THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

She used that as well. During the war they temporarily based a Bofors AA battery there at one point. Worse noise that the bombing!

[Stanley]

The Mersey in Stockport runs through a ravine with high sides like cliffs. The rock is a soft red sandstone easily cut into, at first to make cellars for houses but later considered for use as car parks in the 1930s but during the war made larger and became air raid shelters. See THIS detailed article on them.
I have a later memory of the tunnels. After the war part of them was used by Manchester University to house an experiment into gravity which involved spinning a large metal ball at high speed which was of course quite dangerous. I didn't know about their use as air raid shelters during the war. We never used them even though they were less than a mile away.

[Stanley]

Looking south down the Mersey from Wellington Road bridge, not a lot of water flowing, it often ran much higher than this. So much of my childhood in this pic! The road on the left is Brinksway. The shelters were a dug into the rock on the left hand bank and the bridge beyond the Viaduct is the one at the bottom of Huntsman's Brow where Hope Memorial school was. This was 1979 and I don't doubt there have been big changes.

[Bodger]

Was there a block of flats near there that was hit by a plane landing at Ringway ?

[Stanley]

Not sure where that happened Bodge, I wasn't living there at the time.

[Tripps]

No it missed the flats - Stockport air crash 1967 - in fact this year is the 50th anniversary. I think it ran out of fuel.

[plaques]

Remember it well. I had flown on the same plane seven days before it crashed. Hotel Golf, Hotel Golf, I will never forget that call sign.

[chinatyke]

No it missed the flats - Stockport air crash 1967 - in fact this year is the 50th anniversary. I think it ran out of fuel.

I think it ran out of fuel because the cross feed valves (?) hadn't been fully engaged when they changed fuel tanks.
I was working at Loveclough printworks at the time and the landlord of The Glory pub was killed. I used to go in after work each day as I had 25 minutes to wait for my bus.

[Stanley]

Ah, Loveclough.... I wanted to do that place for the LTP after the spinning but time and funding ran out.... It was a big mistake. I had the occasional pint and a pie in the Glory as well but didn't know that.

[chinatyke]

Loveclough printworks had its own steam engine driving a generator. I went past the door every day and never went in despite working there for over 3 years. I can remember the operator manually barring the flywheel round one day but that's it.

[Stanley]

It was, like weaving in Barlick and Condenser mule spinning at Spring Vale, the original 19th century technology. A big regret of mine that I couldn't get to record it.
I realise as I get older that I was lucky in that so many of the things I have done in my life were essentially old technology. That's the basis for what I said on the LTP thread. Nobody can go back there now, they no longer exist. Incidentally, the Room and Power bit on the CHSC I am doing at the moment on Steam Engines and Waterwheels is a good example of how my experience can be applied to interpreting old prime source material. Too much opinion and historical interpretation is done by people who weren't there and didn't get their hands dirty.

[Stanley]

I know this will sound strange but when I was young evil was very sharp edged. By this I mean that we had a very clear idea of what was bad and good. Today it lurks like a shadow on every aspect of life, think of trolling on social media and online scams for just two examples. It was harder to hide wrong-doing then. I even include the sharp business practices that are common now in the commercial world, think small print in everything from a bank account or insurance policy and the 'contracts' for car hire or buying. Everyone seems to be on the make!

[Stanley]

Interesting to see the changes in Skipton yesterday. Much remains the same but many of the old small businesses have gone and the general impression of the town is that it is moving towards being a mini-Harrogate! Lots of designer outlets and tourism related enterprises. In particular I regret the demise of Manby's, one of the great ironmonger's shops! (And there isn't a single tobacconist in the town!)

[PanBiker]

Must be a while since you have been in Skipton Stanley. Manby's went about 15 to 20 years ago I reckon!

[Stanley]

Yes Ian. I remember it going but I still regret the fact! Another thing raised by Cathy is that I notice that many shops are dog-friendly now, even some restaurants.
You also mentioned the traffic on the M6 in another thread. Hard to believe now but when the road first opened from Crick to the Watford by-pass you could drive for miles at night without seeing another vehicle and even in the day traffic was very light. The old A34 was the main route to London from Manchester and in those days we just drove straight through the middle of Manchester to the White City roundabout and then on the Chester road to Sandiways to get on it. At night I often drove down a deserted road with the headlights off as you could see better by moonlight than the glow worms we had for headlights. Again, hard to believe but it was more restful. As I say so often, I was lucky, I saw the Glory Days! I wouldn't mind betting that I could get to Watford faster then, even with the old wagons, than a fast car can do it now in the traffic. If memory serves me, it took me an hour and a half to get from Barlick to the Lodge café at Talke for a bacon butty and then about three and a half hours from there to London, about 40mph average.....

[PanBiker]

In some respects when I first started riding / driving in the early 70's the roads were still drivable. You still had to go to Samlesbury to get on the M6 or over Odsall top for the M1. When they finally got round to the M65 it only used to go to as far as Blackburn and the M66 ended at Heaton Park traffic lights, not many roads were integrated. The problem of course is under investment in the infrastructure, successive governments have failed to take bold enough steps. We didn't even have a motorway until 1958 and it wasn't the often claimed M1 but the short length at Preston which eventually was extended each way to create what is now the M6. We were 40 years behind when we started and still relying on an obsolete Victorian railway system for people and freight, hang on we still are! For the people anyway, most of the freight is now on our overcrowded roads. Granted the rest of Europe started from a blank canvas courtesy of Mr Hitler, the Luftwaffe and Bomber Command. We should have done the same with our railways, ripped up all the tracks and started again with a monorail Maglev, our own Eric Lathwaite did invent it so we could have had a head start and employment for hundreds of thousands. Northern Powerhouse, we could have had that 60 years ago.

[Stanley]

All true Ian but hankering after what might have been is futile. I am just glad that I had the early experience when 'freedom of the open road', a much used phrase then, actually meant something.
On the other hand, I also remember the misery of queuing for days at the dock gates before containerisation and the miseries of the day-work exploitation of the dockers. However, those days have gone and my main beef about most motorways today is not the traffic but how boring they are. A road like Shap Fell was dangerous but interesting and you could exploit your skills.... Never a dull moment on Shap! Cars then were not 'a womb with a view' like they are today. Drivers had to attend to their business and on the whole the standards were better. The main reason I stopped driving is that other drivers frighten me these days because some of them aren't fit to push a pram, never mind handle a lethal weapon capable of 100mph.....
I remember when the Preston by-pass as it was then first opened. People were driving out to the services just to go on the road and have a meal!

[Stanley]

When the motorways were a novelty it was still remembered that they were initially built, not primarily for cars but to get heavy commercial traffic off the old roads. The services were a good example, they all had a separate section of HGV drivers, in effect and updated version of the old transport cafés.
I was once at the services near Preston on a very quiet Xmas day, we ran seven days a week with the milk tankers. I was the only driver in the place so the management offered me a free Xmas dinner brought across from the main restaurant. I accepted even though I had another one to eat when I got home. Can you imagine that happening today?
By the way, they served tea in pint mugs in most of them.....

[Stanley]

In the days before Motorway services the were many little cafés at the side of the old roads, many of them catering for cars but some for transport drivers. You could always tell them because they had big unpaved car parks and were usually open 24 hours a day. When the motorways opened almost all of them on roads affected by the diversion of traffic closed very quickly.
One of the big earners was catering for coach trips on routes to seaside resorts. The A59 was the road from the NE, Leeds and Bradford to Blackpool and the Coronation at Horton Road end was built specifically by Vaux Breweries of Sunderland to cater for coaches. The New Inn at Gisburn was also very busy. All that ended with the new motorways.

[Stanley]

I've remembered that Bunty at the Coronation banned Wallace Arnold's coaches from the Coronation because when a coach from Leeds came in she needed two extra staff to keep the toilets clean. They used the New Inn at Gisburn instead.

[Stanley]

Nowadays we have a plethora of private van deliveries. When I was a lad it was the railway that delivered heavier goods, during the war by horse transport and immediately after by Scammel Scarab vehicles. Milk and coal were horse delivered and a regular job was going out into the street and collecting horse muck for the roses in our front garden. Rust or blight was almost unknown on the roses, the pollution in the air killed it off. After the Clean Air Acts it became a big problem.



John Ingoe with his restored Scammel Scarab.

[Stanley]

My mother once took me to see the Co-op stables during the war. It was a multi-storey building and I remember one horse was an enormous black stallion called Hitler.....

[Stanley]

Looking back at what was, in hindsight, a terrible period when we were in constant danger of invasion and bombing, I have very fond memories of the war and often wonder why this is so. We never had any counselling, we were just told to get on with it, there was a war on! Today I think that in a strange way this was a good thing, we learned to accept danger, guard against it and get on with our lives. Looking at what seem to me to be hysterical reactions to events today I believe that the reason why I don't join in is that I have been there and got the tee shirt.
Another consequence is that I am very good at personal health and safety! I am always assessing the situation. This means that I am very careful on stairs and always aware of what could go wrong. It seems to have worked so far so perhaps some good did come out of the war!

[Stanley]

Thanks to the Ministry of Food and Jack Drummond and his colleagues, we ate a very healthy diet during the war supplemented by what people could fiddle on the black market which was alive and well despite all the efforts of the government to stop it. See Alan Bennett's play/film 'A Private function' for a very good portrayal of it. The consequence was that the tables were laden at our VJ day street party!

[Stanley]

I was always aware that something remarkable had happened in Britain during the war in terms of nutrition because as the years went by I realised that I was part of what has been called 'The Last Healthy Generation'. Much later I found a book which I recommend to you, 'The Vitamin Murders. Who killed healthy eating in Britain?' by James Ferguson. Published by Portobello Books in 2007. A large part of the book is about the mysterious murder of Sir Jack Drummond and his family in 1952 while on a camping holiday in France. Well worth a read and covers many nutrition facts.