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An Old Parade
This was labelled as a Cycle Parade in the original album, c.1913. The banner
reads 'Society of Railway Servants of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales'
(Penistone Branch), which was the forerunner of the National Union of Railwaymen,
although there was an overlap in time of the two organisations. (This picture was from the 'Janet A' collection)
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Pumping Station Water Works
This next scan is of Hornthwaite Pumping Station which used to reside at the top
of Rockside, Thurlstone, on a lane near the bridge. The close-ups are from
the same picture. Now in private hands, remnants
of the old buildings are reputed to be still there but you would be trespassing
to see them.
Regular website visitor Paul Bradshaw put some useful information in the guestbook. Paul thought that the pictures were taken about 1958. The younger of the two chaps holding the pipe at the back is Eric Bradshaw (Paul's father) and the Landrover is the one that he used to drive for Barnsley Corporation Water Works. Eric also stood for the local Council with George Punt as his agent.
The older chap is Luther Heap who used to live down behind the Blue Ball/British Legion, near the S-bend of the main road. The chap at the front in shirt sleeves and glasses is Tom Wadsworth who used to live at Belle Royd Farm. The black baby Austin was his. They were stripping out the old steam pump and boilers at the pumping station.
Another guestbook correspondent, John Dale, has revisited this topic. John also knew Luther Heap (1900-1975) and wondered if I knew anything about his grandmother, Ann Heap (I didn't, as I'm not much of a historian). His grandmother, when living at the 'Crystal' in the early 1900’s used to get ointment, which she called Ann Heap’s Diachylum, from Ann who lived at Top o’ Town." John said that he still had some of this ointment but it was too dried up to use.
John remarked that Hornthwaite Pumping Station was sold by Barnsley Corporation for conversion to a private residence. He says: 'I have copy of sales brochure and plan. Auction sale was on September 28th, 1972 at Rose & Crown Hotel, Penistone at 7pm. Quote from brochure; "The property has the benefit of a five foot wide right of way from the north bank of the River Don into Wind Mill Lane". I assume it is the property that has the right of way, ie. not a public right of way, however, the bridge and subsequent stepping stones have been used for many years as a route to Rockside and Prospect.'
The flue chimney at top of the bank was pulled down by Hector Morfit. There was a path to the pumping station from the bridge across the river at the end of Windmill Lane. The bridge (which was washed away in 1929) and path to pumping station is clearly shown in photo in Vera Nicholson's book (Upper Don Watermills) on page 68. The Bridge was replaced by stepping stones, long since washed away.
Many thanks to Phil and John for their excellent guestbook contributions. John added that he also took a picture of the propped-up LandRover (below) in 1958.
Stottercliff Road
These pictures are from Wednesday 20th August 1958 and show water workers looking at damage caused by water which flooded from a nearby water installation. It looks as though the surface under the LandRover had given way and it had been propped up.
From 1977
This was the year of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. These were all slide pictures taken with a Praktica L camera
using Kodak transparency film. The first two are on the same one, taken from the top of Wellhouse Lane. You can see the beginnings of
Shelley Close off Wentworth Road. On the next row is a view from my Ward Street bedroom window. It looked across to Unwin St., long before it became Lower Unwin St. and you can see my old blue Mini Estate car, which I parked on the drive of Mrs. Symonds' old house. She didn't mind me parking there. These 'Airey' houses were prefabricated but developed a serious defect. Their concrete supporting pillars became eroded and they had to be demolished.
Number four picture of the church shows the old-style road sign for the one-way street. The last one is Dunford Bridge, when the railway lines and the electrical catenary system were still in use. Sorry that my old scanner is poor for transparencies. I will update these with better pictures when possible.
Emley Moor Tower
The tallest landmark in our area is the Emley Moor transmitter tower, about six miles away from Penistone. The below-left picture is dated as 1970, showing the very early stages of this transmitter tower being built off Jagger Lane at Emley Moor. The earlier steel lattice mast collapsed during the severe winter of 1969. A combination of high winds and freezing rain put tremendous pressure on the structure until it could take no more and it collapsed on Sat. 15th May 1969, at the exact moment that a friend of mine was repairing a TV set, within sight of the mast. All of a sudden he had no ITV and couldn't understand why. The customer rushed in to tell him that the mast had just disappeared from view.
A temporary lattice aerial was brought in from Sweden and quickly erected. It stayed until the tower was brought back into operation. A briefing to plan the new mast took place the day after the collapse.
At that time, we had only three TV channels to watch: BBC and ITV (both 405-line monochrome), the same BBC and ITV (625-line UHF monochrome) and BBC2 (625-line UHF colour). BBC TV on 405-lines (Channel 2, Band I) came from the Holme Moss mast a few miles away, which also transmitted national BBC FM radio as it does now. The BBC TV UHF signal was picked up at Holme Moss using a fairly ordinary Yagi TV aerial pointed at Emley Moor and was converted to 405 lines using a large drum-like piece of transistorised equipment before being re-transmitted on Channel 2, Band I using a powerful valve transmitter. A tiny EB91 diode valve was used to pre-distort the TV signal to cancel distortion in the transmitter.
You can see from the views above that exponential mast structure is a very prominent and graceful landmark. It now transmits TV (Bands IV and V UHF - analogue and Freeview digital), DAB radio (Band III around 200MHz) and some local FM radio (Band II), along with other radio services such as: PMR, utilities and even an amateur radio beacon 'MLE'.
Technical Details
The design of the new mast was started in June 1969 and the first contractor came on site in August. The tower was completed September 1970. UHF TV came back on 21st January 1971 and the obsolescent 405-line TV service on Channel 10, Band III came back 21st April 1971. The design consultants were Ove Arup and Partners and the main contractors were Tileman & Co. Ltd.
Foundations weigh 5,400 tonnes and go down 20ft (6.1m). Base diameter is 80ft (24.4m) and the concrete shell is 900ft (274.32m) height. Wall thickness at the base is 21in (533mm) and wall thickness at the top is 13.5in (350mm). The overall height including the aerial structure is 1084ft (330m) with an overall weight of 11,200 tonnes. The lift takes about eight minutes in each direction and I can tell you that the view from the circular gallery is breathtaking. The tower has a gentle and slow sway at the top, like a ship. (Technical details from an IBA leaflet.)
Odds and Ends
The first picture looks down Bridge Street.
Notice the catenary gantry on the railway bridge from the time when electric trains ran between Manchester and Sheffield via Penistone. The tall building was for a time Penistone Railway Station. The second picture is of my old schoolmate Kev Mc Shane. Houses on Shelley Close were being built around 1978 and he was about to move into one of them after staying for a while in the building which now has our local radio station. I helped him to clear the garden area of rough stones and throw them on to adjacent gardens.
Mark Twain: 'Action speaks louder than words - but not nearly as often.'