Gate
 

I bet you all know where this is.

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Nope!!!!!!

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St Peter's?

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I can see why you might think that, Willow. But, sadly, you would be wrong.

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pendle street

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Pendle Street is close, but not close enough to be right.

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Hmm now you've really got me because I thought this gate led into the grounds (graveyard?) around St Peter's and if it was that one then it is up a little side street off Pendle St. Can't just think of the name of the side street but I'll come back on that. I might even go down and have a look. lol.

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is it perth st; am only guessing

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It's somewhere round there Mez. In a mo I'm going to go out and have a look! lol

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You see, it's all part of the plan. I'm paid by the Government to pose these ridiculous and annoying questions in the hope that some of you will be so frustrated that you will feel the need to get out of the house to go and look for the answer, which provides a bit of exercise.
It's good for your heart and your waistline. Well, that's what I was told.

Personally, I get all the exercise I need from trips to the fridge to top up the G&T and from trips to the bin to empty the ashtray.:cool:

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I didn't get there after all! I got distracted. Maybe tomorrow....................

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ha , ive got it rowland st,. do i get a coconut?

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Is that what it's called? It's a little side street off Higher Antley St isn't it? So where does the gate lead to?

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dont know it was too dark when i passed he he

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I was sure it was a gate to St. Peter's somehow. Now I've got to go and have a look tomorrow if I don't forget.:D

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well i would assume it was cos it looks as if it runs into church grounds

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:s_gupjump Well there you go then. I said St. Peter's right at the beginning. lol

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Hooray! Mez gets the coconut.

It is the rear gate of the house that is opposite Willow Mount WMC. Is it called Willow Mount too? I can't remember. I do know it became an old folks home for a while and then it was burnt out. Behind the gate on the right there is a coach house. Anybody know who the house was built for?

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Is this the one that used to be the vicarage? Or the other one?

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The other one. The Vicarage is on Perth Street, but this too is an old folks home.

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Well fancy that! All these years I thought that gate was part of the church grounds. I should go exploring a bit more often.

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wasn't that were dr chesney lived? im sure they lived round there?

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It's a lovely big house. Presumably whoever lived there as a private residence must have had a bob or two.

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I've just been down there having a look. It's a terrible mess isn't it? Anyway, didn't see a name anywhere but that doesn't mean there isn't one. I do have a feeling at one time one of those two houses was called Willow Mount Nursing Home or something like that. From the back (the gate in Rowland St) it looks as if the whole area could at one tiome have been enclosed by the same wall (church, vicarage and this other house) - did all the land belong to the church at one time? Could the house have had a church connection? A church school maybe? I'd love to know if anyone knows the history of that little bit.

I do know at one time the houses in Willows Lane were numbered differently on that side and that some time after 1900 some of the houses were re-numbered - ie the one at the junction with Ormerod St was originally 127 but is now 129. It had to be after 1900 because that particular block was built in 1900.

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Well here is an interesting little snippet from the 1891 OSmap. You will note that there is no Vicarage and that Rowland Street cuts into the garden. What do we make of this?

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I've got to find a recent map to compare to that A-b.

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So, in 1891 Rowland St ran straight through from Perth St to Higher Antley St, parallel with Pendle St. I've had a closer look, in real life, at the gate/wall and the gate shows evidence of being built later than the wall to the right as the stones are a little different. It looks like the vicarage may have been the building which caused the houses to require renumbering if it was built later than 1900. I wonder now if that house was the original vicarage. Do we know when the church was built?

There's an oddity in the back street arrangements too just down there.

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According to the info on the Accrington Deanery web page it is 1889 and is Grade II listed.

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The vicarage (ie the building which isn't on your map) was built in 1899 according to a stone over the door, so that puts paid to my idea of it being the house which caused the renumbering of Willows Lane because the houses which had to be renumbered were built in 1900.

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It gets better, the area bounded by Willows Lane, Perth Street and what is now Bullough Park wasn't built in 1891 and is just shown as fields. Ormerod Street stops at Pendle Street. So the mystery of the confused numbering is not going to be easy to solve. I dimly recall something being said, a long long time ago, to the effect that buildings were knocked down at the top of Ormerod Street to make a connection with Willows Lane. This a very vague memory and I stand to be corrected on this.

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I'm going to have to climb up a cupboard tomorrow to hunt out some documents which may help shed a bit more light on this. I'm intrigued.

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So am I. Get your crampons on girl!

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I've just been down the road (in the rain again!) and find the area around this gate very interesting.

As you can see, the wall further along seems to be of much earlier construction. Also, just inside the gate there is a curious semi-circular building. Any idea what that is and why it is that shape? I've also homed in on a funny little thing which sticks out of the wall there.

And then there is the curious case of the two back streets, divided by a wall (which you can't really see very well on this photograph) one of which is higher than the other.

I'm also curious about Rowland Street itself because the bright brick built houses seem so incongruous.


Right - off up the cupboard now to fish out some old documents.

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Looking at the 1845 map it looks as though the wall between the backs of Richmond Hill Street and Higher Antley Street is the remains of a field boundary which is clearly shown on the map and also on the later 1891 map. This could account for the lack of kerbstones on the Higher Antley side of the wall.
At the end of the end of the block, at the junction of Richmond Street and Richmond Hill Street, is an area enclosed by a red brick wall. This was the site, in 1845, of a house called "Priest Heys". The land does not appear to have been built on since then, I wonder why?

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Perhaps no-one knows who currently owns that land?

From what I can make of the documents from my cupboard it appears that the houses currently known as 123, 125, 127 & 129 Willows Lane (same side as the photos above, where Ormerod St meets Willows Lane) were originally numbered 119, 121, 123 & 125. I only have record of those 4 houses so I'm not sure how many more this affected.

They were built in 1900 but somewhere between November 1901 and December 1902 the numbers were changed. I had thought they were only changed by one number but now I see that they actually moved up by two. So sometime in that 13 month or so period two more houses were added lower down Willows Lane and presumably all those further up had their numbers changed.

The land originally belonged to the Church of England with ground rent payable to the church. On December 12th 1902 Rev Percival Saben, vicar of St. Peter's purchased 129 (the corner house) but his address was St. Peter's Vicarage which must have been the house next to the church (built 1899) which doesn't feature on your 1891 map.

Unless any of the owners have subsequently purchased the leasehold the ground rent is currently payable to Diocese of Blackburn.

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There is a patch of empty land at the junction of Perth Street and Willows Lane facing the Vicarage. there are Garages on it now. When I was a Schoolboy I remember passing there every day and noticing that there were stone steps leading up to houses that had been demolished. I seem to remember doors too.

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Interesting you should mention that. I don't remember having seen any houses on that land and today Busman asked me if anything had ever been built there and I said "No" because I thought it had only ever had the garages on.

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The houses faced Willows Lane and there were Garages behind them. The ruins were there until 1969-70. I think they were cleared shortly after that date.

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You wonder if that house with gate was vicars house once. Have you asked the church vicar today? Today he has a new house near Bullough Park. Why move away from next to the church so now he has to travel to work?

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I'm not sure he would know, but it's an interesting thought. Lol @ "he has to travel to work" At least the petrol crisis shouldn't affect his journey.

Gate (and all its mysteries!)
 

Well A-B, you have certainly got yourself a "good posting" here, eh? Most intriguing! Unfortunately I am not familiar with this area of town, so am learning a lot here!
I certainly intend to have a nosey around this weekend. The houses in Rowland Street, as WillowTheWisp mentions are certainly of a different brick. It appears there used to be a brick works in that area of town - THE HIGHER ANTLEY BRICK WORKS, started by the Pickup family in 1855. The site occupied by bungalows in Willows Lane. The quarry was filled and landscaped. The houses in ROWLAND STREET were built 1878-80 by this firm.
There used to be an old hall in that area "Priest Heys" also known as "Tewitt Hall", but dont know much about it.

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Mention of Tewitt Hall led me to this

http://www.accringtoncc.co.uk/history/early_days.html

The grounds must have been large enough to play cricket!

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So it seems from the link that the land around Priest Heys/Tewitt Hall was redeveloped in 1859. However, it seems odd that they should want to play cricket on what is one of the steepest slopes in Accrington. I thought that cricket demanded a "level playing field".

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It does seem the oddest choice of location doesn't it? I wonder if there could be some misinterpretation somewhere and in actual fact Tewitt Hall was justwhere they had committee meetings or something and actually played elsewhere?:confused:

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Cancel that theory because there do seem to be records of actual games having been played there!!!

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Try playing on the old King Georges or Highams side pitches or even White Ash (as was)...Level...no way.

The last football pitch on Highams (nearest Accy CC) was so bad the left back couldn't see the right winger as he was over the horizon!! When we played cricket on it, you could hit a cracking square cut "up the Hill" only for it to roll back before it got near the boundary!! :D :D

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OK, this is the site of Tewitt Hall. As you can see, not much room for playing cricket.

Was the field possibly on the opposite side of the road? Still surely one of the steepest locations, no comparison with King George's, Highams etc. How can you play cricket at a 45 degree angle?

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Excellent pics Willow. The site is pretty much as I remember it from my childhood. what the Brickwork was for is a mystery. I don't recall it ever being used for anything in my lifetime.

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A possible explanation occurs. The factories surrounding the site were originally buit by Bulloughs as metal foundries. Casting requires sand and iron,which would have to be delivered in bulk to the site on a regular basis. Looking at the the last two photographs can you see these bays filled with Sand and Iron which would be driven in to the site through the gate in pictures 1 and 2 and tipped into the bays below.

You can see HBC doing much the same thing with road salt, lower down on Brown Street.

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Did you notice that there are a couple of skips there? I wonder who owns that plot.

I also did a bit of a wander round the house relating to the gate which started this thread. When it was a nursing home it was known as Cliffe House. It is in a very sad state of repair now which is a terrible shame for something which was obviously once a very fine residence.

The last numbered house below it is 31, the next one above it with a number is 37. If Cliffe House was known as number 33 that would only leave one house number available for the plot which now has those 'garages' on. I could still see steps at the upper end but the rest is overgrown with weeds and not possible to see what else was there. I'm not allocating a number to the vicarage because the entrance is round the corner.

Of course it's also possible that Cliffe House didn't have a number which would leave 33 & 35 on that plot.

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Great piccy Willow...thanks. My wife was aghast when she saw the piccys of the house. It looks like a sound building , and with some imagination (and lots of dosh) it could be made into a palace. Unfortunately, the surrounding area isn't Park Lane etc.

HBC shoud be spending money on the renovation of sound stone houses and area renewal, without trying to resort to Projects such as Pheonix. No wonder our heritage is dying!!!

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Someone did mention that the house may still be owned by the same people who own Springhill House Retirement Home. I have no way of knowing whether this is still the case or not. It is certainly a crying shame that such a fine building has been left to rot for the last ten years or so.

Willow: given that there is only one number available for the empty plot, 35, it may be that it was earmarked for a single dwelling or maybe even a commercial premises.

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I think it was for sale once but then got arson attck. It looks better in photos than real because you cant see in photo there big cracks in walls. It looks more like falling down than strong sturdy house. Why make council take blame for not making it good? If it belongs to somebody it is there responsibilty not council. Big house could have lot of family in there.

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Yes in the second photograph if you look carefully through the tree you will see that the wall seems to be parting company with itself just to the left of the first story bay window. I'm not sure how serious that is. However, following repeated break-ins and at least one fire which Ifty mentioned I'm sure the inside of the building must be in a worse state than the outside. Surely the council can trace the owners and insist that the area is cleaned up at the very least? There's also an unpleasant smell and a considerable amount of rubbish around those garages.

The house with the Gate at its rear
 

Well A-Bob, you have certainly whetted people's apetite - I too went round to have a look at the house, what a disgrace, what a shame.

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That's an excellent photo Atarah. It just shows what a beautiful house it could be.