FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

Hill Top farm below Letcliffe in 2003.



An earlier pic of the farm in about 1890. How can I be sure of the date? I made enquiries and found that the houses on the top side of the original farm were built in about 1895. I love before and after pics like this, they contain so much information if you dig deep enough!

[Stanley]

This is an Italian knife-grinder but when I was a lad they were regular visitors with exactly the same set-up, the wheel driven by a band from a large pulley on the back wheel.

[Stanley]

Old postcards are great. I like this one of Rainhall Road. I'll guess this is about 1900/1910 and somehow everything looks more spacious and tranquil, largely because it isn't cluttered with cars! You wouldn't walk on the road like that today, even on a Sunday when I suspect most of these views were snapped. (I'm reminded of Mary Lancaster telling me that in her childhood she and her mates used to play in the middle of the road at Thornton in Craven.)
Of course we should remember that all these buildings were new and crisp, we see the same scene 100 years later. Notice the cast iron lamp post, this appears to be the standard Barlick design and was a handsome object!

[Stanley]

No danger walking in the road at Thornton in about 1900.

[Stanley]

Seeing the Village Hall at Thornton in that pic reminded me of the days when Arthur Morrison, mu GP, lived at the Old Vicarage and ran a waste paper collection based in the outbuildings to raise funds for the refurbishment of the village hall. They hit their target and one evening as Mary and I were coming back from an evening out with friends we realised that there was a Wine and Cheese event at the hall so we called in. The cheese was fine but the wine was all home made. I was given a glass of red and after inspecting it I told Mary, "If you can't see light coming through it, don't drink it!" Mary took notice and we left.
The following day I had reason to call in at Arthur's and asked him how the evening had gone. He told me, not well. He and Kim, his wife, were both GPs and they had spent the morning going round the village ministering to those who had over-imbibed. He said that Thornton that morning resembled 'The Village of the damned'. It seemed that my assessment of the wine had been correct!
I liked Arthur, he and Kim were good doctors in Earby. I have lots of good memories of both of them.



Arthur in his office on Water Street in 1977. The best kind of old-fashioned GP.

[Stanley]

In 1977 Arthur and Kim retired and had a 'leaving do' at the Con club in Earby. He had told me that his ambition was to be carried out drunk at the end of the evening and I said that for a leaving present I would do the pics.... It was a wonderful evening, there was so much affection for them and I have lovely images of them with long term patients. They were much loved.
At the end of the evening as Arthur was being carried out to his transport (He had achieved his ambition!) his minders tried to stop me taking pics but Arthur himself told them not to be silly buggers, he had asked for the pic so I got this image of a very drunk but happy Arthur heading off into retirement. I should add that Kim was a perfect lady, not drunk, and watched the proceedings with detached amusement, she had grown accustomed over the years to Arthur's occasional excesses!

[Stanley]

Kim and Arthur at the Con club. Kim was a lovely woman and I visited her many times after Arthur's death at her bungalow in Thornton just above the church. Their son Blake wrote a book 'When did you last see your father' which put Arthur in a very bad light and Kim asked me one day if I had read it. I told her yes and I didn't think it was a portrayal of the man I knew. She agreed and told me how it had upset her. When she died he wrote a book about Kim and gave a lot of intimate details about her. I don't think she would have liked that either! I think on the whole the books said more about Blake and his problems than them! There's no doubt that Arthur had his faults but on the whole he was a good man. At his funeral the parson said that he knew that Arthur wouldn't think much of a eulogy from him but wisely he concentrated on his work as the best sort of GP. He raised a few laughs. Taking all in all we need more men like Arthur!

[plaques]

Is the other chap Les Say?

[Stanley]

I think you're right Ian, that has stirred something deep in my memory. There were over a hundred people there on the night and an overspill outside. A lovely evening....





My last wagon in Gisburn Auction yard on 1972 and below is John Lancaster's response parked on Bank Street when he saw what we had done. At the time we had the biggest wagons in Barlick, any longer and we would have been illegal. Big Boy's Toys and we were both 9ft tall. But....., as Dan Smith said, "The bigger the wagon the bigger the pillock who's driving it. He's on the same wage as anyone else!" He was right of course but driving it always gave me a thrill especially when I was at maximum weight. I had 150hp, John had slightly more but compared with today's wagons we were ludicrously underpowered!

[Stanley]

Still thinking about transport.....



Wild Brother's drivers in 1962. Wild Brothers were an institution. As well as their regular trunk services they ran charas and work's buses. "Travel with Wilds for miles of smiles".



Wild's bus taking workers home from Bancroft in 1976. Every now and then we had to have a word with them for turning up early. When the bus arrived the shed stopped. I am still running in this pic with about ten minutes to go! Someone once asked me why I ran until going home time with an empty shed. I told them because that was what I got paid for!

[Stanley]

The Maudslay wagon that Jack Platt drove for Wilds. It has been preserved as a classic. If you're interested in the story look for my articles 'Rock Solid' in Stanley's View. It's a good story!

[Stanley]

Still thinking about Wilds.....



I did this pic of the Bancroft site after it had been cleared and the dam filled in. if you look at the far left hand corner of the site, in the 1920s and 30s Wild's Motors had their garage in the corner of that field. I say 'garage' but I suspect it was more of a storage area for weft skips, beams and boxes and there may have been a fuel tank there. If you walk up Gillian's Lane past the mill you'll see a section of wall that has been capped with concrete and this perhaps is where the tank was.
If you look at the 1932 flood pics at Bancroft you'll see a lot of skips and weft boxes that have been swept into the dam by the water and it was this debris floating down the flood that blocked the culvert at Clough Mill and caused the flooding in that shed and Walmsgate. At the time it was blamed on Bancroft but was an error, Bancroft never stored items like that outside. The debris was washed down from the Wild's site.

[Stanley]

[Stanley]

1932 Craven Herald report of the suicide of George Hoggarth at Dotcliffe Mill. Newton Pickles told me that when they went down later to do a repair on the water turbine the management asked them to cut the rope down off the shafting. Nobody at the mill would touch it.



This is George when he was running the Clough Mill Engine..... A sad event.

[Stanley]

Mary Cawdrey, a weaver at Bancroft, renewing the fur in a shuttle that acted as a brake on the weft as it flew off the pirn. One small example of the wonderful women who kept our industry alive. I can't tell you how much I admire these women who did a hard job with great skill and were never fully recognised.

[Stanley]

My late mate Ernie Roberts clowning in the tackler's cabin at Bancroft. The fur hat is significant. The mill managers were too tight to buy rabbit fur for the shuttles, they didn't need to because the weavers brought in cast off fur, often bought at jumble sales. Ernie had just had a new donation, this fur hat, so it was an opportunity to have a laugh!

[chinatyke]

Note the pint pot, essential equipment!

[Stanley]

Tacklers often wore a waistcoat on top of their overalls and this gave more pockets to carry their tool kit! I asked Ernie to empty his pockets one day and here's the result. So much information here! Notice the unique shape of the 'Sacason' forged steel 'keys' or spanners. They were a unique size and made to fit the square nuts used on the looms. The piece of 'tackler's band', very strong linen based string used on the loom is essential as is the Glacier Mint. If a weaver was depressed this was Ernie's instant cure, a mint to suck to cheer them up. The ruler was used for two main purposes, tucking the loose end of the piece under itself so the sand roller could grip it and stirring tea.

[Stanley]

Wendy posted this pic of Old Shed on New Road at Earby, the only pic I have ever seen of it. It was the first steam driven mill in Earby, run by the Earby branch of the Bracewells who later built Victoria Mill. The subject was of course the cricket match and I love the fact that there is a mix of clothing, some in whites but most in their street clothes. Definitely a forgotten corner!

[Tripps]

"The mill managers were too tight to buy rabbit fur for the shuttles,"

Why does a shuttle need rabbit fur?

[Stanley]

David, It acts as a brake on the weft as it comes off the pirn at high speed. If there is no constraint, some weft tends to 'balloon' under the centrifugal force of leaving the pirn and forms tangles before it reaches the eye where it exits the shuttle. This impedes the flow enough to break the weft and cause a fault.



I think you can see the fur in this shuttle in use on the loom. Notice how it is trimmed to shape after sticking on the wall. A very clever tactic which worked well.

[Stanley]

Clog irons, pegs and nails.... Every house in Barlick had these at one time, running repairs could be done to your own footwear. Ladies tended to use 'rubber irons' and these were even easier to renew.
I shall pay out £16 today for a set of new heels on my boots.....
Some households went even further and had a Last.

[PanBiker]

We have a last, makes a good stop for the front door.

[Stanley]

That one was described on the web site as a last/door stop..



Another essential item was the clothes mangle. One thing I remember about the ones I have twined in my day is the fact that the sycamore rollers wore out in the middle and there was a sub-trade in re-turning rollers to straighten them up and making new ones.



When I refurbished the dolly scourer at Higher Mill, Helmshore we had to get a new one made but this was on a larger scale.

[Tizer]

This is not a forgotten corner but perhaps a forgotten role of women during WW2. The photo shows women despatch riders in 1945 with their motorcycles. I don't know where the photo was taken but it's on a postcard that we bought at the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum in Cornwall in 2001 and comes from the archives of Cable & Wireless. Was the HGH registration a military one?