R-  About sixty ton I think in winter time, perhaps more.  But they had a boiler man on that hadn't much idea.  Now, the biggest change in the boiler house was when Tommy Almond come down. 

Tommy…..? 

R-  Tommy Almond, he worked for Brown and Pickles. 

Almond. 

(150) 

[Newton told me that they had to have all three boilers blowing off with full fires and water right to the top nut on the gauges in order to start the engine and cope with the load]  

R-  Almond, and they were without boiler man so they sent him down.  And he could get steam out of stones could Tommy Almond.  I never saw anything like him.  Charlie Scullthorpe left and went to the Armoride, a lot more money and I suppose better conditions.  And they got Billy Lindsay on, he came from Gargrave.  He said he  was a boiler man but they made about as much steam at Gargrave as if for brewing tea.  Well, having to come on to a thing like this, oh it was horse work.  And I were no

boiler man and my mate weren’t, not same as Almond were.  The only thing

that Tommy Almond got dirty were his breeches behind, he were really a marvel. he were.  It was amazing, he never used to get a sweat on.  Well it used to be running down off us, out of us pants bottom, really, were the sweat.  And that’s the difference  between one that knew his job and one that didn’t.  It’s all right throwing coal on and  even more coal  but that’s not the way to raise steam.  Because he was just using the same stuff that Billy Lindsay had been using and as soon as we started up you could watch the gauge and it were just going down and down.  And we’d to go down into the boiler house and three of us wiring in to get the steam back up again.  And then we’d leave him, [boilers] right, blowing 

(200) 

off and then down and down and down.  I tell you, I could write a book about the experiences in there. 

That’s what we are doing Horace. 

R-  But Tommy Almond were good, he were good on boilers, but he were nothing on anything else, he weren’t.  But he had two lads, worked somewhere in Barnoldswick and he’d been in a public house one day and getten fresh I think, and him being, bragging about being down here, and telling he were going to get his two lads in.  He said “I’m going to have yon two buggers out and get me own lads in.”  So we thought well, we’ve to be ready for moving before he moved us.  But I will give him his due, he were good on boilers, he were.  Oh it, we used to go in and oh what struggles we had.  When the steam were down and you were fighting to get it back up and get the engine going.  Then happen about an hour and down again, all Lindsay could do was open the door and look in.  Oh he were nowt!

(250) 

And the rubbish we got!  When there were a right coal shortage we got a lot of slurry.  All it were was breeze, they called it slurry.  It’s supposed to have been washed off coal, it were nothing but dirt.  And the first day it came, mixing it with coal, coal and this slurry together.  We did ever so fair, managed to fiddle the day out and went home and when Charlie Scullthorpe came up at morning to get the steam up, it were one solid mass, set everywhere this slurry, it were just same as if we’d filled the pipes with concrete you know, right up into the chamber above.  Everywhere solid, you never saw such a pantomime. [The slurry had set in the large pies which let the coal down from the overhead bunker to the hoppers on the stokers.  These would be shut off at the boiler when they burned off at night and had set in the pipes, blocking them.]  We got it cleared and got going, a man to each boiler but when it were going on there were no flame.  The only thing that came off it were just a blue light, just flickering, a black mass and just flickering.  So the job soon stopped, there’d to be no  more slurry.  

(300) 

So the next move, word comes through there were no coal for us, we could have some open cast but it were in big lumps.  [what Horace is describing here is similar to that described by Newton Pickles on Tape 78/AG/03 when he and Harry Crabtree were trying to fire Clough Mill on American Lend Lease coal in 1946.  The date is right as well.  This was brown coal and very poor.  I burnt some at Bancroft in 1976 when we got to the back of the stock pile, it had been there for thirty years.  It was terrible coal.]And they brought some big loads from open cast workings, big lorries were coming and tipping it in the yard outside.  And you know what ironstone’s like?  Well brown, that were all it were like, it wasn’t black same as coal.  Some of it were but the main were this brown stuff.  And people everywhere in Earby were short of coal and the first day when these loads come and were tipped in the open yard they were “Can we have a bit of coal?”  “Aye, go on, help yourself.”  And George Shuttleworth, one of the tenants, “Could he have some?”  So we put some in a sack and put it in the boot of his car and he brought it back the next morning!  Because we knew what we were using, using on the boilers, it’d hardly boil a kettle.  We had to break it right small, it came in big cobs and we’d a sledge hammer apiece.  There were a man to each boiler and they were tipping it in front of the boilers, and you were breaking it up and then throwing it on.  And all it did were change colour.  It went on, black and brown and it just went to white.  It didn’t go any less, it were the same lumps you raked out.  I know one afternoon after that come we cleaned out every boiler seventeen times.  It were just a matter of throwing it on and it 

(350) 

changed colour.  Of course the mill were stopped, just everything stopped, you had to struggle on getting steam up and get going again.  And all the lot went on like that just as though there was a hole in the bottom of the boilers.  My God, summer time and cleaning out seventeen times!  You just got so that, do you know, that day, when it come to night I couldn’t lift my arms up.  By Gum!  So that finished the open cast,  anybody that got any brought it back, glad to see the end of it.  But it were just brown, main of it were just brown and you’d a job to break it.  My goodness!

I've some pics of the engine at Norden.....  I'll have a furtle.


Stanley Challenger Graham




Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk