn’t get into the turbine race for rope dust! You know, with the ropes rubbing together. Besides two odd pulleys. So me father says to Adam one day, Don’t you think Adam it’s about time we did away with this cross rope drive? He says How can you do away with it Johhny? The engine won’t run the other way round and neither will the turbine. Me father says, No need to has it if we put some wall brackets up here and we put a countershaft across and we’ll move that rope pulley on to that shaft there and at this end we’ll put a pair of spur wheels. And that were a fair job we did. We did that job for him and me father says I’ll tell you what we’ll do and all Adam, let’s make a rope drive pulley wi’ grooves all the same size and all. Did away with the cross drive, aye, no more trouble.
SCG/11 November 2000
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