SPOT THE DIFFERENCE!

[Stanley]

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE!

21 December 2002

We start the new year with a small quiz. There are two pictures this week and what I’d like you to do is spot the difference (if there is any!) The first picture of the wall with the small section missing out of the top is a bit of pure vandalism on Letcliffe. This is the boundary wall looking out over the valley and Park Hill reservoir which was all repaired last year. Someone evidently thought it was clever to push a section of it over into the field below. (Why don’t they use their heads!)
The second picture is the dividing wall between the top field and the field containing the toilets. This was one of the original dividing walls dating from when the park was a working farm and to my mind was an essential part of the traditional landscape. During the week before Christmas the Council demolished it. I asked the question and a month later this was the result. You can see the lighter section that was rebuilt when the demolition was stopped. It pays to be vocal at times!
While we’re up on Letcliffe, I have a small advance for you on the story of the Letcliffe Tank. I’m sure now that it was cut up for scrap in October 1932 and from what I can make out from the very battered picture I found, it was on the plinth which now carries the viewing station that identifies the hills on the horizon. I’ve always thought that was the favourite because if you look at the wall behind the plinth you can see where it has been rebuilt and the gap looks to be just about wide enough for the tank. The news item in the Craven Herald gave the date.
Another update on the small building at the bottom of Lamb Hill. John Northage called in to see me just before Christmas and he told me that his father in law, Richard Fellows, told him 40 years ago that it used to be used as a lock-up for offenders before they were removed to Skipton.
From time to time you may have heard me mention that there used to be a small steam winch on the island at the top of Salterforth Lane. It was used to give the horses a hand to get heavily loaded stone wagons up the hill from what, in later years, used to be Gibson’s Quarry on the right looking down the drag. I had mislaid the reference for this but remembered the other day that Jack Platt told me that it was certainly there just after the Great War because he used to watch it working, I think Whitham would be running the quarry then. He was originally a pork butcher in Barlick and had a shop on Church Street. He went into partnership with another man to run the quarry but he let him down so he gave up the shop, went to live on Salterforth Lane, worked the quarry himself and made a success of it.
Before this William Bracewell got possession of it in 1870. He had been made trustee under a deed of assignment for the benefit of the creditors of a former owner and sold the property at auction in 1867. In 1870 he bought it for himself. It was put up for sale next, together with the brickworks which went with it, in the dispersal sale of the Bracewell Estate in 1887 but I’m not sure who bought it then.
Right, that’s a few interesting bits and pieces out of the way. I’m working hard over Christmas to dig out more of your history and there’s plenty to go at in 2003. Don’t worry, I shall be stopping occasionally to have a large meal or slightly too much whisky. The first part of the agenda is to follow Jim Pollard through his career in the army and at Bancroft. After that, we shall wander where our fancy takes us.
Keep an eye on Rainhall Road School and ask questions. If you feel like getting up to mischief you could always quiz the Parks and Cemeteries about walls in Letcliffe, if enough of us protest, they’ll think it’s a movement! (If that last sentence reminds you of a song, give me a call and I’ll put you out of your misery!) (It was 'Alice's Restaurant' by Arlow Guthrie.)
Thanks for all the feedback and support you’ve given me, it’s so nice when people get back to me and let me know that I’ve triggered their memories off. That’s what local history is all about, we keep it alive by talking about it and in the end the people who will benefit will be our children and grandchildren. They will have some sort of an idea where they came from. Wonderful!

21 December 2002