FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

I always said he was one of the most progressive farmers in the district, first to use 28lb paper bags...
I called in one day with the groceries and it was freezing. Mrs Robinson offered me a plate of potato hash that was boiling on the stove. Next to it was a pan with handkerchiefs boiling in it and as the two pans were touching the froth from the handkerchiefs was spilling over into the hash....
She never put salt into her cooking because she didn't like it.....

[plaques]

How about this for something we are all forgetting about. The one time ubiquitous coal shoot. Perhaps most of us, at my age, can remember the coal man with his horse drawn coal wagon pulling up at the next drop without the need for any prompting. All this along with the coal shed/cellar and built in iron coal shoot door disappeared with the clean air act and smokeless zones. Most are now bricked up but occasionally in the back streets of Barlick you do see them as nature intended.
This one can be seen from Fernlea Avenue,

[Stanley]

They are still about P if you walk the back streets.....

[Stanley]

Orchard Street in Barlick in 1982. The alcove with the bin in it used to be a communal ash pit for the street but by 1982 had been relegated to a place to put a single dustbin. Most likely for the house next to it.

[Stanley]

My mind is on this corner this morning which I hope is not forgotten! Gillians Beck is running a banker and there is more to come....

[Nolic]

Comrade, your picture is Garden Street not Orchard..... you can tell by the shop that used to sell ladies underwear which was next to our house. We had a share of the communal bin "tip" and the outside toilet that was down the little ginnel. Nolic

[Stanley]

Thanks Comrade.... I always get mixed up with those little streets off Newtown....

[Stanley]

In another post Plaques mentioned that 'Salterforth Lake', the pooling of water in the Bottoms to the west of Kelbrook, was bigger than he had ever seen it before. There is very little fall in that section of the valley and water doesn't get away towards Earby and the Aire Basin. You have to go back up the hill on to Whitemoor to fully understand the reasons why it is sometimes worse than others. Most of the water on Whitemoor drains eastwards but due to the contours swings sharply to the left after Barlick and heads off down into the Ribble catchment. However, funnily enough, the drainage from the west end of the moor heads down the hill, feeds what is now Whitemoor Reservoir and continues down into the valley past there via what we call County Brook but which used to be the Black Brook. It runs into Salterforth bottoms and if the flow is heavier than the fall in the valley can cope with it pools there.
When the canal was built at the end of the 18th century one of the reasons it was diverted northwards to include Barlick was that by doing so it could take advantage of the County Brook to supply the summit level of the canal. A canal is only as good as the supply of water to the summit level. Water let down from the reservoir runs into the canal just below County Brook Mill. On the opposite bank you can see these arched openings in the retaining wall above the valley. Any excess of water in the canal at this point flows over the cills and continues down the bed of the old Black Brook into the valley and the Bottoms.
When the canal was busy, water was continually drawn off both ends of the summit level to operate the locks and so the amount of flow over the cills down towards Salterforth was limited and the drains in the valley and Earby could cope.
It is no accident that flooding at Lane Ends in Earby (The level crossing area) became more frequent as the levels of traffic on the canal decreased after the 1950s. Less water was used for the locks and more went down the hill towards the Bottoms. This is what has happened over the last few days, no leisure traffic on the canal because it is winter. more water running down the bed of the old Black Brook and eventually more weight of water in the bottoms and Earby.
I have mentioned elsewhere that the canal is an essential component of the drainage system and these arches in the bank are a good example. If you weren't looking for them you could easily miss them but they are an important factor in water levels in the valley. Definitely a forgotten corner!

[Stanley]

Another topical forgotten corner. This is the modern entry to the culvert that carries Calf Hall Beck under Calf Hall Shed. It used to be dammed at the lower end and the culvert served as a lodge from which the engine took water for the condenser.



Originally, there was a small lodge at the top side of the mill. I did this picture in 1978. There was a borehole there as well on the right hand bank which was used to supplement the water supply in dry spells when the beck wasn't delivering enough flow.



In later years, after Carr's Printers took over the mill the dam was converted to a culvert and even later it was covered over to make a new car park.

[Stanley]

Culverted water courses are sneaky little buggers! How many people realise that the River Fleet runs under Fleet Street in London? Gillians Beck runs under Walmsgate, Calf Hall beck runs under Butts Mill in a culvert and joins Gillians in the road outside the mill but the only sign is the sound of running water if you stand over a large manhole outside the mill gate and listen carefully. Out of sight, out of mind!



Here's a forgotten example. There is a culvert from the sump of the 'waterfall' on Forty Steps (Actually the dam that used to hold back the lodges for the mill) which runs under the yard of the mill, under the red brick building and discharges into Clough Dam from under that building. If you look carefully you can see the arched opening from the bottom side.



The one thing all these culverts have in common is that they are Victorian technology and have not been upgraded since then. It may be that the time for action is here. We have been warned!

[Tizer]

If you go into the showroom of the Volkswagen main dealer in High Wycombe and keep one eye looking at the floor you'll notice a glass `window'. Below you see the River Wye running through.

The River Fleet - some information and good photos at the bottom of the page: Fleet

[Stanley]

The sump in the Bowker Drain from which Wellhouse Mill drew its water. The sump was in Eastwood Bottoms and has been buried during recent landscaping. I did this pic in 1982. Further, the building operations along Valley Road involved deep excavations on the line of the Bowker Drain. I wonder if they replaced it when they dug the ground up. If not, where is the water drained from the bottoms all the way back to the Kelbrook New Road going now?

Harold Duxbury once told me he had entered the culvert under Butts Mill and inspected it in the 1950s and it was in bad condition then. Has anything been done about it?

[Stanley]

When I bought this little building in 1979 and got John Northage in to bring it back up to a good standard and then re-sold it for what it had cost me I had an idea I was doing a good thing but never realised how important it was going to become in the future. (Bought for £300 and John charged me £600 for doing a good job. I sold it for £900 the buyer paying all conveyance costs.)
On my early walk this morning I was struck by the unusual sight of a young lad dressed only in a shirt and track suit bottoms legging it across the car park of the Pioneer store as hard as he could go. He vanished into the little building which has been used as a taxi office for years and a few minutes later was off home in a taxi. It struck me that the little building has, quite by chance. become a very useful transport hub. I went off down the road with a warm glow.... That effort 36 years ago had not been in vain! And it saved a nice little piece of Barlick's heritage.....

[Stanley]

Click to enlarge the 1892 25" OS map of Barlick. It's interesting to look back and see what these old maps can tell us. I'd forgotten that there used to be a nursery in the bend of Butts Beck in what is now Valley Gardens. In those days the mill head race from the dam behind Briggs and Duxbury carried on under the road via a culvert and discharged into the mill dam for the Corn Mill which was installed by Billycock when he took over the mill in about 1854. Prior to that the small round lodge immediately behind the mill was the water reservoir. Since then of course the lodge has been filled in and has been used as a garage site for years. It makes you wonder how long it will be before someone sees it as a good site for development....

[Stanley]

Thinking about the Corn Mill, if you look in the beck at the side of the mill you'll see this large CI pipe in the bed. I'm not certain what it is but I'd guess at the outfall from the water turbine that Billycock put in to replace the old water wheel. If so, it would be cast at Burnley Ironworks. It looks like the right vintage.

[Stanley]

This feature in Calf Hall Beck at the back of Butts Mill has puzzled me for years. The curved edge at the bottom of the pic is obviously the cill of a redundant weir at a higher level than the present flow. This morning Wendy pointed me at a site where I could get better images of the 1853 OS map than my copy so I had a furtle....



You can see Calf Hall Beck coming down under a small bridge and going straight forward down what was then the north side of the mill in a culvert. The half buried weir in the picture kept the level up for the main course to Butts and the overflow served the small building, Paddock Laithe, which fifty years before Butts was built was a water spinning mill producing roving for hand spinners, probably disused in 1843 when Butts was built. The diverted water followed the original course of the beck and entered a culvert half way down the side of the mill. At some point this became the main flow of Calf Hall Beck and in the 1887 sale map for Butts is shown going under the mill after being joined by a tributary coming out of the Parrock, almost certainly from a balance pond there fed by a pipe from Clough Dam.
I suspect that when the water supply was improved by the Clough water and the new engine had been installed the water arrangement at Butts were changed. They were always tinkering about with it in Bracewell's days as owner because the mill was chronically short of water.
The main thing is that I now know what the original purpose of the redundant weir at Parrock was.

[Stanley]

Notice on the map above that the combined Gillians and Calf Hall Beck surfaced in the middle of the road outside Butts Mill. I think I can remember there being a circular feature in the middle of the road which was an access to the watercourse. By that time it had been culverted beyond the access to where it appears now from under the road. At some time around then the access was closed off and now the becks are fully culverted.

[Stanley]

The manhole in butts near the old Pigeon Club where you can hear the water running.......

[Stanley]

A major forgotten corner. The directors of the Calf Hall Shed Company in 1895. The CHSC was a major influence on the late 19th century growth of Barlick. They built Calf Hall Shed, bought Butts and Wellhouse and Viaduct Shed at Colne. They let all their space out to tenants, sticking to the provision of Room and Power and never venturing into manufacturing. The profits earned by their tenants provided the greater part of the capital that was invested into the building of the later sheds in the town. All their Barlick mills are still occupied and being used by modern industry. They served the town well!

[Stanley]

Kids in North Street in 1952.....

[Tizer]

A marvellous image! Looks like a game of cowboys and indians has been going on. I like the all-in-one suit of the little one at the front. Looking at the faces, it makes me think that we had more variety of facial features in those days. We're more smoothed out now, probably due to better health - but less interesting!

[plaques]

I like the one with shorts and wellies. Reminds me of David on boxing day.

[PanBiker]

The girl on the right must be the sheriff, she has the handcuffs. I used to have some the same made from white metal with a button on the end to release, no lock of course.

This image has been on one of the local Facebook photo sites with names attached I believe.

[Stanley]

The thing I like about it is the range of ages all playing together...... I think Joyce Lawson gave me the pic.....

[Stanley]

Wendy's pic of snow up at Black Lane Ends. It's been a forgotten corner this winter but it is snowing at the moment for the first time. She could well be able to do this pic again today.....