If it is only one percent as good as this site then it will be okay.

You have done a really good job Mel, we just need the input now, hopefully from people who can answer all our questions------dream on Gloria.

Thanks Gloria.

It was originally only going to be a resource site, somewhere to pop in and have a look but after discussions with Roger Frost, Gloria and one or two others with an interest in the area we thought it a good idea to have the facility to add queries. It is not the intention to replicate OGFB...that is impossible... but it is frustrating that there is so little info availble for Briercliffe on the internet. Hopefully that will all change.

Thanks Stanley. I have copied a couple of my own posts that relate to Briercliffe...like the Sutcliffe wills and a couple of extracts from Rogers book.

I will be adding a picture archive to the main site when imindoors has the time to go through the coding with me..sometime this week. 

Got to get more content there to get the punters in!

Just a nudge for anyone who wants to have a look.

Stanley, there are mill chimneys and engines in Harle Syke, but you probably already know that, probably been up them.

Gloria. I know Queen Street well.  My mate Robert had an offer for it on the table at Burnley Council for over five years.  Here's a bit from me memoirs....

1984 was a year for looking in new directions. Knowing that I was finishing at PHC in September concentrated the mind wonderfully. I tried several avenues before I finally settled down, they were all interesting but for one reason or another didn’t come to anything.

The first was when a mate rang me up and asked me whether I knew that Burnley Council, in partnership with Pennine Heritage, were looking for somebody to manage the conversion of Queen Street Mill at Brierfield into a heritage attraction. I didn’t know it was on offer but got the papers and applied for the job. I was interested in this because it was right up my street. It was relatively near home and Queen Street was exactly the same set-up as Bancroft Mill. It was a technology I understood perfectly from my previous experience and my time at Pendle Heritage had taught me a lot about managing heritage attractions and interpretation. On the face of it I was a good candidate for the job. Queen Street was the last complete steam driven weaving shed in the North of England, or so everyone believed at the time. There was no doubt in my mind that we had to save one and this was the candidate so there shouldn’t be any problem getting funding. My only worry was the position of the mill and the prospective partners in the enterprise. I had seen Pennine Heritage in action before and wasn’t very impressed by them for a variety of reasons. I have to admit that my crap detector was on its highest sensitivity setting when I went for the interviews!

I forget exactly when the interviews took place but it was a three day process at Queen Street Mill. I only knew one other person who had applied and that was Anna Benson who had helped Ian Gibson during the conversion of Higher Mill at Helmshore into the Museum of the Lancashire Textile Industry.
The interviews started well enough but when I went in front of the panel which included the Planning Officer from Burnley, David Fletcher of Pennine Heritage and his manager I was struck by the fact that they seemed to be spending more time selling the project than actually enquiring what my qualifications were. It was almost as if they were putting on an act for the council to convince them that they knew exactly what they were doing. At one point they told me what a wonderful boiler and engine there was driving the mill. I said that it might not be as good as they thought and showed them pictures which I had with me of the inside of the high pressure cylinder on the engine. I had these because a couple of years earlier I had helped Newton repair the engine when it broke a piston ring because of lack of lubrication. The broken ring had ploughed a groove in the cylinder bottom and the management hadn’t done anything about it beyond replace the ring because they knew they were going to shut down. I also pointed out other major faults on the engine, the fact that the low pressure was so badly worn that the piston rod was running in the bottom of the metallic packing and the flywheel had loose keys. I also detailed the faults in the economisers and the boilers including the fact that they would certainly have asbestos in the settings. In case you are thinking this wasn’t the best technique to adopt, I wasn’t interested in working with someone who couldn’t accept the truth. They didn’t make any comment beyond the fact that they were impressed by my knowledge of the plant The day’s interviews finished and we all went home to prepare for the next day. At this point I was told I was still in the running.

Late that night I got a phone call from a mole of mine in Hebden Bridge where Pennine Heritage were based. He told me that he had been informed of a conversation earlier that evening which had been overheard in a pub, he didn’t say where. My name had been mentioned in respect of Queen Street and I wasn’t going to get the job, he also told me who would get it and why. I digested this, went to bed and the following day presented myself at Queen Street. When I got there I had a word with Anna Benson and told her she was going to get the job. She said this was daft because I was the obvious candidate and asked me how I knew but I kept quiet. However, I told her that the reason she was getting the job was because Pennine Heritage thought they could control her. I advised her that if she took the job she should try to do it on secondment from the Lancashire Museum Service because in my opinion it had the makings of a disaster. I then formally withdrew from the interviews giving no explanation beyond the fact that I had changed my mind. I called in to see David Moore on the way home and I can still remember what he said to me after I explained what had happened. He said I had acted correctly, he was glad I hadn’t caused a stink and wasn’t it funny how something that looked so good one week could turn into a can of worms so quickly!

All good fun.

At least the mare won't expect me to babysit, pick up offspring from school etc etc. AND I can sell it.

I was speaking to a friend yesterday who told her two daughters there was no way she was going to look after their children so not to ask, she had done her thing.