Bygone Burnley: Catlow and Catlow Bottoms, with historian Roger Frost MBE

Burnley Express

Bygone Burnley: Catlow and Catlow Bottoms, with historian Roger Frost MBE 16-6-25

Transcript

00:00Today we're in Catlow just above Catlow Bottoms and in the background behind me

00:06you can see Catlow village which is one of the few surviving agricultural

00:14villagers still left in the Burnley area. Technically it's in Nelson but where we

00:20are is in Briarcliff. One of the main features of Catlow Bottoms is this

00:27Pack Horse Bridge. Now it probably dates from about 1560 to 70, maybe a few years later.

00:37But in Victorian times the people who owned this land put these extra stones on

00:46the top. Originally there was no wall at all. It was just a place for Pack Horses

00:53to cross the river in safety because as we will find out there are two Fords one

01:02of which rises very quickly and can be very dangerous. So they built these two

01:09walls over the bridge but after they built them Pack Horses could no longer use it

01:16because there's not enough width between the walls for a horse with packs on its back to proceed

01:29securely and safely. Now this is Stepping Stones Cottage which is right beside Catlow Brook

01:38which you should be able to see in the picture. Now Stepping Stones Cottage used to be two cottages

01:44it's now all made into one and in Cattle Bottoms there used to be five cottages so it's a little

01:51hamlet in its own right. The people worked in the woolen industry and cotton industry and there are a few

02:00quarries around here so some of the menfolk worked there. The thing to say about this part of the world is

02:09beautiful and as verdant verdant as it is now in the past a great tragedy struck this little community

02:20this was in the 1840s when there was an outbreak of typhoid fever now typhoid is a disease which is

02:30transmitted through water and a lot of the people in this area there weren't all that many

02:36but a lot of the people in the area caught typhoid and a young boy who was about 15 was showing a

02:46Quaker member of the church at Briarfield around the area and he was bringing relief to the families

02:54who couldn't have nobody working great unemployment and still torn by the typhoid fever.

03:04He came on the first incident to show the work around the worker was John Chapman who wrote a diary

03:13of his activities which you can still see locally in libraries and a fortnight later he came again

03:22to pass out food and drink and other things that they needed but unfortunately the boy

03:31was only about 14 15 was dead he died like a lot of other people in this area of a great but now forgotten

03:43outbreak of typhoid fever. We are at cattle bottoms now at the first of the two fords that are in the area

03:54and this one starts as a stream up to my left in the grounds of Burwains which is a very ancient house

04:05first mentioned as early as the 10th century although the present structure was built in 1642

04:12and the family that lived there the Briarcliffs the Briarcliff they were called and the family that lived in the next

04:19farm falls house were both involved in the textile industry and the folds family were known as ecroid

04:29they built a dye works just higher up the stream from where we are today and the remains of it can still

04:37be seen this is the larger second ford which is on catalog brook there are stepping stones which have

04:47been replaced after was washed away some time ago and when i was a councillor i have been replaced like

04:56they are but what is significant about where we are is that the stream we're talking about up to a hundred

05:07years ago just below where we are was blocked up and the spectrum we're looking at now was made into a

05:17swimming pool a natural swimming pool there was a dam but still alive water through but the water was

05:24perhaps two or three feet deep and we have a picture of children swimming in this natural swimming pool

05:35when the whole of this area was a playground for the local people in the days before people went on

05:43holidays they would come and spend a day here stepping stones cottage used to sell jugs of tea and mineral

05:53water and things like sarsaparilla and you could buy a sandwich or a biscuit or a cake and then you would

06:02bring your family sit out here before all these trees were uh were sort of grew from not being the land

06:12not being maintained i am standing on the remains of a small clapper bridge as i said there are two

06:19streams this is the smaller one is underneath so you can hear it uh the water it makes a delightful

06:26musical sound as we are here but there are very few clapper bridges left it's called the clapper bridge

06:34because there's one stone on either side supported by other stones but it's just a straightforward simple

06:43bridge like the others in this area but the most well-known of them are at white collar we're now in

06:52cattle village which is actually in nelson rather than burnley but the village has a very old name

07:01cattle two syllables low is the old english for hill and cat doesn't refer to the domestic cat but the pole

07:12cat which was uh uh sort of occupied this area another possibility would be um the animal

07:22that people keep at home uh but they aren't pole cats they are and the name is eluding me now but

07:29there are there are several varieties of animals that were called cats so cattle the hill of the cats

07:38we're in uh cattle court now which is uh old buildings mostly up form the farm building which had been

07:48converted into very attractive residential properties directly behind me is cattle hall which dates from

07:571616 although there was a hall on the site before that i remember another date stored on the building

08:05which seems to have been removed which reminded me of the fire of london because it was built

08:11in 1666 or possibly the year before 1665 but that's many years ago however as you can see they've made very attractive

08:22houses and cattle probably has as many people living in it as possible or has been the case in the past

08:32there is one farm which is completely still formed there were three farms here and there is a large house

08:42that was built by the family who ran the quarries and we'll look at that next these are attractive

08:48cottages in cattle village they were built for agricultural laborers quarrymen handling weavers over

08:56period of time they weren't all built at once and they make an attractive feature of the village

09:05now we're standing in front of cattle house uh in cattle village itself now it was constructed by

09:14the family that ran the uh quarries here and cattle quarries were very large and profitable quarries

09:22a lot of central liverpool is built out of cattle stone and it was transported from where the quarries are

09:31which we'll show you in a moment and taken to the railway station in nelson when it opened in about 1849

09:42and from the station which was known as walton signings it was carted off to liverpool

09:49to build the area around around st george's hall there's a square and a lot of the stone is is there so

10:02that it was a big industry here until the first world war when importing stone became a lot cheaper than

10:11paying people to quarry it here but these quarries had their own railway lines inside the quarry and i've

10:21got a photograph of them showing the railway lines in the inside the quarry another thing about cattle

10:28was that in the 19th century before the national health service towns were responsible for building

10:40hospitals and nelson decided to deconstruct a hospital for smallpox victims they built it here because in

10:50those days they thought that the disease was transmitted by air but the prevailing wings coming from the west

10:59would take any infection towards thursday and the benhives so in the background you'll see a bit of

11:07land that is a bit uh other thing and that was the site of the hospital on this side of the road

11:16not a few dogs there's not the worst that i was an isolate for other diseases other than the dreadful

11:26uh smallpox smallpox was a killer

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