Albert Promenade and Wainhouse Tower, Halifax

That’s Albert as in Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband.  It was built in 1861 by Henry Charles McCrea, an Irishman who moved to Halifax and became a locally well known businessman.  He gave the walk to the town together with West View Park.

It looks down a rocky cliff, known locally as The Rocks, towards the valley below. This is the valley which has the Rochdale Canal, the River Calder, the trans Pennine railway and the A58 road all funnelling through a fairly narrow gap in the hills.  It is a convenient walk when the unpaved paths are muddy and gives some lovely views, changing day to day depending on the weather and angle of the light.

Wainhouse Tower is a folly, originally built as a chimney for a dye works in the valley below.  Above is the view of it from Albert Promenade.

And this is the view of Albert Promenade from the top of the tower.  More photos by AdamKR can be found here.  It gives a good idea of the plateau on which that part of Halifax is built. Off the left of the picture is an area known as Skircoat Green, the most expensive part of Halifax for property.  There is an area of about 73 acres of open land owned by the Savile Family from the 13th Century until 1892 when it came into the ownership of the Halifax Council.  

As ‘Skircoat’ came, so I am told, from the word ‘Schircotes’ which means building on the rocks.

Wainstalls and Luddenden

This morning was so bright and sunny that we just had to get out and take advantage of the weather.  We went past Mount Tabor and down a road which goes nowhere except past the popular Cat-i’th-well Inn.

We parked just before the Luddenden Dene Wesleyan Cemetery and walked along the narrow lane to the Cemetery where some orphans from Liverpool, brought over the hills to work in a local mill are buried.  We visited the grave back in February 2010 and haven’t been back since.

One thing I hadn’t thought of before was the amount of room left on the stone for further burials.

It is a lovely spot with views across the valley.  A shame that these children probably never got to enjoy the view.

At the other end of the Cemetery, where the modern burials take place, we found someone we had never heard of – though I wish we had known him as he sounds quite a character.

‘Sithee lata’ is our local dialect for ‘See you later’.

A Google later and I found that he was just known as Malcolm Lund of Wainstalls and died 31st March 2011.  He left 6 children and a partner but I can’t find out anything else about him.  If anyone knows more, I’d love to hear from you.

We walked on and I’ll just share some of the beauty with you – it doesn’t need words.

The last of the blackberries

A woodpecker lives here.

And home for lunch.

The Railway Children – Forty Years On

If there is anyone out there who has not seen the 1970 film, The Railway Children, where have you been for the last forty years? 

Written by Edith Nesbit as a serial for The London magazine in 1905, the book was published in 1906 and the story was adapted for television by the BBC in 1951, 1957 and 1968. The film, directed by Lionel Jeffries, came to the big screen at Christmas 1970 and was a great success. Since then, it has appeared on television on holidays, was produced as a video and then DVD. Now there is a new remastered DVD, produced for the 40th anniversary. I will not linger on the 2000 version of the film as I haven’t seen it and don’t particularly want to. Like countless others, the 1970 film is my version and I am quite satisfied with it.

If you watch it and don’t get a lump in your throat at “Daddy! My Daddy”, you really need to get in touch with your inner child.

The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, where the film was made, staged a celebration during the May Bank Holiday Weekend and re-enacted some of the famous scenes on each day with the help of local actors and, of course, we had to go!

It was a strange sensation to see the actors, in their costumes, mingling with the crowds of visitors. The railway is not far from us so we went on the Saturday, assuming it would be quieter than the Sunday or Monday. Unfortunately, the weatherman decided to aim one of his forecast ‘scattered showers’ right on Oakworth Station after lunch. This developed into a full downpour, mixed with hail, so we retreated home.  Alan went back again on the Sunday and took more photos in better weather.

More pictures at Railway Children Re-enactment and Railway Children 40th

Steam trains, nostalgia, beautiful countryside and people enjoying themselves – perfect.

A local Pugin Church

St Anne's Church, Keighley

Keighley (pronounced KEEthlee) is a town not far north of Halifax and we normally moan about its town centre as we navigate the heavy traffic on our way to the Yorkshire Dales. At first glance – or second or third, come to that – it has little to make anyone linger and Bill Bryson, in his book ‘Notes from a Small Island’, asks why the British Army uses beautiful countryside for target practice when it could use Keighley. He was joking, I hope.

The wider Parish includes Haworth, where the Brontes lived and also some of the Stations on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, as well as East Riddlesden Hall which is a National Trust property and it turns out that the town centre does have its little gems when we visited St Anne's Church a few days ago.

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin was an Architect and designer who is best known his work on the Houses of Parliament and especially the clock tower, better known as Big Ben.

Photo by David Iliff licenced under Creative Commons

St Anne’s was his first church design. The Church opened in 1840 and in 1846 another influx of Irish immigrants arrived to escape the potato famine.  By 1886, the Catholic population was 3,000 and 600 children attended the school next door. By 1907, the building had been extended to almost twice its length and the altar moved to the West end – very unusual
.
Now, the Church needs more work to keep the fabric of the building from crumbling. That is the price of good architecture..

The Church was locked when we arrived but the Parish Priest let us in through a side door and left us to wander and take photos. He even gave us a booklet produced for the 150th anniversary. Thank you Canon Gilligan.

The official Keighley website does not mention this historic building (or not that I could find!) but I found a dizzying panorama on this site. The Church has its own website and, if anyone has a few thousands of £s or $s to spare, I'm sure they would be grateful.
As ever, there are more pictures in my Picasa Albums.

The Rhubarb Triangle - Protected Status

Appellation Controlee (d**n, how do you get an acute accent in Blogger?)


“Huh? She’s really flipped this time.” You are thinking. “The Bermuda Triangle, yes. Everyone has heard of that – but rhubarb?”


Well it does exist within 20 miles of our home in a geographic triangle between Leeds, Wakefield and Bradford. Once there were hundreds of rhubarb farms, now there are twelve. We see the fields as we drive along the M62 but, what not many people realise is that the early, tastiest, sweetest rhubarb is transplanted, by hand, into long dark nursery sheds to be ‘forced’.


Workers harvest the stalks by candlelight to avoid damaging the young stems that are still growing – just as it has been done since Victorian times. Rhubarb was introduced in the 1800s from Siberia and flourished in Yorkshire’s cold and damp and, when the sheds were introduced, by-products of the woollen industry provided the fertilizer.


In the 16th Century it was imported and sold for more than the price of opium but it went out of fashion after the 2nd World War when more exotic fruits were introduced. Now it is back in fashion because it has only 7 calories per 100 grams and is a high source of calcium – what goes round, comes round.


Now, Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb has been given Protected Designation of Origin status by the European Union, just like Champagne. There is a BBC news item on the story, but I don’t think it is available outside the UK.  Sorry about that, but I don't think the BBC would appreciate me reproducing their news!


I sent the link to Alan via email (sad, but our studies are two floors apart) and his reply was:


'I really feel that anything involving being forced in sheds is on the dark side. This sort of thing is growing. It really leaves us in a stew. Society might crumble. Well, I suppose we might get acustard to it ........'


Sorry for the puns – that’s Alan for you!

Wainstalls - a Village School

When we were walking on the hills above Wainstalls on Saturday, we met a man taking photos who had been born up on the moor near Cold Edge Dam – about as high as you can get on the moor – and went to the school in Wainstalls village when he was five years old.  It must have been quite a trek for a little boy of five.  See this map for location. That got me thinking about the school, which is still there, and I found out some of its history.


The Elementary Education Act of 1870 established a system of ‘School Boards’ to build and manage schools where they were needed.  Only two fifth of children between five and ten were estimated to be attending school at that date.  There was some opposition to the idea of universal education  and it was not taken up everywhere – after all, if the working classes learned to ‘think’ they might revolt.  Most schooling for the poorer children had previously been provided by the various Churches, with grants from the Government who were reluctant to lose their influence.  Industrialists were keen, on the whole, arguing that a better educated workforce would improve Britain’s competitiveness.


By today’s standards, they set their sights very low.  Education would be provided from 5 to 12 years of age and the main thrust was to be the 3 Rs – reading, writing and arithmetic.

In 1876 a Royal Commission recommended that education be made compulsory and, in 1880, school attendance became compulsory between the ages of five and ten – though by the early 1890’s attendance within this age group was still falling woefully short.

Wainstalls School opened 10th January 1877 with 84 children, mainly part timers.  This meant that they worked, either in local textile mills or factories for the rest of the day.  I was surprised to read in the school log that by the end of January there were 221 children registered.  At this point there were two teachers including the headmaster!  Two local ladies helped ‘at times’ and monitors (older children) were used to teach the younger ones.
 
The population on the moors must have been much higher then.  We see the ruins of houses in the most unlikely places on the tops and some of the population would be itinerant labour brought in for lambing, shearing and haymaking, so student numbers probably fluctuated a fair bit.

On 2nd November the same year, the school was inspected by HM Inspectors of Schools ‘This is a new school, in a wild and neglected district, which lies at a great height and is terribly exposed in winter to snow and stormy weather.’ they wrote in their report.

The village is only 3.5 miles from Halifax but in 1886 the school log shows ‘Two wanderers from the moors admitted, 11 and 8 respectively.  Know nothing whatever but Aah!’

The local mills ‘imported’ orphans from Liverpool as workers and some attended the school.  That reminded me of a local gravestone which we photographed some years ago.  It is almost impossible to read the names but it says :

                                                   ORPHANS EMPLOYED
                                                                    BY
                                                         I & C CALVERT
                                                         WAINSTALLS
                                       MARY ELLEN CLARK AGED 14 YEARS
                                            ALICE DEVITT AGED 12 YEARS
                                      ELIZABETH EDWARDS AGED 17 YEARS
                                           JANE JOHNSON AGED 12 YEARS
                           SARAH SHAW DIED MAY 17TH 1892 AGED 15 YEARS
                            MARY EMERY DIED JAN 22TH 1895 AGED 15 YEARS
                    ANNIE STEWART DIED MARCH 7TH 1895 AGED 16 YEARS

What struck me as most sad was that the first four children did not even have a date of death recorded.  About 100 children were recruited over several years  from 1879 and the last one still living in the village died in 1966 aged 88.  It seems terrible to think of children being uprooted and taken across the country to a strange place to work in a mill but it was considered a philanthropic gesture on the part of the mill owners to give these children a ‘fresh start’.

It was difficult to get the labour the mills needed at Wainstalls as there was no transport from Halifax – just a horse bus which ran once on Saturdays.  The children under 12 worked ‘half time’ (41/2 hours) and were fed, clothed, housed and given a few pence a week pocket money. Once they were 13, they worked full time - 56 hours a week, Monday to Saturday and had to attend Church on Sundays.  Philanthropy or cheap labour?  (cynical, moi?)

Now the school has 140 children in five classes, its own website with weekly newsletters and podcasts.  The pictures of the children on the website are of happy healthy youngsters and I can’t help wondering what the first Headmaster would think if he could see it now.  Wainstalls school website is here.  Scroll down to the bottom of the ‘About us’ page to open the history documents.

A Favourite Drive

Yesterday was sunny and the snow had all disappeared from here, so we took the opportunity to take a drive out instead of walking Mac locally.  Once we got higher up, near Queensbury, there was still snow on the fields and roadsides.  It’s an overcoat colder at Queensbury, as they say round here.


We drove through Denholme which is on the old Roman Road from Ilkley to Manchester, though, apart from one straight stretch of road which follows the line, there’s no visible trace of it now.  There’s no record of a settlement there in Roman times but, not far away, Roman remains have been found along the line of the road.



It’s not a pretty town as most of it was built entirely by the owners of the local textile mills for their workers, which means narrow streets with rows of small terraced housing of no architectural merit.  The mills have gone now and the site of one is a new housing estate, while the other is up for redevelopment and who knows when that will happen?  The only trace I could find of the family name of Foster, the mill owners, is Foster Park.

If you buy jewellery in a velvet lined box, there is a chance the velvet was made in Denholme at Denholme Velvets which has an international reputation.  I had no idea till I looked them up on the web that there were so many types of velvet made.



We drove on towards Keighley, turning off onto the road to Hebden Bridge and climbed over the moors to Pecket Well, now more a dormitory village above Hebden Bridge but once more important as the road we were travelling on was a coaching route and The Robin Hood Inn was originally a coaching inn dating back to the 17th Century. There is a legend that St Thomas a-Becket drank from the well.  Pecket Well was originally called Becket Well so maybe that is where the legend comes from.

No lambs yet

We turned off the Hebden Bridge road at Pecket Well and came back towards Halifax by the high road (lane, rather) that runs parallel with the Calder Valley.  This would have been the original road before the valley was cleared and settled.  It follows, in places, the route of an ancient track across the country which made a trade route from the Irish Sea to the North Sea. Although the Ordnance Survey shows it as a Roman Road, it is certainly much older and Neolithic and Bronze age artifacts have been found along it's length, including above the village of Midgley. 


Taking narrow lanes with hairpin bends up steep hills, we climbed from Luddenden up to Wainstalls, parking above the village to walk along a narrow farm lane.  Up here, there was snow on the roads.  Coming from a much flatter landscape, I’m always struck by how the weather can vary up here in a relatively small area.

Above Wainstalls

It was the sort of day which makes me, in that moment, want to celebrate the winter weather.  Alas, that doesn’t last and we pulled back the curtains this morning to swirling snow again and have about another inch which is lying on top of ice.

We should-a brought a camera!

We went out up on the moors yesterday afternoon as the sun was shining for once.  Unfortunately, it didn't last and we drove through snow showers and watched them sweep across the valleys.  Still, it was good to get up high for a change and we actually went above the snowline - and down a no through lane, hardly wider than the car!

It wasn't a good day for photography but, when we got to Blackstone Edge Reservoir, we chorused our personal anthem - We should-a brought a camera.  The sun was glittering on the ice and it looked beautiful.

I couldn't resist going back this morning  (the sun was shining when I left) to take photos. 


It's not a large reservoir but was certainly necessary when it was built as it tops up the Rochdale Canal - which has 92 locks on it's journey over the Pennines from Sowerby Bridge (Just outside Halifax) to Manchester.  The Rochdale Canal was the first built to cross the Pennines and, if you are interested, it's history is here.


The only thing, I'll mention is that during World War II, barges were brought up from the canal and placed on the reservoir to deter the Germans from landing amphibious planes.  It sounds so unlikely but it is very high on the moor and not in a valley like most reservoirs.  The remains of the barges were found when it was drained for maintenance some years ago.

Although most of the snow has gone, it is still heaped up on the North side where the sun doesn't hit.


I would like to have gone round the side down a narrow road to take pictures of the length but the snow started again and I had a nice white jacket by the time I got back to the car.

 

I couldn't help thinking that this notice was a bit superfluous today!

The National Railway Museum

We visited the National Railway Museum in York.  I haven't been there since they had a big expansion some years ago and was most impressed
.
The engine above is The Duchess of Hamilton, built in the '30s and very fine.

The biggest disappointment was that the Flying Scotsman is still in small pieces waiting for the rest of the money to be raised for its restoration. In this economic climate, who knows when it will get done.

Possibly the most interesting section was the Warehouse.  All museums have stores of items they don't have room to display and this is no exception so they have opened up the store.  Thousands of items, big and small, are piled high round the room - everything from a warning notice that throwing stones at trains can be punished by 'penal servitude for life' to a chamber pot from the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras.


We highly recommend it - and entrance is free!  More details here

Winifred Holtby, Rudston

Winifred Holtby was born in Rudston and was a writer. Her bestselling novel, South Riding, was written using Rudston as a backdrop. She was born in 1898 and died at the young age of 37 in 1935 and was buried in the churchyard. Sadly, she knew she was dying when she wrote the book and it was published after her death.

I read the book years ago but, sadly, can't find my copy now. It is back in print so I might be tempted. It gives a good view of life in 1930s England and her writing is superb.

Added later : Thanks to Rosie, I have a new copy of South Riding.

Rudston Monolith

Rudston is one of the oldest inhabited villages in England and lies in the Gypsey Race valley. There are square and round barrows with numerous Neolithic and Bronze Age burials. Unfortunately, many of the excavations were carried out in the 19th century and due to the methods of "archaeology" used, little remains of the content.

Rudston is also famous for its Monolith. It is believed to be the tallest standing stone in England, Weighing 40 tons and standing 25 feet tall with a similar length believed to be buried beneath the ground. It is 6 feet wide and 2 feet 3 inches wide at its base. The top is now covered with a metal cap to protect it from the elements. It is believed to have been brought from Cayton Bay, situated on the coast 20 miles away - around 4,000 years ago, for some religious reason. It may have once supported a cross of some description, which has long since, disappeared.

At least this time I remembered to take a photo of Alan to give a size reference.

Boynton - Turkeys before Thanksgiving

We spent 5 days just outside Bridlington on the East Coast of Yorkshire at a small village called Boynton. The local church is a fine Georgian building, probably about the fourth to be erected there with elements of the previous buildings - except the first which was built in the 11th century. From the photo of the interior, you can see that the altar is not at the end of the church, but set in a space with rather fine pillars enclosing the chancel. Behind this, a railing separates the mortuary chapel of a local family - the Stricklands.

So what about the turkeys?

William Strickland sailed to America with Cabot in the 16th century in search of gold. They didn't find gold but it is claimed (though I can't find anything to support the claim) that came back with the first turkeys to appear in England. So proud of this were the Stricklands that they adopted the turkey for their coat of arms in 1550 and a turkey appears on their monuments in the mortuary chapel.

The Lectern was actually installed in the 1930 in memory of Major Fred Strickland who was an engineer and involved in the development of motor car engines.

The family seems to have been populated by 'characters', including one who became a geologist in the 19th century and travelled as far afield as Africa and Asia in his search for fossils, only to be killed in a railway cutting near Gainsborough when he was too absorbed in the rock formations to notice the approach of a train!

The Devil's Arrows

Since 1957 I have been travelling up and down the A1 which mostly follows the route of the Great Northern Road and links London with York and then Edinburgh. The Romans built the road and long straight stretches of it can still be seen, though it has recently been converted into a motorway along much of its length. When I say 'recently', I really mean that as Boroughbridge, where the Devil's Arrows can be found, was only bypassed in 1963 and now that road is superceded by a stretch of motorway.

So, I passed within yards of the Standing Stones without even knowing they were there!

They are three large stones of millstone grit which were erected somewhere around 2200 BC and so have stood as long as some of the Pyramids and belong to the same era as Stonehenge.

The largest is 22 feet 6 inches tall with about another 6 feet below ground and is over 4 feet on each side. The second is shorter and the third even shorter, though around 8. feet to a side.

As with all the standing stones and stone circles, no one really knows why people would go to the trouble of moving the stones over 6 miles from Knaresborough. The legend is that they were thrown by the Devil and aimed at Aldborough but he missed. More info here.

It's a shame that you can't see them all at once as the tallest one is on one side of a lane and the other two in a field behind high hedges. I forgot to take a reference shot to give a better view of the sizes so I've included one of Alan and Mac beside the tallest stone.

Moskva Cheryomushki at Leeds Grand Theatre

We went to the opera yesterday evening – but it was an opera with a difference! I had some doubts about a ‘light’ opera by Shostakovich telling the story of a 1950’s Soviet housing estate and the machinations of bureaucrats but it was a light hearted romp with a great deal of topical humour. We enjoyed it tremendously.

Cheryomushki translates as Cherry Tree Estate and the re-orchestrated version we saw is titled Paradise Moscow. For more info on the production and Opera North, go to this link

There’s a great clip on youtube here

We’ve not been to the Leeds Grand Theatre before and were most impressed with the fine restoration. Rather than run the risk of plagiarising, I’ll just send you to this site to read about its history if you are interested. I just wish there were more photos.

We ate first at a little vegetarian cafe almost next door in the Grand Arcade (alas, grand no more). At first sight it looked doubtful with unmatched chairs and plastic tablecloths but it served a very good falafel (my choice) and Alan had mushroom stroganoff, thereby messing up my planned menu for today. It gradually filled with opera goers and we topped our meal off with apple and gooseberry crumble with custard. M’mm! Thank you for the recommendation, Andrew.