For many years the main source of water for Barlick was the boreholes on High Lane but between the wars the supply was augmented by the building of Elslack reservoir collecting water off the moors.
A general view of Lower Park Marina from Cockshott Bridge. The large pipe in the foreground is the main supply pipe from Elslack bringing water down to a service reservoir below Letcliffe.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
One of the things that fascinates me is the period between 1890 and 1914 when the cotton trade was at it's peak, transport was still horse drawn and sewage and water supplies were being installed together with road paving after 1900. Barlick must have been an ant hill as everything was being dug up and the town exploded. All built with stone from the Tubber Hill and Salterforth quarries and a thriving trade exporting stone setts to Lancashire by canal boat. There were tramways from Park Close and Sagars Lower Quarry down to the canal and a boat-building yard at Salterforth. Most of the mill coal was coming in by boat to Coates Wharf. Can you imagine the traffic and disruption all this caused?
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Park Close butty loaded with 40 tons of setts for Burnley. This could have been towed by another boat with an engine in later years but from the way this is fitted up it was horse drawn.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Can someone help me out? Not a forgotten corner more of a forgotten 'when'. When did local cinemas start opening on Sundays? I have it in my mind that it was about 1957 but I'm not sure. Any ideas?
I didn't know P so I had a furtle. I found this on the British Film Institute site Sunday opening usually was not allowed in Scotland and normally required a local poll to come out in favour before it was permitted in England. Sunday opening time was widely restricted to 4.30pm and a donation to charity was required. Most circuit-release cinemas played revival double-bills on Sundays rather than new films.
They are vague about the date but the context is cinema in the 1930s so it was probably then. If I had been guessing I would have said the same as you though.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
In the late 1950s when we were living on Napier Road on Heaton Moor, our next-door neighbours but one was a bloke called Jack Brannan and his wife Mary who was a lovely childless woman who loved us to bits. He was manager of the Odeon Cinema at West Didsbury and I remember him telling us about the time they showed the hit film, 'The Cruel Sea' for a fortnight instead of the usual one week. They had to have St John's Ambulance people present as so many people got sea sick just watching the film! The main thing I remember about Jack is that his hands were like shovels!
Anyone remember the Plaza at Skipton? It always looked to me like a converted chapel.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
It's still there Stanley, we took the grandchildren to see "Trolls" there not long ago. Originally a Temperance Hall and showing it's 100 and odd years a bit round the edges now. Originally The Gem, Matthew Hartley acquired it in the 1920's.
Ah yes, I'd forgotten my own research! Boris Hartley told me that when he was telling me about the Majestic..... Have a look at this LINK.
A door panel in the late Boris Hartley's bungalow on Greenberfield Lane. It came out of the SS Majestic. Matt Hartley bought a lot of fittings when they scrapped it and used them in the Majestic Cinema and other buildings he erected.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
From what I can gather, Matt Hartley came to Barlick in about 1890 and left his mark on the town. Apart from the high standard of his own buildings, his ambitions for the development of the centre of the town had an effect on the other builders and I think raised standards. Apart from the odd unsafe pediment (Matt loved his pediments!) most of his builds survive intact even the never to be realised swimming baths on the Croft.
The story is that the Council refused to supply enough water and it became an electrical workshop, an ice-making business and for a long time the Croft Garage.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Like many big public buildings before the advent of mains electricity in the 1920s the Majestic Cinema had it's own generator driven by a gas engine. I never saw it but Newton describes it in the LTP.
The Central Cooperative building had one as well. Here are the engine and alternator beds in the cellar at the time of demolition.There were many small gas engine in use in the town then. Newton tells of repairing one that drove the peeler and chipper in a chip shop and Arthur Entwistle told me about his dad having one in the front room of their house on the Croft to drive his lathe.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
I did this pic in 1982 in Butts and it's deficient in that what I wanted to show was the new building to the left of this pic. (I shall have to do one of it) I want a memory check. My memory is that the site of the new build was once a large black wooden hut which was used to store cars. My memory is that Harry Broughton (known as 'Hot Breath'?) owned it and ran a car hire business from here, I think he dealt in second-hand cars as well. Further, my memory also tells me that Harry ran a big American car in the 1950s and 60s which had a Perkins Diesel in it. He had a regular run between the Lancashire and Yorkshire pubs when the opening hours changed at the border at Hague. Catching the extra hour, usually on a Sunday I think, was important. Have I got this lot right?
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Memories are creeping back Comrade. Was Harry a bit of a spiv during the war? If its the man I'm thinking of my dad disliked him intensely probably because of black market dealings. He once came down Garden Street in a big flash car, knocked my bike over and crushed it. He said it was my fault for leaving the bike there - it was on the pavement but gave me a couple of bob. When Dad came home from work he was fuming and went to see this man. He came back with enough money to get me a second hand two wheeler and if I remember rightly he told mum that he given him a smack as well. If this is was not Harry then I do apologise.
Bank Street in 2003. The old building at the bottom of Hill Street has gone, was it something to do with the British Legion or St John's Ambulance? David Hoyle's woodworking shed is still there and the old West Riding ambulance station, at that time being used only as a base for the street cleaners and storage of Council equipment.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Stanley's View
scg1936 at talktalk.net
"Beware of certitude" (Jimmy Reid)
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Stanley wrote: ↑15 Jul 2017, 04:48
The old building at the bottom of Hill Street has gone, was it something to do with the British Legion or St John's Ambulance?
It was the Barnoldswick Branch Royal British Legion Womens Section building. It was used amongst other things to store and process all the poppies and wreaths when they were delivered ready for distribution. My mum was secretary of the branch.
When I was a lad that was all hen pens but when they were first cleared, (early 60's I reckon) there were three large trees that ran down the site from Bank St to the footpath from Valley Rd through to Long Ing. Of course as soon as it was cleared we claimed it as our adventure playground. It had everything that you needed, plenty of wood from the old huts for building fires and the three trees ripe for climbing. We soon had a rope for a swing on the middle one and had worked out climbing routes to the top of all of them. They were substantial trees and would probably be around 50 - 60ft in height. That area and the garages below Wellhouse, the mill yard and the dam and the "flat part" in front of the old foundry, was Wilds but now Gissings was our patch. We had our annual bonfire on the site for quite a number of years. The cinder and compressed earth path through to Long Ing (where we used to ride on the big horse) was perfect for noggins for marbles. We take our grandchildren to the little park now and I cant help thinking how gentile and elf and safety it all is now, good in some respects but kids don't get the opportunity for self assessed risk and consequence of actions. From memory we only had one broken arm in our gang, lots of cuts and bruises but everyone survived.
That all sounds similar to my childhood in Blackburn, Ian. We used to play out on `The Tops', a waste area in front of a mill which had once been a landfill site but was then long overgrown. It was exciting though because the ground was irregular with high parts and dips in which you could hide, and all covered in rosebay willow herb. In my earliest days our den was made simply by flattening an area of the weeds but it progressed over the years to more daring designs as we gradually accumulated old oil drums, boxes, corrugated iron sheet etc. We would then dig a trench and build the den over it so we had more head space. All this well away from adults and with no supervision. We got bruised and scratched and were sometimes frightened like when our fire got out of control, lit the grass and we had to race about stamping it down so that it wouldn't reach the timber garages! I once got into trouble for diverting a stream and causing it to flood the area in front of the garages to about a foot depth. The garages were dry because they were on raised ground but the water meant that the owners couldn't get their cars in or out. I always liked diverting streams to see where the water would end up. I once inadvertently flooded a series of back gardens that way!
Nullius in verba: On the word of no one (Motto of the Royal Society)
We used to build multi-story dens in the mill shed outside the entrance to the mill it was like an open barn. They stored all the empty skip baskets there and along with some of the big wooden boxes you could build some magnificent structures. Other side of the mill dam was Bill Craddocks smallholding he kept a few sheep, pigs and hens in the barn loft. I learnt to drive there when I was about 11 or 12, in the field, first on the tractor and then the Land Rover, the two fields were mown in summer and we did a bit of hay making. There was an old Nissen hut opposite the mill yard it was covered in pitch and used by a local joiner for wood storage I think. As teenagers we had our first garage down there for tinkering with motorbikes as related in another thread.
