Boyd's photo diary. |
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aug21 test |
Sat 28 Aug 2021
Eric (70th birthday) and friends on Helvellyn Thu 28th Aug 2003.
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A huge Happy 88th Birthday to Cllr Eric Bell (Sat 28th Aug 2021)
a great personal friend and the best friend Whittle-le-Woods
will ever have.
Eric was the Mayor of Chorley and we climbed
Helvellyn in Cumbria (950 m. [3,117 ft] the third highest
mountain in England) on his 70th birthday for a sponsored walk.
Near the summit Eric wore his Mayoral robes for a group photo. |
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Cycled to Morrison’s car park, Chorley to watch 2 formations of
the RAF Red Arrows display team fly over at 17:35. They were on
their way from Blackpool to their base at RAF Scampton. |
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Fri 27 Aug 2021
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Today is Jill's 45th birthday so I'm using it as an excuse to
show some old family album photos. |
Jill at the Littondale campsite. |
Jill & Steve in Littondale. |
Jill at Tarn Hows 1977. |
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Tue 24 Aug 2021
Charlie Watts (2 June 1941 – 24 August 2021) |
Very sad to hear of the death of Charlie Watts (2 June 1941
– 24 August 2021) the Rolling Stones drummer. He was one of the
band's longest serving members, joining in January 1963 and
remaining a member until his death in 2021. He cited jazz as a
major influence on his drumming style. |
Charlie Watts in 2013 |
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Cycled to Dean’s & had a look at his new (second hand)
convertible VW car. 1,800 diesel. |
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Tue 17 Aug 2021
The Courier. |
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It was good to be back in the cinema for the first time in ages.
Saw ‘The Courier’ a true historical spy film starring Benedict
Cumberbatch as Greville Wynne, a British businessman who was
recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6 and a spy from
the CIA) to deliver messages to Russian secret agent Oleg
Penkovsky in the 1960s. |
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Sat 14 Aug 2021
The former Odeon Cinema being demolished Sat 14th Aug 2021. |
Gala Bingo (former Odeon Cinema) Oct 2016. |
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The former Odeon Cinema building in Chorley town centre is now
being demolished (Sat 14th Aug 2021). In more recent times it
was Gala Bingo and although the exterior architecture was rather
dull I always remember it as the Odeon Cinema and have fond
memories of going to see amazing films there in the 1950s and
60s. The Odeon Cinema opened in 1938 with seating for around
1,500. It eventually closed as a cinema in 1971 and later
reopened as Tudor Bingo in 1973 and then Gala Bingo which closed
in 2018. In 2016 I joined Gala Bingo so I could get access and
make a photographic record of the interior, which still had its
cinema decor. |
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Wed 11 Aug 2021
Grant's Tower - Wed 11th Aug 2021. |
Afternoon walk to Grant’s Tower above Ramsbottom.
Parked at
Nuttall Car park.
alt/long: 53.638828, -2.299242.
Grants
Tower is built at Top o’ th’ Hoof, Ramsbottom. It stands on the
spot where the Grant family are said to have first looked down
on the Irwell Valley, on their arrival in 1783. They had
embarked on an epic trek in search of work from Morayshire, in
Scotland, to Lancashire. The tower they built is a well known
local landmark but in recent times it was about to fall into
absolute ruin. |
Grant's Tower before collapse. |
The family set up the firm William Grant and Brothers some
time around 1800, and became a very successful calico printing
business. (Calico is a plain-woven textile made from unbleached
cotton). The four brothers William, Daniel, Charles and John
were all involved in the running of the firm. |
Grant's Tower before renovation. |
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In 1806 they bought Peel, Yates & Co. Printworks (owned by the
future Prime Minister Robert Peel) and just six years later
purchased Nuttall spinning factory, which they extended. They
also had a warehouse on Cannon Street in Manchester.
By 1827
they had accrued enough money to buy the Park Estate on which
they would construct Grants Tower.
Built 1829, 50 feet high,
800 feet above sea level, 4 flights of stairs, 84 individual
steps, 8 turrets at the top (two of which were disguised
chimneys for fireplaces below.)
The day the tower opened
there was a fair-like atmosphere, with their employees given the
day off. Refreshments were laid on and entertainment took the
form of races, games and singing. From then on the tower was
regularly opened on Good Friday and other special holidays.
Grants Tower has also been lived in as a house. In the 1850s,
the steeplejack James Wright stayed there with his family. He
had a unique method of setting up his ropes that did not involve
ladders or scaffold, but by flying a kite in order to fix them
to the top. It was said that he could descend his ropes at 100
miles an hour. Something of a showman, his perilous drops would
draw large, appreciative crowds. He was much in demand not just
nationally but as far afield as Belgium and America.
In 1880
it was lived in by the family of Mr. Nightingale, a forester who
worked for the Grants. After a severe storm one night they
thought it would collapse, and so were forced to abandon it, not
to return. The last person to live there was Edwin Waugh, the
dialect poet, sometimes referred to as the Lancashire Robert
Burns. Whilst convalescing from illness at the tower it is
claimed that he wrote Little Cattle, Little Care with the
refrain “Lie thee down, laddie !” in which he is speaking to his
dog at the end of the day.
By 1914 it was in need of
restoration and so a fund was set up. By then the local farm at
Top o’ th’ Hoof had become a pub called the Tower Inn and no
doubt Grants Tower was still a draw. It was used by the Home
Guard during the Second World War as a look out point, but
during the war years the council closed it as it badly needed
repairs. They also entered into negotiations with Peter Grant
Lawson to buy it. This was all in vain, for on 21st September
1944 the tower suddenly collapsed. No efforts were made to
restore it and so it has lain, falling more and more into ruin
as the decades have passed.
The owner Mr. Buckley has decided
to restore the building. The aim is to make it a partial but
stable ruin. Much of the stonework on the site has been sorted,
cleaned and put back into place at the ground floor level. This
has been repointed and the windows restored on the front and
side. There will now be only one ground floor room and this has
had a new zinc roof to cover it to prevent further water damage
to the remaining structure. |
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Sun 01 Aug 2021
Foundations for new houses on the site of the original Kem Mill. |
1848 map. |
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The old car park for Cheeky Monkeys at the junction of Kem Mill
Lane and Factory Lane, Whittle-le-Woods is now being excavated
for the new housing development foundations. For as long as I’ve
known it's been a car park but around 230 years ago it was the
site of Whittle’s main spinning mill, the original Kem Mill. It
is shown on the 1848 Ordnance Survey Map along with the
associated mill race and lodge to power the waterwheel. By the
1840s it was owned by Edward Leece, a leading member of the
Wesleyan Church. The mill was advertised for sale in 1858 after
Edward Leece was declared bankrupt. The new owner was Henry Ward
from Blackburn but in the 1880s he closed Kem (spinning) Mill
and filled in the lodge. He then concentrated on the adjacent
weaving mill which was on the site of the Cheeky Monkeys
buildings that are currently being demolished for more housing.
Kem Mill used to manufacture its own gas, partly for lighting.
The gasometer (gas holder) is shown on the map and one of the
cast iron retorts used for making the gas can still be seen on
Factory Lane. Many thanks to local historian Dave_P for much of
the detailed history and mill owner names. |
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