FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

Preston and anywhere close to Accrington and the East Lancashire Brick and Tile Works used brick extensively (Nori). Whinnygill Quarries was where all the shale and clay came from and there was an aerial ropeway down to the Accrington works.
Quarrying used to be a major industry in Barlick, both limestone for burning and masonry on the north and east and good gritstone for masonry on the south and west. We had the advantage of the Craven Fault running almost right through the centre of town giving us both strata. However we never had good bedded stone suitable for slates and flags. See Jack Platt's transcripts in the LTP and the series 'Rock Solid' in Stanley's view.

[Tizer]

Whinny Gill Brick Pits is a site listed by the British Geological Survey as a location for fossil ammonites called Lyrogoniatites georgensis. Not that you needed to know that of course.

[Stanley]

It doesn't surprise me Tiz. I remember seeing activity up there a while ago, there must still be a market for the shale, perhaps in other brick works.



This wall in what is now the Co-op car park but used to be the railway line and some masonry on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal are the only uses I know of limestone for building purposes in the town. The canal company opened and ran the biggest Limestone quarry, Rainhall Rock so that explains their use of it. There must have been some reason why it was preferred when the Barnoldswick branch line was built by private capital but I don't know it. I suspect it might have been something to do with the major promoter, William (Billycock) Bracewell, who always followed his own course and may have had a commercial reason for avoiding use of the excellent stone from the Tubber Hill gritstone quarries, the preferred stone in the rest of the town.
Which reminds me of another forgotten corner.....



An old estate map of the Upper Tubber Hill quarry. Why on earth was it called 'Loose Games'? Was it the venue for earlier rough games that we find in other locations which generally generated high passions and damage? Was it thought better to have them in what was then open country near the town?

[Stanley]

The 1853 OS of the same area at Upper Hill. Like all these old maps it repays close examination. One thing I note is the number of wells (springs) marked on the map. Water was so important in the days before mains supplies. Note that the quarry had been enlarged compared with the estate map above, this was because of increasing demand in the town as it also grew.



Compare with this in 1892. Expansion in the town is in full swing and the quarry is in full production. The lessees from the Roundell Estate, the Sagars, have not yet built their new house on the side of Higher Lane near Upper Hall. If you are ever passing, have a good look at it, they used the very best stone out of their quarries and it is perhaps the best built house in Barlick.
note also that Upper Hall is still intact. In 2002 , Shirley Oldfield (nee Alderson) told me that she used to live at upper Hall with her father, Thomas Alderson, until 1947 when he died. They kept pigs and she said that Upper Hall was originally a squatter's house. It was owned by the Sagars and I have no record of anyone else living there and it fell into the ruin it is today.



Upper Hall in ruins.

[Stanley]

Squatter's houses like this hovel in Walmsgate, now refurbished as it was cheaper to do that than build a massive retaining wall, are more common than we realise, particularly on the edge of the waste like Upper Hall. Peel's House on Gisburn Old Track is another good example. The hovel in Walmsgate was an infill on a forgotten corner of land that had been overlooked.
If you keep your eyes open you will find numerous 'infills' in the town, there's a good one opposite the entrance to the Pioneer Car park on Wellhouse Road. Not necessarily squatting but definitely someone taking advantage of an opportunity. Some of them are a very queer shape to take advantage of what was available. Have look at the funny little house on the west side of the entrance to Rainhall Road car park which was of course the old railway line. There was a small piece of land on the boundary of the railways right of way and someone built a small house to take advantage.



The 1892 25" OS map. Look for the junction of Essex Street and Rainhall Road and you'll see two houses on the side of the railway that are infills.

[Stanley]

The 1853 map of 'Ousel Dale Mill (Saw)' (Ouzel (also ousel or wosel) is the old name for the Blackbird (Turdus Menula) a species of Thrush)



The mill in 1937 when it was operating as a foundry. Water power was dispensed with in 1907, they installed a gas engine.



The 1892 OS map of the mill. It was in the last days of water power then and had already become a foundry. The head race for the wheel ran in a culvert from the NE corner of the dam to a balance pond to the east of the mill and you can see the course of the tail race into Clough Mill lodge below.
I have never found a date for the building of the mill but suspect it was one of the early twist mills in the late 18th century. Some time afterwards it was converted to a saw mill, most likely around 1830 when the first steam mills were operating and demand for sawn timber was increasing. When Bracewell bought the mill in the 1840s he was hoping to utilise the water for his new Butts Mill (1843) but was frustrated in this when he found that Clough Mill owned the water rights on Gillians and wouldn't sanction any abstraction of water above their lodge as that would have lessened their water power resource.
When the Calf Hall Shed Company bought Butts Mill they also became owners of Ouzledale mill and let it for many years to a succession of tenants culminating in Henry Brown and son who set on a man called Ashby as manager. That was the start of the Ashby firm's rise in ironfounding in Barlick which culminated in the modern foundry at Long Ing.

[Stanley]

I did this pic yesterday of the tiny infill house on Wellhouse Road opposite the Pioneer car park. There must be a story behind it but we shall almost certainly never find out what it was.

[Stanley]

The end house in Wellhouse street at the Wellhouse Road end in 1980. For many years this was Sunday Paper central in Barlick. It opened early on Sunday morning and employed a gaggle of young people on deliveries. It was run by the lady who was office manager at West Marton Dairies, she was called Bunty by everyone but I'm not sure of her surname. I have an idea it was Heaton. When newspaper sales started to decline in the late 1970s and the supermarket started selling Sunday papers it closed. The corner was rebuilt and it is now a private house.
Looking at the girders and cast iron pillar I suspect it was originally a corner shop.

[PanBiker]

Looking at the girders and cast iron pillar I suspect it was originally a corner shop.

Fairly safe bet there Stanley, the rest of the row were shops when I was a lad. Tommy Kendals cloggers, Charlie Morris's camera shop, Derek Spencer's plumbing shop, three I can remember on that side. Original hardened frontages have been reclaimed as gardens now that they have been converted to dwellings.

[Stanley]

Nice confirmation of something I have always suspected. Thanks Ian. More conversions...



Rainhall Road at the east end in around 1900.



The same row from the opposite direction in 2003.

As far as I can make out almost all of the smaller shops in Rainhall Road at the Newtown end started life as cottage properties but soon were converted to shops. The same happened to the later houses seen here.
Notice how, when the conversions to shops was done and the upper floor became the living space, the bays were rebuilt a floor higher up in most cases. In the original row they were plain sash windows.

[Stanley]

It struck me this morning that I never mentioned the chapel which has gone now. I can't quite remember whether it was Presbyterian or Wesleyan. I think the latter because this school opposite used to be called the Wesleyan School.



This is of course now a community centre and office space. I was so pleased when it took this role instead of being demolished and converted to yet another modern building.

A contrast is the old 'Brick School' on Fountain street.



This started as a school, briefly became a builder's premises but then for many years was the Fountain Street Club which was the social club for Ouzledale Foundry as well. When that closed it was converted back to a school but this time a private nursery school which it still is today.

[Tripps]

The picture of Rainhall Road reminded me of one I took on my first visit. I've just been trying o get some order into my photos by means of Flickr. I surf through Gus Brennan's photos occasionally - he does seem to have a good time doesn't he? Looks like I've missed the best times there, as they're reducing the 'free' category down to 1000 photos soon, but that'll probably do me. I thought at the time that to paint such a building blue and white was a sin. I still do.

barlick1.jpg

[Stanley]

I agree with you David.



I have to confess that in 1969 I was a fan of Snowcem stone paint on the grounds that it waterproofed the building but used cream colour. I later realised it was a mistake and clean stone with good pointing was better,



The present owners have rectified it and it looks much better.

[Tripps]

Well that's good to see. I had wondered how much of a job it would be to restore back to stone, or even if it was possible.

[Tizer]

There's quite a variation in the stone from bottom to top - dressed stone below gradually changing to rubble stone at the top.

[Stanley]

Tiz, the dressed stone at the bottom is new construction, it replaces the wooden structure that was there in my time when it housed the oil boiler for the CH and was used as a utility space. You can see it on the picture of the house and barn above.



David, even a badly eroded wall can be reclaimed. Here's the west gable under treatment. When I bought the farm I was broke and so I rendered it with limestone dust and cement to rescue it. We planted the espalier Conference Pear in 1960.....

[Stanley]

Mention of Wellhouse Road in another topic reminded me of this 1982 scene at the junction of Wellhouse Road and Skipton Road. Wellhouse Mill was still largely intact and on the corner there was the last of a few small businesses that rented space on the land. In this case Fairchild's monumental masons. Newton told me once that in addition to the memorial work Mr Fairchild was also called in by Brown and Pickles on occasion to do repairs and modifications to stone foundations and large corbels supporting shafting in the mills.
At this time the large open space was leased to the Showman's Guild and was the site of the annual fair.
In the early 20th century there is a mention in the Calf Hall Shed Company's minutes of space being rented in the yard by a Heald Knitter who supplied many of the mills in Barlick with an essential weaving accessory, the healds that controlled the warp threads, an essential element in weaving. That trade in itself is a forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

This was Wellhouse mill shortly after 1900 when the Calf Hall Shed Company bought it. You can see the scars where one of the beam engine houses was demolished to the right of the chimney. As part of the sale CHSC had to install a modern engine to safeguard the investment the Craven Bank had made in financing the sale.



When Silentnight decided to demolish Wellhouse they asked me to do some pics of the mill for them. This is the cast iron water tank on the roof. Doesn't look much but without this tank full of water the mill couldn't function and it served its purpose for almost 100 years supplied with water that was initially pumped into the dams from the Bowker Drain. All forgotten now......

[Tizer]

This was a forgotten corner in Bridgwater but it's been much improved. The building was in a bad way when we first came to live in this area so it's good to see the restoration finished...
`Bridgwater's miniature castle restored after £600k revamp' LINK

[Stanley]

Some forgotten corners need removal, I made that decision when asked to advise on Dee Mill, but your example is one of the ones that we should conserve and I'm pleased to see a success story. I always read the Piloti column in PE because it draws attention to examples like these.
I put my money where my mouth is when I saved the little building in Station Road in 1979 which is now the Yellow Cabs office. I look at it with great affection each time I pass. Never Scheduled or Listed but it was a charming little building that needed TLC.



John Northage did the work and I sold it for what I had laid out. Well worth it!

[Stanley]

In 1979 most of the looms at Bancroft had been scrapped or were in the process of being scrapped. However, some looms like these were spared. They were 'bang-ups' a type of Lancashire loom that in addition to being able to weave fine cloths could be adjusted and used for far heavier cloths up to canvas. We had about ten of them and they were sold to Queen Street Mill and waiting to be shipped out.



Here are some similar looms going out of the mill earlier, there was a good market for them.
If I remember rightly Queen Street never did pay for the last bang-ups because they too ran into terminal trouble.
Selling and scrapping looms was big business in the later years of the industry and one of the main players was Rushworth who had a thriving business. They kept a large pile of scrap looms near Primet Bridge. I was told that it was financed by the government as part of a programme to stockpile strategic materials and textile scrap, due to the purity of the iron, was highly prized as feed stock, it was always a better price than normal scrap. During a royal visit, or was it an anniversary, a Union Jack was placed on the summit of the pile and generated a lot of adverse comment. All this is a forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

In 1979 a new building was built at the end of Church Street, it was to be the Yorkshire Bank.



39 years later it was closed and it would seem that there are no takers for the lease, and this in a prime location. High street baking is looking like a forgotten corner. It doesn't take long these days for a change as important as this to take place. How long before they are all gone?

[Stanley]

I tripped over this pic in the archive this morning. It's a pillar in the weaving shed at Bancroft shed during demolition. The weavers stuck pin-ups of their favourite stars up on the pillars next to their looms. A touching reminder of an ethos which is now a forgotten corner....

[Stanley]

Another pillar, remember Alan Ladd?



The late Jim Pollard, weaving manager at Bancroft surveys the ruin of the greater part of his life. He was resigned to what was happening but it was obvious it was depressing him. He had worked at Bancroft since he was a lad. We forget the effects the death of an entire industry has on the workers. Definitely a forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

Crow Row or Longfield Lane, take your pick. This little row behind Hey Farm has always interested me. It started life as a row of tiny handloom weaver's cottages round about 1830 and first intrigued me because none of them have back doors. This is a product of the restricted site but has the side benefit of cutting down on through draughts in the days when doors and windows were not as accurate a fit as today.
The thing that reminded me of this was two cars racing each other on their way towards work down Gisburn Road and flying through the junction where I nearly got run down a couple of weeks ago. This in turn made me think about the leisurely progress of the packhorse trains in the days before good roads when they carried the bulk of long distance trade. Crow Row is on such a route and of course I worked out later that it was based on a much older Bronze Age trackway across Northern England between Ireland and the Baltic. Just take a minute to let your imagination roam across the millennia and try to imagine the range and quantity of goods and travellers that have used this track. Does this help you to understand the frame of reference I have when I look at something like this? You can do the same if you do the digging.
Which brings me back to the speeding cars..... no way they have any appreciation of what they are passing, they are blinkered and their lives are the poorer for it!