FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

Sensible man. It was a great shame that Science got caught. You'd have thought he would have been Ok with being in the open air.....

[Stanley]

Thinking about quarries and explosives. When the quarries were in full production a lot of explosives were used in Barlick and people must have been accustomed to the sound of shots being fired. A Forgotten part of the Soundscape!
Have a look at 'Rock Solid' on the site, Jack Platt's story (Also in the LTP). In it he tells the story of converting a tidy little brass tube he had found at Sagar's Quarry that was just the right size for using as a pencil holder to use the last stub of a pencil. There was some stuff in the bottom of it and he scraped it out with a piece of wire as he walked down Salterforth Lane. It was fulminate of course and the 'brass tube' was a detonator! It exploded and he blew three fingers and part of his palm off on his left hand, temporarily blinding himself in the process as well. He thought this was perhaps the reason why later on John Sagar gave him such good jobs at the quarry......

[Stanley]

More explosives. Many Barlickers will remember a man called Hardisty who was blind and frequently seen in the town tapping his way round with a white stick. He lived in the bungalow opposite Loose Games quarry at the top of Tubber hill. This is where he was blinded when attempting to extract a shot charge that had failed to ignite. It should never have happened of course and many believe that this had an affect on the subsequent quarry closure but others think legislation on silicosis as an industrial disease also played a part.

[Stanley]

This was the busy scene at Long Ing in 1959/1960. Tom Clarke has bought Moss Shed from the Widdup Brothers for £25,000 and is in the process of making it his major site in Barlick, all the property between the mill and the road was demolished as part of the modernisation.
Notice that the original canal bridge is still in place. Shortly after this pic was taken it was demolished and the road widened with a new modern bridge.



Here's Gus's pic of Barnsey and Long Ing in about 1961. The alterations at Moss have been finished but the old bridge is still in place. Barnsey Shed is still there.....

[Stanley]

Little corners like this are often overlooked. This is Butts Beck where it emerges from the culvert where Calf Hall Beck and Gillian's Beck combine under the road near Butts Mill. At one time the confluence was open in the middle of the road and railed off but I have never had a pic of it. The beck goes round the back of what is now Briggs and Duxbury's and because it is in a small gill is completely isolated and an undisturbed haven for wild life. There is always a lot of activity there in summer and it has always struck me as a hidden, if not forgotten, corner of the town.

[Tizer]

Five minutes walk from our (new) house there is a stream running through the housing estate. The council here has been very good at keep as much natural environment as possible - lots of trees and green areas, and the stream follows its original course. At one point it runs between the school buildings on one side and the back of houses on the other. There is a well-used footpath between the school buildings and the stream. Very closed in but we regularly see an egret standing in the water. We can walk right up to the bird and stand there about 2 metres from it and it just carries on looking at the water for its next meal.

[Stanley]

I'll bet there are thousands of little enclaves of calm like these and we should be noting them and protecting them from being 'tidied up'.

[Tizer]

Talking of `tidying up' nature have you seen what's happening to the trees in Sheffield's streets? The council has contracted out the felling of thousands of the town's trees to Amey Plc (a PFI contract). Locals are up in arms about it but are being held back by lots of police and security men. The felling off just one tree had about 30 police and security people attending it.

[Stanley]

PE have been keeping me posted Tiz ever since the contract started. Very badly managed affair.Every re-shoot of an old pic in Barlick shows that the trees are gaining on us and it causes no trouble.





Here's an example the bandstand at Letcliffe Park in 1920 and 2010.

[Stanley]

Lane bottoms in June 2009. This little weaving hamlet is and always was an outlier of the town. At one time there were a number of small enclaves like this but they have now been almost all submerged by the development of the town but they are still there. Think of Dam Head Farm and Hen House Farm on Gisburn Road. There are many such examples, think of the jumble of old buildings In the corner of the junction of Station Road and Skipton Road, you can see clearly from the age of the buildings and how they are sited that this was once a small enclave on its own. If you keep your eyes open there are many examples and it's one of the charms of Barlick that they survive.

[Stanley]

I've often thought that Bancrofts Farm should get an award from the town for being such a splendid 'gateway' to the town. It's always been well kept. I saw George the other day, he is lasting well. I've lost track of the Simpsons, I have an idea he is the last of the brothers.

[Stanley]

The flat concrete top to the wall in the foreground of the above pic is the milk stand. Each morning the Simpsons put their milk there in 10 gallon galvanised kits and it went to Dobson's Dairy at Coates. If you keep your eyes open you can still see other milk stands, there's one in the pic of Barnsey and Long Ing that Gus did, it's at the bottom of the lamp post in the foreground. With the advent of bulk collection by tanker they are all redundant now of course.



Here's another at Yarlside on the Bracewell Road. Is it still there?

[Big Kev]

Not sure if this is a forgotten corner or something that's relatively new, it certainly made me smile

[PanBiker]

I think this was retrieved from someone's garden having been missing for a number of years. Re-instated and documented by Nick Livesey I think via one of the local facebook groups a few years ago.

[Stanley]

Ian is right. What we now call Cross Lane, from Salterforth to Coates used to be the easiest route from Salterforth to Barlick. The other route via Salterforth Lane and Upper hill was very hard on a horse carrying a load because of the gradients. If you think about it, the canal at Salterforth and at Coates are on exactly the same level and Cross Lane is the logical way to go but by some accident of fate, it was never developed and adopted as a 'main road' by the community. Even now I don't think it has ever been adopted and If I remember rightly there were judgements in the Manorial Court prohibiting its use by wheeled traffic. It is also the direct route to Gill Church. Remember that until relatively recently Earby had no church so Gill was the closest place of worship. The bridge over the quarry that became a rubbish dump at Rainhall Rock was put in by the canal company when they opened the quarry up as a right of way to the church.

[Stanley]

I am reminded that the structure of that bridge is still there under the landfill. The only visible remains are the ends of the parapet wall which were still in place on the footpath last time I was there. A bit of a treat for archaeologists in the future!
Worth remembering that Rainhall Rock Quarry was started by the canal company for stone for the canal workings and when the canal was finished the quarry stayed open for many years as it was a valuable resource. I have an idea that in the latter days it was operated by Wasney of Thornton in Craven who lived at (and I think built) Queensmead on Thornton Drag. He used the branch of the canal to get the stone out by boat.



The tunnel on the Springs Branch before it collapsed.
As far as I know the only people who used the limestone for building in Barlick were the canal company and the branch railway. Look at the big retaining wall in the Pioneer car park.

[Stanley]

An old post card of the canal at Long Ing in about 1900. Lots of interest on here because Barnsey Shed hadn't been built and Barnsey Farm is on there. The branch to Rainhall Rock was still there and that's why there is a bridge on the tow path. The right hand chimney in the background is Coates Shed.

[Stanley]

I have been asked why all the old canal bridges had a white mark offset on the arch. This was an indicator for the deepest part of the canal. The broad boats which were standard on the canal were deep laden and a lot of the time there was less than a foot of water under the keel.
Many of the bridges had rollers mounted on the corner of the bridge next to the tow path to protect the horses tow ropes from damage. Some didn't have these and if you look you can see the grooves worn in the stone by the ropes.

[Stanley]

James Brindley (BIOG) is a largely forgotten man. He is credited with inventing 'puddle' which is a mixture of clay and sand which is waterproof and was used as a lining for the early canals where they were not dug in impervious strata. I once had a leak in the dam at Bancroft and Harold Duxbury told me that the canal depot at Burnley still made and stocked puddle for use if they had a leak and I could buy some off them. In the end I used concrete because it was best for the type of leak I had. Every time you look at the canal, remember Brindley. Francis Egerton the third Duke of Bridgewater who built a canal to transport coal from his mines at Worsley to the industrial areas of Manchester employed him as engineer and this was the first commercial canal which triggered all the rest.

[Stanley]

Potholes are in the news today. Worth remembering that in the days of the urban district council BUDC were responsible for local road repairs. They had their own gang and equipment and did all the minor jobs. The had powers to borrow money against the rates to employ contractors for bigger jobs.



They had their own roller very similar to this 1911 Aveling steam roller. It was housed at the Gas Works Yard which of course in those days was also a municipal enterprise. How things have changed!

[Stanley]

A wooden snow plough at a show in Bavaria. I can remember when the BUDC used to use a plough like this towed behind the road gang's tipper wagon. John Waite used to drive the BUDC dust cart and he was called in in winter to snow plough with the tipper at times. He once told me he went all the way to Standing Stone gate and when he turned round he found he hadn't got the plough behind him, the hitch had broken as he came up Tubber Hill! He had to do it all again.
The Council used to hire bench hands from the quarry on day work for snow shifting if needed which was handy because in frost they couldn't cut stone, it was too brittle. Jack Platt once told me some of them got more per hour for snow shovelling than cutting setts.

[Stanley]

I love old advertisements like this one. They have so much information in them and whilst it isn't strictly Barlick it reminds us how important the textile industry was round here. Coopers and Whites at Colne made tens of thousands of looms like these. Think of all the trades and skills that were supported (and the number of apprentices!). It's no wonder that when the modern aero engine factories moved in during WW2 we had plenty of skilled workers available who could be easily re-skilled. Contrast that with the position today across the country, mind you we have plenty of security guards and cleaners!

[plaques]

As a kid I lived near Butterworth and Dickinson's the loom makers in Burnley. At one time the biggest loom manufacturers in the World. You could here the air pump on the blast furnace for miles around. All gone now of course. People are just as smart nowadays as they have always been but there is no drive by the top 1% to get involved with all the problems of manufacturing. Its far easier to let others have this headache and just sell their stuff or better still shuffle piles of paper round and rake of a percentage. Third world here we come.

[Stanley]

Newton once said to me "The trouble is there aren't enough people making things". He was no economist but he'd put his finger on the problem. The way to manufacture is to take a raw material and add value. Shuffling paper round doesn't cut it. The people who say manufacturing is dead need to go back to Economics 101. It has become a Forgotten Corner.

[Stanley]

It's always worth looking at these old images of Barlick. This is Church Street around 1900. It was full of useful shops that were busy, all your needs from food shopping to a watchmakers and a tinsmith were on this picture. The 'retail revolution', first the supermarkets and now online shopping have killed most of these businesses and in turn the profit they used to make is exported from the town. When Barnsey Shed was built it was nick-named 'Pots and Pans' because so many retailers were prosperous enough to invest in it. Like Barnsey itself, that is now a Forgotten Corner.