SKIPTON

Skipton is a delightful market town.  There is a big comprehensive interesting livestock market just out of town and three days a week there is a general market up the main street.  It is not a dead town but a bustling thriving place with a good range of shops.  In addition it seems to welcome boaters as there are decent moorings for visitors.  Pennine Boats has good hire boats and day boats as well as giving cruises so the waterway can be quite active.

The bit of wall in the photo above is located in a very odd place and I am sure many people never see it despite being on the edge of the bus station.   The pavement to the main road is on the other side and I have to say I never really noticed this 'Skipton' wall until it was pointed out to me once.  But it is clever and makes me think there is an opportunity for creative dry stone walling.  A niche market for a dry stone waller with artistic flair to bring some subtle images into walls.  In fact the CVB have a qualified dry stone waller as a Joint Master.   Maybe he will see an opportunity here to differentiate himself and make a bit of brass as a dry stone wall artist.

Pennine Boats is just through the bridge and there is a very good fish and chip shop on the road on the right over the bridge.

But while we are looking there is something odd about the narrowboat on the right of the picture above.  It is basically designed in the traditional shape but it is significantly different and too long for the canals up in the north.

So at around 70 feet it is too long for the Leeds and Liverpool canal which has locks around 61 feet maximum and maybe less.  In narrowboat terms the front cover is called a cratch and this has one in the middle as it is actually two boats, one fitted inside the other.  The owner wanted more space and the boatyard here in Skipton built another boat to fit on the front.

The wood 'pallet' it a bit of a platform to fit around the bows to give a level deck, when it is down, and rests over the locking turnbuckle. one each side.

So the front boat fits snugly and rigidly around the bows of the main boat.  The cratch can be raised up with extensions to its frame to give more headroom inside.

It makes for a very long boat but probably no more so than in the Midlands etc where the locks are so much longer.  I suppose on our locks up here, the front boat is simply breasted up with the main boat and they go through the broad locks as a pair.  Not sure how much of a pain it is to keep taking it apart and putting it together though.  I was told that there are three such boats with this idea on the waterways.



While on the subject of boats here is Kennet

Kennet is a historic boat of the type formerly used on this canal and is owned by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal Society.  She was built for carrying cargo on this canal in 1947 and in the early 1960s ended up as a maintenance boat for British Waterways  Now she is a pristine example of her type.

Skipton, like Saltaire and other places, has many terraced houses.  I hope that no demolition maniac ever appears on the horizon to make changes as they are really good houses as far as I can tell.  The Saltaire ones are safe as there is a preservation order on them but I don't know about Skipton.  And mostly they seem to be on hillsides like these.

So this is the front of how many look.

Let's look at a doorway

As in Saltaire, they have a 'hole to the side of the doorway.  Some bigger terrace houses have a small front garden and this hole can be to the side of the front gate in the garden wall.  It is not for milk bottles!  In fact when these were built, and later, milk was delivered out of a can with a ladle into a jug left outside with a little embroidered/crocheted cloth on the top of it held down with beads around the edges to keep the dust and flies out.  And it would be delivered by a chap in a horse drawn milk float straight from the farm.  

I searched high an low on and off for two days for an original cast iron fitting, As you will see if you look closely there are three locating points in the stone.  Well actually in this case you can only see one as the two side ones have been pointed over.

And here it is -

Boot scraper

I don't know if it is the only one in Skipton but I could not find another that was complete like this, if somewhat eroded.  I found another with the central bar gone but that is all.

It is a boot scraper.  And in Saltaire the same was provided for all the terrace houses.

Nowadays they have other uses!

At the back of the houses there is the 'service alleyway' which stikes me as a brilliant idea.  Children can play, cats can roam in safety and today it can be filled with wheelie bins!  Wonderful cobbles with a central drain

The other thing about the back of these properties is the little yard with the coal place (coil oil) and the outdoor closet, which I presume was an earth one originally.

Here is the end of one in the standard shape with the two cast iron doors or hatches.  Mostly they came from Mamby & Bros of Skipton who had a very good ironmongers establishment

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Some have knobs and some a slot for a handle

Anyway, the top one was for the coalman to empty his bags of fuel into the 'coil oil' and the bottom one would be for the night soil men to empty out the 'toilet' I think.  As a small boy I lived on a farm and we had a two seater outdoor earth closet so one could sit there in company and use the small squares of old newspaper hanging by their corners on a string.  That one had a bottom opening like these but I don't recall ever seeing it cleaned out by the night soil men.  Maybe these houses also had a wash house.  I know we had one with a big copper bowl set in brick over a fire hole for boiling.  

I asked one or two very old looking locals about these things but maybe they were not as old as me as they didn't seem to know about the history of their property, or maybe they were much older as they seemed totally vague on the subject.  I suppose the insides of their little buildings were presumably converted to something else years ago and all that is left are the original walls in some cases and some lumps of cast iron on the outside.

This house was interesting

It had decorative quoin stones.  Here is one.  Were they originally part of something else and reused as separate stones or are they individual and representative of something?

Just as a final thing about houses, here is a 'hanging ground', for properties near the canal, which is behind the trees on the left.

Skipton - bikers

There was a flock of geriatric bikers passing though Skipton one day, mostly on geriatric bikes .

They were on a run from John O'Goats to Lands End to raise money for Parkinsons

The bike below is a beautifully turned out Velocette

And these two were not part of it but came to lend their support.

And this big chap was with in a group of three on big bikes on another occasion.  He spent a lot of time standing by his bike, it being the finest off them all!  It is a Triumph,  He spent most of it glued to his phone.  I suppose you need to be a big assertive looking bloke to have a bike like that

Reflection on the tank of the spotless Triumph.

Just before we left Skipton, Kennet came down the canal skippered by Chris Shave who used to own Snaygill Boats.  I suppose he has something to do with Friends of Kennet who operate and maintain the boat now he is retired.  Snaygill Boats had, and the new owners have, very good hire boats as well as a big mooring and other facilities just a bit further on from Skipton centre. 

One or two of the swing bridges were exceptionally difficult to swing and the small narrow pedestrian one, Redman Swing bridge No 185 was stuck so fast that two fit men could not shift it and I had to get a crowbar under the tail end before it would begin to move,  In the past it has swung like a dream.  While the new Trust is working on its 'presentation' it might like to try all the swing bridges.  In fact as women seem to have to do all the work while the men stand and steer, it would be a good idea to send that fierce receptionist from the Trust's Leeds office to see if she could shift them. 

Not least the one below, Cowling Bridge No 191!

I do not understand this,  This farm has moorings all along its field side so it is making some brass from boats.  Yet this bridge is used as a passage for its herd of cattle to drift back and forth from fields over the other side of the canal, which is understandable.

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But the problem is there is a dip by the gateway to the farm and that is a big pond of slurry and the bridge roadway is deep in the stuff.  Slipping and sliding about in that muck trying to open and close the bridge is no joke.  OK it is a farm and one expects a bit of cow shit but not to this extreme!  I don't think in the many times I have passed this way it has ever looked as though it has had a bit of a scrape.  I suppose they work on the principal that if left long enough it just dissipates on people's footwear, into the canal, or dries out.

With one or two other bridges I had to get passers by to help me get them,moving.  I think this time I had more stress and strain with bridges than ever.  The foot bridge on the Three Rise at Bingley was so bad it had the Lock Keeper and me pushing with all our might while a rather startled passer-by had been induced to jump up and down on the tail end so that it would shift.


Anyway one can't have decent water without a heron.  Usually they flap off when the boat approaches to land a hundred yards - sorry metres - or so further on and repeat this until they get bored with it and float up back over behind the trees to where they like to be.  This one dwelt a little longer than most.

So this photo is of going back down Bingley Five Rise locks on the way back - in the second lock.

And who should be there!

Barry Whitelock MBE had been drafted in that day as the man doing it now was on leave or something.  How pleased I was to see him.  As I mentioned in a previous post the new broom of the 'Trust' seem to have demoted him to doing maintenance, litter collection and filling in for missing staff after spending more than half his life devoted to these locks. 

There is a bit more to come as we make our way back to on the next post.