FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

I've often wondered whether this old vice on Forty Steps was a legacy of Paul Brydon.

[Stanley]

Thinking about water management in the local area I often wonder whether the Bowker Drain is still running. Over the years its flow has been interfered with many times, the latest could be the landscaping of the land in Eastwood Bottoms. It was an important water resource in the 19th century and I have heard there was a court action in Chancery over it around 1860, Bracewell v. Nuttall I think. If it isn't flowing into Stock Beck at Victory Park any longer, where is the water going? Click to enlarge the map, the drain is the dotted line going under (pre-dating) Long Ing Shed and its origin is near Kelbrook New Road in a gravel bed.

[David Whipp]

Jeremy and Martin Ashby told me they had had to accommodate the Bowker Drain when they developed the new units on the land between Ouzledale Foundry and Roundell Road; it should still be running.

The bits and bats of information that I have is that Silentnight's warehouse used to flood and it was suspected that the Bowker Drain was implicated (I've not heard of flooding in recent years). The other snippet is that Rolls-Royce made use of the water at Bankfield; not sure if this is still the case.

My recent enquiries about the Bowker Drain have been about its interrelationship with Crow Nest Syke (which has been causing problems in parts during the last couple of years). I came to the view that the two separate watercourses would impact the other if either was blocked downstream of Eastwood Bottoms, but not otherwise. (This certainly happened around the turn of the century, prior to the upgrading of the culvert beneath the Spar garage and the installation of an effective trash screen; water formed a lake in the bottoms, connecting both watercourses together and threatening the lower properties on Edward Street.)

I'd be interested to learn if the Bowker Drain is still taking water under the canal below Barnsey...

[Stanley]

The canal did some piling in the late 1960s and the reports I got was that the flow in the Bowker Drain was much reduced. The old blokes I talked to always agreed that the drain was originally installed to collect leakage from the canal.



If you go into the field on the other side of the canal from Lower Park Marina you'll find this where the field water dives into the ground. I have seen drawings of the drain where 'two oak baulks' are shown running under the canal. I suspect they were originally installed when the canal was built to stop water ponding at that point.
To the best of my knowledge the drain never goes under the canal. Have a look at the plan and you'll see the course. This plan will be accurate I think because I think it dates from the time that Rolls Royce paid Briggs and Duxbury to re-pipe most of the drain with 9" concrete pipes, Harold Duxbury told me that but he was always tight lipped on other aspects of the drain. Rolls used it for foul water services at Bankfield and I think you'll still find the manhole into it in the car park roughly where the Old Coats mill lodge used to be. Billycock's cousins ran Old Coates and when he built Wellhouse in 1853 he started pumping water from the drain in Eastwood Bottoms for his main water supply for the new mill. This severely compromised the water supply at Old Coates and was one factor in the demise of the mill. The Bowker drain also picked up water from another big drain coming into Eastwood bottoms from Roundell Land and even when CHSC took over the mill they still paid the Gledstone Estate for that water. See the CHSC minute books on the site.

[David Whipp]

Thanks Stanley.

We've got a further meeting with Rolls in a couple of weeks; I'll ask about whether they're still drawing water from the Bowker Drain.

In the same neck of the woods, the watercourse pictured here has been very much a forgotten corner...



This is Crow Nest Syke, just above where it goes into the culvert beneath the car park/service area for the small 'advance' units below Gissing and Lonsdales on the Crow Nest Industrial Estate. (Built in the early 1980s.)

In August 2014 the choked watercourse overflowed, with water going into some of the units. Efforts to get the landowners to clear out the watercourse came to nothing, despite them having plenty of plant on the site when the new houses off Valley Road were being built.

Pleas for the county council, which is the 'Lead Local Flood Risk Authority, to take action on the blockage didn't achieve anything. Eventually, there were two bins close to the culvert entrance together lots of other trash...

To be continued.

[Stanley]

There will be a cost if they don't clean it!
One other thing about the Bowker Drain. I have been fascinated by it for years and it must have been put in before Crow Nest Cottages were built because it goes underneath them. I was told once that a piece of red sandstone in the foundations marks the position of the drain but was never able to find it. Most likely date for it is late 18th century as part of the water gathering for the original Old Coates mill built and run by Bracewell at Coates, the progenitor of both the barlick and Earby Bracewells. His will is on the site somewhere.... If it isn't, I have it and could re-post it.

[Stanley]

This insignificant little sump giving access to the Bowker Drain in Eastwood Bottoms was where Wellhouse Mill drew the water it needed to run for over 100 years. I think it's been covered up during recent landscaping.

[David Whipp]

The sump may be covered by vegetation, but it's still there. A few years ago there was concern that the sump was open and posed a danger to children playing on the land.

Moving a few hundred yards back to Crow Nest Syke, following the Boxing Day floods (when the small units there had just missed being flooded), the trash at the culvert entrance was still obstructing the free flow of water.

Determined to sort this out before Storm Frank hit, a councillor colleague, Richard Milner, contacted Housing Pendle (who own the land) to ask if they could clear the obstruction as a matter of urgency... eventually, they consented to us taking direct action.

This led to Richard getting into the ditch up to his knees in water, after dismantling part of the fence (with the help of Mark Gretman, one of the business owners) to get access to the watercourse. Richard raked debris away from the culvert entrance, eventually leading to the water level dropping by about 18". As the water level dropped, three drains discharging into the syke were revealed beneath the original water level. These continued to discharge water, which had been backed up in them, for a considerable time.

Richard, me, two other councillors and Mark eventually spent time digging out the culvert entrance, and with the help of a mini-digger kindly provided by nearby plant hire firm Temp Plant Ltd the following day, cleared all the crap out of that part of the watercourse.

This is the pile of muck that we dug out of the ditch at the culvert entrance...

[Stanley]

Well done David and the rest of your helpers. This is exactly the same problem that Tiz mentions in the treatment of minor watercourses where he lives in the Somerset Levels. Authorities and land owners refusing to take responsibility for clearing them out. When you consider the economic consequences of flooding it's a good investment.

[David Whipp]

One funny side of the Crow Nest Syke incident, and a reminder of how we are conditioned, was the issue of getting through the gate...

In the months since August 2014, when some of the units were flooded due to the choked watercourse, direct action to clear the ditch was impeded by the security fence around the perimeter of the industrial units. One section of the fence had a chain and padlock around it and lots of enquiries were made to find out who had a key to get through this gated section (without success).

On the day that we did gain access, we got permission off Housing Pendle to smash the lock off if necessary. As Richard and Mark worked with a big hammer and bar to do the necessary, I stood idly by and checked out how the panel opened once the lock was off... realising that there wasn't a gate at all and that the chain was looped through two ordinary fence panels and a post...

Mark's workshop provided spanners and we simply unbolted a section of fence to get in.

After we'd done our stuff, this is how a section of the culvert looked.



Several days after our labours, a gang turned up from Housing Pendle and spent a couple of days thoroughly clearing overgrowth and all the crap out of the ditch.

Hopefully, it won't be another 30 odd years before someone looks at it again...

[Tizer]

David, in our neck of the woods I know where there is a 2-metre high wrought iron gate secured with a padlock and blocking entry to a private alleyway. But if you lift the gate it comes off its hinges and can be swung out of the way!

[Stanley]

Lovely job David. I used to transport corrugated culverts like that one from Armco in S Wales to the Crofter's Scheme in the north of Scotland. Heavy corrugated steel, hot dip galvanised and then dipped in pitch. A heavy dusting of chalk dust stopped them sticking together. Used as shuttering for a concrete infill they are virtually indestructible. I used to watch the production line at work, impressive!

[David Whipp]

After Housing Pendle had done their bit, another look at the culvert inlet revealed what looks like a twin pipe to the one pictured running alongside the first; they obviously anticipated needing a lot of capacity when they built it in the 1980s. Have yet to get that one opened up and running properly...

[Stanley]

That makes sense and good forward planning. Cheaper per pipe as well when you put two in at the same time. It's amazing how many schemes like this were cocked up. There is a big culvert that carries the River Beal under the M62 interchange Junction 21. When I was doing forward planning with the then Rivers Board at Ellenroad I found out that the culvert had been built using the wrong figure for a 'Hundred Year Event' on the Beal and was (and still is of course) half the capacity it should be.



This is the offending culvert at a time of low water on the river. I think the problem is obvious. The water entering the river on the right bank is the condensing water from the Ellenroad engine which was running at the time. This isn't extra water, we had pumped it out above the weir and were simply returning it whence it came.

[Stanley]

Many mill lodges had cooling arrangements built in to the way they returned warm water to the main body. Some had ornate cast iron waterfalls in the centre. At Bancroft we had a trough running down the wall to take the warm water to the top of the dam, otherwise it would be dropping back in directly over the intake foot valve.

[PanBiker]

If I'm not mistaken and from memory Wellhouse dam was the same with a trough down the back wall of the shed.

[Stanley]

I can remember when I was going to school wondering why some of the mills had fountains in their lodges....

[Nolic]

Lots of carp (goldfish) in mill dams as they enjoyed the slightly warmer water. On the same vein power station cooling towers often had loads of fish in the cooling tanks below them. It only needs a couple of eggs on a birds leg to start a colony.
A mate of mine was giving a quote for removing the EWS tank from the roof of Pressed Felts at Colne a few years ago. He went on the roof to have a good look at the tank and shouted down to the manager asking him what plans he had for the fish. The manager would not believe there were fish in the tank until he went up and had a look for himself. Colne Anglers removed them to the lodge up Lenches. Nolic

[Stanley]

Nice one Comrade. Reminds me of the time when a man who was a patient at Giggleswick when it was a mental hospital went fishing in the water tank on top of the boiler house at Settle Creamery (he worked there). We all stood round to have a good laugh but when he pulled the first good sized trout out we fell silent. Northern Dairies had been illegally topping up the tank with water from the Ribble and because they were using a contractor's diaphragm pump it passed the trout through uninjured. The lad wasn't as daft as we thought......

[Tizer]

Did the mill lodges ever get a surface covering of duckweed, Lemna? The ditches here in the Somerset Levels get covered with it and it makes a thick layer, causing the water below to go anaerobic and any animal life to die out. Like the fish eggs, it gets carried and spread on birds' legs. Worse still is that we now see azolla (Azolla filiculoides) covering the ditches and it's more vigorous than duckweed. Azolla

[PanBiker]

Wellhouse had Water Lilies in patches in the middle and Bulrushes around the margins and some pretty big goldfish, and three and ten spined sticklebacks. A pair of swans used to nest on the far side of the dam in summer, the banking round was grassed and it was quite idyllic in summer.

[Stanley]

Tiz, one of the factors that militated against rampant growths like green algae or chickweed was the fact that there was always a slight amount of oil contamination. On Bancroft dam the ducks and moorhens seemed to be immune to it, we had a thriving colony. I never saw a fish in there, not even a dead one. One of the things that always struck me when we drained it was that there were always duck eggs laid on the silt in the bottom. I never really understood this as I had always believed that one infallible test for the freshness of eggs was that they sank in water, the ones that were off floated to the surface because of the gas in them. That doesn't happen with duck eggs.....

[Stanley]

That remind me of the Muscovy ducks and geese we had at Hey farm. Both lots flew and left home each morning, returning at night. One hard up Xmas I waited behind the thorn tree in the field and shot one of the geese as they came in. We had it for Xmas dinner and while it was a bit tough it was OK. The following spring, as usual, the geese laid their big clutches of eggs in their favourite hedge bottoms round the field and we didn't have a single gosling. I had shot the drake.....

[Tizer]

Perhaps it the eggs had been in the water a long time the gas had escaped. Your drake story reminds me of a local lady telling us how her husband was at the end of his tether over a heron that was taking his carp from the garden pond. Eventually, in desperation and against her wishes, he took his air rifle and hid himself behind a bush a little way from the pond and waited. She watched from the window and was amused to see the heron standing on the fence behind him and watching. She didn't tell him and he never got it.

[Stanley]

Herons can clean the fish out of a pond or small beck very efficiently. I remember going up Burton Dale in the 1970s and was told that a couple of herons had cleaned the local beck out and then departed.
Tiz, your story about the bloke with the air rifle reminds me of when I was doing Ellenroad. I had problems with pigeons in the engine house flapping about and bringing down all the dust from the roof on the clean engine. (You'd be amazed at how much muck one sparrow trapped in a house can bring down) I got a high powered air rifle and shot them but I didn't tell anyone, it would have caused too much trouble, but pigeons are like rats when they are in the wrong place. Also very dangerous when they contaminate a roof space with droppings. Never go anywhere near dried bird muck without efficient breathing protection.