Re: Priestly Clough
 

Yea I remember doing that!!!

Re: Priestly Clough
 

It was easier to take the high bank and then come back down to the river level...oh yes and throw sods at the numpties swinging along the pipe....

Re: Priestly Clough
 

Anyone know why "Black Rock" was filled in all those years ago :help:

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Some bungalows were built in Willows Lane , just below Miller Fold , and I think the debris from the building work was dumped in Black Rock .

Re: Priestly Clough
 

Fly Tipping did for Black Rock?????

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There was a fence of sorts but it was easy to pass. I also had my dog with me and I didn't lift it over any obstuctions. The only thing I was concerned about was she kept taking small drinks of the water as we zig zagged across the beck. The water still looks a bit industrial.
I've attached a pic (if it works) of the old cottage at the start of my off the path walk up to the Red Barn field. If this works I'll attach a few of the pipes we use to cross as kids.

Re: Priestly Clough
 

OK here's three more pics. The first is the bit of a jungle where there was a fence of sorts. In the beck there is a small water fall. The next pic is the Red Barn Field, don't know where the big pipes came from they weren't there when I was a kid. The last on is the Red Barn field pipe, just before the clough narrows.

Re: Priestly Clough
 

OK the last four pics.
The first is the clough above Red Barn, the next is the second pipe over the beck. The third is the bridge just before five arches and the last one is the bridge that replaced the five arches.

Re: Priestly Clough
 

Takes me back abit this photo's, thanks for taking them! Not much of a bridge to replace the 5 arches!!!!

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Thanks . I'll have a look around where you have taken the photo .

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Anyone know if the stream/beck through the clough had a name??

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First, absolutely loved looking at John Conway's photos - thanks v much; second, my maps name the stream "Woodnook Water".

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Yes it is Woodnook Water...or at least that is what we always knew it as.

As for those pipes going across the beck...they were there when I was a child(there were three sections of the beck crossed by wide pipes)........though they did not have the metal 'frill' on them to prevent you from walking along the pipe . I know this because my brother was once showing off.......walking along the pipe like a tightrope walker.......pride comes before a fall...and fall off he did, into the water.......got his school blazer soaked and his bum tanned when we got back home to Riley's Hill.
My memories are from the late fifties(57/58)

Re: Priestly Clough
 

Was that your Mick?

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It was indeed. We went up to the five arches after he fell in he brook. We dare not go home.
Ma would have skinned us alive.
We made a fire under the arches to try and dry his clothes, but we were sprung because we reeked of smoke when we got in - that and the fact that his green blazer had run into his white shirt. We all got leathered for our pains. Me, because I was the eldest and should have known better.

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Who was a mate of mine back in 60s, Still mates but rarely see each other these days.;)

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See Cashy...we are almost related :D

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Those pipes were installed to divert the efluent from the dye works up Bash till it went past the mills on the factory bottom, before that the mill owners were up in arms about it, the dirty water was damaging their boilers, they had frills on those pipes when I first saw them, that was before you were born.

Re: Priestly Clough
 

Just stumbled across this old thread. I grew up in Woodnook - Hudson Street in the 60's.
Priestly Clough was our playground too.
Picnics and paddling - the water wasn't that bad IIRC.
Just hearing the name 5 arches, brings it flooding back!
I brought my now wife up there back in the 70s to show her what a special place it was and ended up proposing to her on the bridge which is down at the lodge end if I remember correctly.
As a nipper, I remember the steam trains struggling up the hill to Baxenden - clouds of steam billowing up over the valley.

On another topic - we were still breaking in to the shelter under Riley Hill in the late 60s.
It was a labyrinth of passages... at the end of each it formed a 'Y', and then another, making a honeycomb pattern. There were escape holes and hatches buried in the hill, which several groups of kids unearthed. It was bulldozed in the 70s I think, but it was a great place for an adventure!

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I lived on Riley's Hill and only knew of one of those tunnels.
I thought they were part of the coal workings which went under the hill.
As children we were warned about going into these workings. My mother told us she would 'skelp our aces' if she ever heard about us having been in there.....she was a formidable woman(she still is) so I never ventured in there......that isn't to say our lads didn't......but they were never found out if they did.

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Wouldn't mind betting the one i mated wi did?:D

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Cashy, I have no doubt whatsoever about that. :D

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Last time i went up T clough i was about 16. Went walking with a young girl from our area. Think she was called Marion Holden or something like that. It was pouring down and we had to shelter in a workmans type of tent on top of the rock. Only kids.

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Living on Belfield Rd. Priestly Clough was my playground. Somebody mentioned the lodge behind Hingham’s works; well that is where we would fish with a net for "Sticklebacks". Unfortunately one day when I was about 7-8 I fell into the lodge and being a non swimmer I was soon in Trouble. Fortunately as it was Sunday a couple came by and the Young man rescued me. It was Derick Briggs who also lived on Belfield Rd. If Things had turned out for the worse, I wouldn't be writing this article today!

Cheers

Philip Kenyon
Late of Belfield Rd.

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Do you mean the original mill pond top of bath st near the footpath?

I use to get warned all the time about the dangers of playing around that area there was also platts lodge too.

Glad your alive to tell the tale ;)

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Yes exactly the mill Pond to the right of the footpath.

Cheers

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I remember I was once looking for frogs and things on the banks of the rectangle-shaped lodge to the side of Nelson's farm. This would be around 1960. I stepped in, just at the shallow edge, and my feet started to slide down the sloping banks and into the deeper water. I panicked, not being able to swim, and the lodge looked very deep. After what seemed like an eternity my little brother reached for my hand and pulled me out. Never forgot that! :eek::eek:

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A bit history about the clough on this picture :)

Attachment 47658

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Be around that then wintertime Turtle, mates and me ventured out onto Nelson's Lodge when frozen. The groaning and cracking of the ice as it took the weight of 4 or 5 of us Woodnookers, scared the bejazus out of me and offski I went.

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Long before 1960...during a pretty cold winter we(my brothers and I) went to survey the lodge.
This was a place that we were forbidden to go, unless with an adult...and we weren't.
Both of the lodges...the big one and the little triangular shaped one, were frozen over.
My brother Michael wanted to skate on the frozen ice and squeezed through the railings.
I pleaded with him not to go onto the big lodge.....but he did not listen to me.
The ice cracked and into the freezing water he went. He could not swim and the shock of the cold water had sort of stunned him.
I saw a thick branch lying in the wooded side of the lodge and I managed to get hold of it.
I held this out to him and with the help of Peter(another brother) we managed to fish him out.
We took him home, blue with cold and shivering and shaking.
He dared not go in the house...fearing what Ma would say.
She came to the top of the back steps and flung a bucket of cold water over him saying
'you like water????? I'll teach you to like bl**dy water'
he was then brought into the house and had his bar bum paddled , then he was wrapped in warm clothes and sent to bed to consider the error of his ways.

It made no difference he was always in some kind of scrape...as Cashy will no doubt attest to.

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Poluted and devoid of fish in the 70's! - 80's ?

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I lived in the farm house at that time so I must know you