FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

West Marton Bedford wagon JTB 517 delivering bottles to the depot in Valley Road in 1957. This was where the bottled milk was dropped for the retailers in the town and shortly after this pic was done it was moved to the larger one on Vicarage Road. This building is still there behind the fence that surrounds what is now Gissing and Lonsdale's works site.
At this time WMD still had their own retail round in Barlick, served by a horse and milk float very similar to this one.



The last WMD milk chap was Jack Brown, he lived in Barlick down Gisburn Road and when the dairy sold their milk round he became the plumber at the dairy at Marton. What finally killed the round according to Jack was the fact that the management got him another milk float and it was too heavy for the horse. He refused to use it and kept the old one and this forced a decision. I think that was around 1960.

[Stanley]

The paved road that led from Butts to commercial Street in 1982. This was just before these dilapidated old buildings were demolished. They started life as stables, Butts was where a lot of the town's horses were kept. The upper storeys were where hay and feed were stored. At the time they were built Harold Duxbury says that there were quite a few market gardens down Butts and this perhaps explains why there doesn't seem to be a midden for the horse muck. Perhaps the gardens were taking all the muck as it was made.



The 1892 OS map. It looks as though the stables were a later build.

[Stanley]

Muriel Smith, weaver at Bancroft, cleaning her shoes before she went home in 1978. Muriel always looked as clean and tidy when she was going home as she did when she started in the morning. She wasn't alone in this. The mill didn't supply any work clothing, most of the weavers just had a pinnie exactly like the one they would wear in the kitchen at home.
The weaving shed wasn't the cleanest workplace in the world and I always thought that it was a bit of a miracle that they kept so tidy. Look at the state of the flagged floor, uneven and rough so very bad to keep clean anyway if anyone was trying. What happened was that the weavers swept their own alley, the space between their looms, into the broad alley that ran from the front of the shed to the back. The loomsweeper swept the alley at the back of the looms when he had swept the looms and when he picked the 'sweeps' up he collected what the weavers had swept out as well.



The exception was the looms that were not in use. They just sat there gathering 'dawn' until they looked like a wintry scene. The weavers hated having a set of mucky looms next to their set but had to put up with it.
I doubt if these conditions would be tolerated these days.... Probably a good thing but remember that at least the weavers had a reasonably secure job and a regulated wage. That in itself is a forgotten corner these days.

[plaques]

Just think about what weavers were breathing in every day. Health and safety is always a forgotten corner if you let industry get away with it.

[Stanley]

Yes P but we had weavers who were almost 80 years old and they didn't die until the government stopped them working. I know that's no sort of an answer but that was how it was.....
I always remember when we stopped coming under the aegis of Leeds for the factory inspectorate. We had a visit from a young inspector from Quay Street in Manchester who literally blanched when he saw the engine and the weaving shed, muttered something about consulting with his superiors and scuttled off.
Not long after the chief inspector came to have a look and was absolutely delighted to find that once again he had a genuine steam driven mill on his patch. He brought all his young inspectors by private bus and gave them a lecture on safety. He pointed out to them that what might look dangerous and illegal wasn't necessarily so. The workers were used to the system, there were no accidents reported and a further consideration was the fact that we were expected to close down within the year. On balance he reckoned we were worth leaving alone and he made sure that all his young inspectors had at least one trip to see what industry used to look like.

[Stanley]

At Ellenroad we were insured with Vulcan and they used to send young trainee surveyors to us to do some jobs.
Two turned up one day tasked with inspecting our Lancashire Boiler and reporting on its general condition. It was the ideal time to do this as we had all the brickwork stripped off it.



Here they are in February 1987. When they arrived they came to me to ask where the boiler was, they had walked straight past it without recognising what it was. So, as expected by Vulcan, I gave them a crash course on Lancashire boilers and showed them what to do and what to look out for. They were there most of the day but when they went home they at least had the basic knowledge!
The best surveyors were the retired marine engineers who had transferred to the insurance companies where they were in great demand because of their thorough training. I wonder how many of them are still about? I'll bet that route of recruitment is down to a trickle now.

[plaques]

Don't ask me how I got here OG 2011 but a page from OG in 2011 with lots of comments about the Buffs and a wedding photo of MoH. You can also access some of the old pictures. Worth a few minutes of anybody's time.

[Stanley]

Wonderful how this stuff survives in odd corners of the web isn't it.



Can you remember the time when Green Shield Stamps were flooding the high street? It got to the point where they were more important than price or quality and were the ruin of many an old business in one way or another. I remember when I was open all hours at Sough we came under pressure to join in when the scheme first started in 1958 but never took the bait and sold out in 1959 just as it was getting going. See THIS link to a Wiki article on trading stamps. I had forgotten until I read this that the Green Shield Catalogue became the genesis of Argos.

[Stanley]

CROQUET. Bob's piece about croquet yesterday reminded me of this...

My subject this week might be seen to be far removed from Barlick but in the inter war years the houses of the wealthy manufacturers sported tennis courts and croquet lawns. In case you have never played, this involves striking wooden balls with large mallets and the object of the game is to progress through a series of hoops or 'wickets' until your ball strikes a peg in the middle of the lawn, it was sometimes referred to as 'lawn billiards'. So far so good but as in so many games there are refinements like being allowed to hit your opponents ball with yours and drive them off course, in extreme circumstances, completely off the lawn. It is closely related to hockey and games on this basis have been played since the Middle Ages gradually developing over time until by the early 19th century something very closely resembling the modern game was becoming very popular.
In November 1856 the first set of rules was registered with the Stationers' Company in London by a gentleman called Isaac Spratt. This became the basis for the modern game and of course, as is the nature of such things, they became more refined and complicated as the years went by. In 1868, the first croquet all-comers meet was held at Moreton in Marsh, Gloucestershire and in the same year the All England Croquet Club was formed at Wimbledon in London where it still survives but the venue is better known now for tennis. I was first introduced to the game by an ex-Paratroop Regiment Brigadier and his wife in Norfolk and had a rude awakening!
I had always imagined that croquet was a gentle summer pastime enjoyed by people with an afternoon to spend at leisure. This might be true in some circles but in the one I found myself plunged into it was fiendishly competitive, devious and passionate. The object was to crush the opposition by any means, including the most blatant cheating. There was constant bickering about the rules of the game and it got to the stage where man and wife were confronting each other with raised mallets and I was expecting damage to be done! I came to the conclusion that this was a sign of a household at war with itself and I just happened to be there on a bad day.
I discovered later that this was not the case. They were a completely compatible and loving couple, it was simply that their behaviour on the lawn was part of the sport for them and that this attitude was quite common amongst those who played the game seriously. So my verdict is that the game should only be played by consenting adults over 40, never in the presence of children and that anyone like me invited to join in should be warned beforehand!
I can still hear the lady of the house informing me in a refined bellow that "Your balls are in the ha ha Stanley!" And then we had a perfectly civilised cream tea.....



The Brigadier and his wife disputing possession of the ball!

[PanBiker]

My mate Roger is a champion and has cups and shields and stuff to prove it!

Bowling is a similar gentle sport but fiercely competitive with belligerent attacks on the opposition bowls that may be leading a particular end. Personally I prefer bowls to croquet.

[plaques]

John Prescot playing croquet at Chequers. I wonder what Boris is up to?

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John Prescot.jpg

[Stanley]

Daniel teaching Susan, Margaret and Janet how to play croquet at the Meadows family home, Great Washbourne in 1977.

[Stanley]

My problem is that everything is a forgotten corner at the moment.
One that could remain forgotten for longer than others is hairdressing salons and barbers. Very hard to observe social distancing in those trades.



As for gatherings like this on Jepp Hill, forget it!

[Stanley]

This is a forgotten corner now. This pic that Daniel did of me came to mind when I saw THIS report suggesting that smoking might be a protection against the coronavirus. Sue mentioned it the other day and I raised the question in March but it went down like a lead balloon. It would be ironic if it turned out to be the case! Don't worry, I am not going to crack. My version is that if there are any anti-viral effects from smoking I might have achieved them in 80 years of soaking in nicotine! We'll see.....

[Stanley]

As I understand it, Covid19 is a virus that has crossed from animals to humans and this is almost always bad news. Many years ago I was poorly, I was getting night sweats and flu like symptoms which never got really serious but didn't go away so in the end I went to see Arthur Morrison my GP. He told me I had a very old fashioned disease, Undulating Fever. The source was milk from cows infected with what in those days we called 'Pick'. A picked cow was one that prematurely aborted the calf or, if it carried it to near term, 'stuck to the cleansing', in other words the birth process didn't work and for days after the birth they wandered round with the caul hanging out behind them.
There was a cure for this, you shoved your hand up inside the cow into the womb and picked off the 'press stud' shaped sections of the afterbirth that were still attached to the lining of the womb. We knew that we had to be very careful not to take this infection home with us but most people who were closely associated with cattle carried the disease. At one time it was the occupational disease of vets.
Arthur told me that the medical name for the condition was Brucellosis. Eventually there was a strategy to test all cattle for it and any reactors were culled. In that way it was eliminated from cattle in the UK and so people don't catch it these days. Problem is that there is no cure for it. I forget how Arthur treated me but I know I was off work for weeks with it. For years afterwards I had recurrent episodes, a violent night sweat was the most obvious symptom but as I have got older these have retreated and touch wood I haven't had one for years. Another consequence was that I was told that I should never give blood again, I was unclean!
I doubt if we will ever manage to kill the Covid19 virus at source like that. What I need this time is a vaccine!

[plaques]

Our milk was delivered from one of the local farmers. A small two wheel trap holding about three kits of milk. He would arrive at the bottom of the back street, ring his bell, and out you would go with your jug. Later he got all modern and would deliver in bottles. TT tested milk was his big selling point.

[PanBiker]

Colin Smith who I worked with in Earby at Cook and Thornton's had Brucellosis. Started after he had been camping on a farm in Wales and drinking raw milk supplied from the dairy. He had it all his life and like you the symptoms tailed off in later life.

[Stanley]

Ian. Arthur told me that once you had it you were always a carrier and it could recur. He was right.
P, the TT milk you had was raw milk but attested as Tuberculin Tested, in other words milk from cows who had been tested for bovine TB. Only problem was that the test they used wasn't 100% reliable. The only certain protection was Pasteurisation after filtering at the dairy.
Another process added to the armoury at the dairy was homogenisation. Crudely speaking this was simply pumping the milk at very high pressure through jets onto a solid stainless steel plate. This broke up the fat globules in the milk and stopped it separating out into a 'cream line'. Remember how the first to the milk bottle got the cream? One way the customer could assess milk was by how far down the bottle the cream line was. Homogenisation stopped all that nonsense and allowed the dairies to 'standardise' cream content by adding skim milk to the sample thus making more money because the customer could no longer easily assess the fat content and the dairy could get away with less.

[Stanley]

At one time the dairy industry had two peaks for cream demand, Christmas and the strawberry season. A change started when out of season fruits became common all year round as air transport made it economical. This meant a big demand for cream and the industry had no problem catering for this. The problem was that the market for the by-product, skimmed milk, couldn't absorb it and a lot had to go for animal feeding especially pigs.
But then a cunning wheeze arrived, low fat yoghurt made from skim milk. Add fruit flavours and name it Ski Yoghurt to give the impression of sport and health and you have a marketing success. Promote its use as a healthy option for replacing fattening puddings and a new industry was born.
Today the idea of seasonal fruit and cream is a totally forgotten corner. Strawberries and cream can be had any day of the year.

[Stanley]

Almost a century ago Henry Brown and Sons built their new foundry at Havre Park which marked the end (for the time being) of their original foundry at Ouzledale.



Ouzledale foundry sometime just before 1937.

But hang on, if Ouzledale closed when the Havre Park foundry was built in 1922 how come it is still running in 1937? (I am sure of that date because the new brick building built in 1937 for George Ashby isn't on the image.)
In October 1929 the unthinkable happened. The Calf Hall Shed directors were informed on the 16th that Henry Brown and Sons were filing for bankruptcy. (They owned Ouzledale Mill) They saved the Earby workshop and carried on there but their days as Barnoldswick engineers were over. When the dust settled Mr R S Windle, the Receiver, paid out 19/6 in the pound, an indication that there was actually no need to finish as they were almost solvent and could have worked their way through the difficulty.
This left their new foreman founder George Ashby high and dry and reading between the lines, The Calf Hall Shed Company made George an offer he couldn't refuse and backed him to open Ouzledale as a foundry again. This gave them rent eventually and a source of castings for any repairs needed in the mills. At the same time they backed Henry Browns engineering foreman John Albert Pickles to reopen Wellhouse Works as an engineering resource. Ouzledale Foundry still exists as Esse and Brown and Pickles is part of Gissing and Lonsdale's Havre Park works. So two forgotten corners that had major repercussions on the town's modern economy.



Look carefully at Gissing and Lonsdale's Havre park works and you'll see that the centre section is the old 1922 foundry.

[PanBiker]

When I was a lad it wasn't as cluttered in front of the old foundry. It had a red roller shutter door that we had goalposts painted on and just to the left of the shutter we had a set of wickets painted on the wall. There were garages all around the perimeter of the turning circle in front. The site was our sports stadium for tennis ball cricket and kickabouts with a football. The slope down from Valley Road was good for home made trolley testing. We used to store our chubs in the run up to bonfire night down there as well.

[Stanley]

The miracle was that it was possible to build anything down there at Havre Park. The valley there is deep river silt and when they were building Wellhouse Mill they had bad problems with foundations settling and walls having to be rebuilt. Johnny Pickles built the new foundry for Henry Brown, he was their foreman at the time. Newton told me that his dad bought hundred of tons of old wrought iron loom cranks and used them as reinforcement in the foundations of the new building. Notice that even when the building was new, Johnny put tie bars in on the top courses.

The other miracle of course is the chimney at Wellhouse.



Wellhouse in about 1900. The stone chimney never had any problems with foundations, it stood straight all its life.

[Big Kev]

Soon to be a forgotten corner. I noticed yesterday that the former Vicarage on Skipton Road, last used as the Masonic Hall Lodge has now been demolished with only the foundations remaining. A small cluster of houses and a new building for the Masons use are due to be built on the site.

Grabbed a pic on the way out of Aldi this morning, work is progressing.

20200429_121632.jpg

[Stanley]

Newton used his garage on Vicarage Road as a workshop. He had a wooden hut in the garden as well for storage. The loco on the right was long term but he eventually finished it, added a tender and he and Walter ran it at Blackgates track at Tingley near Wakefield which is still active. His main lathe was the Myford on the bench under the window but he also did a lot on Johnny's 1927 lathe which is on the left and now in my front room. He also had a larger Wilson lathe which I took when he moved out of the garage to a small wooden shed at Dam Head. He had a Senior milling machine (LINK) and did some lovely work in here. This was the shed I forced him back into after Olive died and he was hitting the bottle, it worked, he never came out of the shed again until his death!

[Stanley]

Angus posted this image in 2012 when it was unclear what was going to happen. We know now of course that the Fosters Arms or 'Syke' as it was known was to become yet another 'development opportunity' and we lost another good pub.



In 2005 we had another famous Barlick Pub at the end of Church Street, the Seven Stars. That too vanished and we got a funeral parlour.

Both these could be said to be simply examples of change. Actually it was an economical mistake, that of allowing the supermarket to sell alcohol at a far lower price than in the pub. This assumes that pubs were simply outlets for sales but in fact they were a valuable part of the community and when we lost them they altered the locality and society as a whole. I am not alone in thinking that it was a mistake and we lost out. The present closures could well trigger another round of closures as there are no signs of any support for the pubs, some landlords are even carrying on charging full rental and the tenants are locked in by contracts. I hope what remains of our Barlick pub estate survives even though I do not use them.