Miscellaneous Pictures - Dunford Bridge and Winscar

Winscar Reservoir
Winscar reservoir is about five miles West of Penistone down the Don valley and it is high up, overlooking the hamlet of Dunford Bridge in the bottom, which is always named after its bridge. It has a spacious car park on the side nearest Hade Edge and a (now closed) toilets block. Gentlemen can still find a convenient use for the rear part of the block, as necessary. Most people arrive at the main car park and stroll along the road on the dam wall but you can also climb up the hillside to walk over the moorland. At the other end of the long dam wall walk is a boating club and a wide picnic area with tables on the hill beyond, accessible by road from the other side of Dunford Bridge or by continuing the walk from the dam wall. Winscar reservoir is owned by the Yorkshire Water company and it might be possible to walk all of the way around it, although such a walk is not on their website. The perimeter is 5km which is just over three miles in old money.

In the first picture you can see the sails of the boat club and the mast of the Holme Moss radio transmitting station in the distance. This was on a moody August day when the weather was alternating between gloomy cloud and bright sunshine, as I have observed it often is there. It was also bilberry-picking time, hence the blotchy hand. Winscar has some pretty views which photographers an joy and there are always some ducks and geese around, especially when there are plenty of people about when they will come right up to people. Visitors would be wise to dress for windy weather.

Dunford Bridge
Looking over the reservoir wall down into Dunford Bridge, we can see a scattering of houses which must have been built in the late 1990s after the earlier Airey houses there were demolished. The Airey houses had been built around the late 1940s using pebble-dashed concrete panels and were supposed to last for only about 20 years to accommodate the postwar baby-boomers. They were spacious and were indeed airy in that they were draughty houses with steel-framed windows. Inside the walls, the vertical reinforced concrete support columns became weak with time as reinforcing rods suffered a reaction in contact with high-alumina cement. The structures became weak over time and most Airey houses would be demolished, such as these and many in Penistone.

Dunford Bridge was also the home of the The Stanhope Arms, which had been a very popular food pub for many years. It was noted for its food, particularly its Sunday dinners. In the time of Edric and Ann Foster, they had a regular guest organist on Saturday evenings and other themed events. They had also held gala days and bed pushes. Some people might remember lock-ins with all curtains drawn, but one might not like to admit anything.

With the demise of the railway and with the line becoming the Trans-Pennine Trail, the Stanhope became a very handy refreshment stop for cyclists, walkers and horse riders until it closed. Perhaps its remoteness and some bad winters had sealed its fate. Incidentally, Dunford gets its name from the River Don, which used to be pronounced 'Dunn.'

The last two pictures are from one picture taken in December 2007 on a bitterly cold day. You can see a parking area for the Trans-Pennine Way. The last picture in this set is a close-up of the pylons, which looked interesting as they marched their way towards the moors of South Yorkshire. Plans are afoot to remove the pylons and bury the cables to restore the moorland view of the Don valley.

For further interest, take a look at Andy Smith's tour of Dunford Bridge on Youtube, under the name of 'The Village Idiot' whose mission is to tour all the parishes of the Barnsley Borough. The video includes the hamlet of Carlecotes. Also see Winscar Reservoir Ordnance Survey's 'Get Outside' guide, with an erroneous 'Barnsley' address, albeit with a Sheffield district postcode of S36 4TF. Even the Ordnance Survey can gets postal addresses wrong!

The Railway Tunnels
The Dunford Bridge hamlet is at one end of the famous Woodhead railway tunnels which cut through the Pennine hills. Two of the tunnels date back to the beginnings of railway in the mid-19th century. They were originally built to carry coal from yorkshire to the heavy industry of Lancashire. The condition of the old tunnels had deteriorated due to acidic rainwater from the moors and years of sulphur smoke from the locomotives.

A later third tunnel was built in the mid-20th century and the line would be the first in the country to be electrified using a 5kv DC system. It was ahead of its time in some ways, such as the use of regenerative braking to put waste power back into the system, but the line would succumb to Dr Beeching's famous axe and the line eventually would be closed. After the Woodhead Line closed, the later tunnel was not in use for a good time and it was possible to walk through it (as I did) before it was re-purposed as a route for electrical power lines to keep our Lancashire friends cosy in winter. There is more power generation on our side of the Pennines than in Lancashire.