FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

I think these two pics speak for themselves, the first in 1900 and the second in 2002. I refer of course to parked cars. The situation is worse now than it was 16 years ago and every residential street in the town is choked by parked cars. I often wonder how the emergency services manage at times.
The advent of the 'family car' was of course immensely liberating and stimulated the post-war economy but one has to wonder if we are reaching saturation point. I note in winter the number of cars that arrive in the Pioneer car park with steaming exhausts which of course means they have travelled no distance at all. Are people losing the ability to think 'walking to the shop'?

[Stanley]

Two more before and after pics. Bank Street as it was and how it is now. Progress on the new build seems to have been stopped and the back wall of David Hoyle's old joinery shop still blocks the bottom of our back street.

[PanBiker]

My old garage seems to have been done up, I used to keep my Honda 500 four in there. Could be bugger getting it in on a cold night when the setts were iced over, just when your hands and knees weren't working from the ride back from courting in Carleton.

[Stanley]

Didn't know it used to be yours Ian but yes, the owner of the house keeps it well maintained.

[PanBiker]

It had a shallow inspection pit, (not much use for a motorbike) but it was boarded over. At that time it belonged to the Legion, it was next to the RBL Womens Section building that used to be on Bank St. I paid rent, via my mum who was Secretary to Kath Myers who was Treasurer of the section. My dad and mum were both heavily involved with the RBL, dad was Secretary, Branch Standard Bearer for some years and also Secretary of SSAFA.

All the poppies and wreaths for remembrance were delivered to and stored in that building. I think I have mentioned before that the poppies of the day were not as we have them now the four part pop together green plastic stem, petals, leaf and plastic centre. Former design had a wire stem with a hard moulded plastic centre holding on the petals, no leaf. Leafs were supplied separately, made of green paper with a short stem with a hole in. I spent hours making poppy sprays in the weeks before Remembrance Sunday. I sometimes used two poppies using the second stem wire to secure the leaf to the first. The finishing touch was to wrap the stem with the foil strips supplied in boxes, half inch wide and about 4" long. MOD surplus from WWII, formerly dropped from bombers as "window" to fool German radar. Not a lot of folk know that particular recycling use and a proper forgotten corner.

[Stanley]

I used to have a roll of the foil used for 'Windows'. It was very high quality and was on an aluminium tube core. I was told what it was and always thought that it was dropped as long strips from the reel but found later it was sheared into short lengths for deployment. Like my Mills Bomb, 25lb practice bomb and parachute button it vanished in the house move when I was in the army.....
The present owner must have bought the freehold for the garage because when the plot was redeveloped it was protected.



The Legion building was demolished before the old ambulance garage. I think this was in 2000.

[PanBiker]

I was told what it was and always thought that it was dropped as long strips from the reel but found later it was sheared into short lengths for deployment.

For the record Stanley the foil was cut to the length or a multiple of the wavelength that the German radar used for detecting the bomber formations and controlling some of the Ack Ack and flak batteries. 4" roughly would equate to a full wave of around 10cm or it could have been a half wave of 23cm. The latter still an allocation in the IARU Amateur Radio band plan.

[Stanley]

Ian.
My trip down to Aldi yesterday made me realise I have to have a walk down there and do some pics. Things have changed!



Coates 2004.

[Stanley]

Even earlier in 1905.

[Stanley]

I was thinking about when they cut the new piece of road through from the end of Salterforth Lane to Gill Brow in the 1960s. Before that we had to contend with the winding road past the locks and a steep bit of downhill past Gill Hall. They widened the road as far as Thornton and at the same time improved the junction with the Wisick rod to Earby. The length between Gill and Thornton was a narrow twisting road with a high bank on the South side. A big improvement!



At the same time Rolls improved the car parking at Gill factory because they pinched a bit of the old road which was of course redundant.

[plaques]

Your bottom picture shows Rolls building what was to become the electron beam welding department on their own land. Nothing to do with the road. An extra bit of car park was built above the existing one with access across the old road onto the new bit. I don't think they pinched anything just utilized what was already there.

[Stanley]

I stand corrected P. At the time I was told it was a car park. Still an interesting old pic!

I don't have pics but when the new road was put in to by-pass the locks the old Gill Quarry, which had been used as a tip by the Council after Rainhall Rock was filled, was reclaimed as part of it was used for the road.
At Thornton, just after Marton road end a large pile of large rocks grew from the blasting needed to make the new road bed. It was later grassed over but for many years I noted the large number of rabbits around there and suspect they were using the spaces between the rocks in the pile as ready made warrens.
I can't remember whether it was before or after the new road but the Council used their own labour to improve the very narrow road down to the canal bridge on the Marton Road. I have an idea this was before the new road but I'm not sure. It was a long drawn out job which at times stopped for lack of funds but eventually was a big improvement.



Here's the 1892 map that shows the road then and Gill Rock quarry.

[Stanley]

Here's an old pic of the top of Walmsgate. If you read Atkinson's Barlick he says that the left hand corner was the meeting place for several inveterate snuff takers. Only a small thing but a nice little insight into old Barlick!
Notice also Clough Mill, long forgotten but a dominating feature.

[Stanley]

Definitely a forgotten corner, Mary Southwell as was from Salterforth in the pasteurising room at West Marton Dairy in about 1950. Mary worked in the lab testing milk. She married David Drinkall and as far as I am aware is still alive and well in Cheshire.....

[Stanley]

Manchester Road in 1984. The dressmaker's shop is still in business next to Monk House and the end of the block is still a barn. The Co-op is still a functioning shop but soon to close down. Out of sight but the police station and mortuary were still there above.

[Stanley]

The current interest in Bancroft triggered this forgotten corner. The warehouse at Bancroft with stacks of cloth awaiting shipment out at the far end near the cloth-looker's plaiting machines and the weft skips and boxes stored in there. Many of these were the property of long defunct mills and I asked Sidney Nutter once why we didn't clear them out. He told me that as long as they sat there they counted as an asset on the books and if thrown out that valuation would have to be removed from the books making the trading figures less attractive.



The wash basins, Colin Macro's cactus garden and the boiler used for brewing up. All part of the warehouse. The bucket in the large stone sink was where the weavers put their tea leaves. I used to take them down to the engine house and either use them for scattering on the floor to lay the dust when I swept up or simply chuck them on the coal in the bunker so that they got burned.

[Stanley]

There was a time long ago when China was seen as an essential ally against Japan. These two posters were snapped by Daniel Meadows in the warehouse at Bancroft. They were on the wall of one of the tackler's cabins. I suppose they date from the war years. That would be about 40 years when Dan snapped them.

[chinatyke]

How things have changed for the better. It was a grim time in many parts of the world.

[Stanley]

[Stanley]

I tripped over this in my archive, can't remember where I got it from. A nice reminder of old Kelbrook.

[Wendyf]

Very timely, planning for 10 houses in the field behind Yellowhall has just been passed at appeal.

[Stanley]

I didn't know that Wendy..... Let's hear it for serendipity!
I used to use the Old Road to Foulridge a lot, even with the cattle wagon because my friend John Harrison farmed at Old Stone Trough.





We often ran together coming down from Ayre on a Tuesday. A good man and we have lost him.

[Stanley]

John Lancaster's wagon and trailer parked on Bank Street in 1979. John took note of the outfit I put together for Richard Drinkall and followed suit. He made a good job of it. In some ways this was a better outfit than ours because it had more power!

[Stanley]

Forgotten Corners are all about the past. The reason why they qualify is that so often we forget them and this topic is of course me jogging collective memories. I was thinking about that yesterday as I walked across the Pioneer car park and, noting that the first 2018 registered hybrid cars were already appearing my mind went back to the changes in vehicles over the last 60 years, one of the advantages of being old!



Laycock's buses in 1925. This is a case in point. Look at these buses and contrast with the modern ones. These would all be classic veterans now and worth a small fortune but they have all been scrapped and even the firm has gone. It's progress of course and gives us our forgotten corners. Thinking about the modern hybrids, what changes are we going to see in the next 60 years? I'll have to leave that to the youngsters!

[Stanley]

Thinking about forgotten corners reminded me of an incident many years ago on Sawley Brow which for me is part of Barlick history. No pic I'm afraid....
It was a sunny afternoon and I was in a line of traffic following a Barlick wagon carrying bales of Coir for the padding in Silentnight mattresses. A bloke on an old motorbike was chancing his luck in the opposing traffic flow coming the opposite way and it caught him out as he got to us, he went right under the back wheels of the wagon in front of me. I jumped out and stuffed my jacket under his head and tried to make him comfortable but it was obvious he was bad, blood running out of his ear onto the jacket and he was literally grey faced and incoherent. I stayed with him until the ambulance came and the medic agreed with me, I later heard he died in the ambulance and was an air force bloke on leave from Catterick. The thing that got me was that the driver of the wagon had clear priorities, it had started to rain lightly and he was fully occupied sheeting the bales of Coir! It was clearly not his fault but even so... (It was a good jacket as well but I never used it again.)
In later years the man had his own haulage firm and this incident always crossed my mind on the odd occasions when our paths crossed. I never mentioned it of course. Funny how these things come to mind years later......