00:00Today we're at Burnley Central Station and we're here because a number of years
00:08ago Burnley Council published this leaflet. It's called the Brum Valley
00:14Greenway and the walk starts here and it sort of wends its way across Burnley
00:22towards Briarcliff and we go near to or through several parks and what we're
00:31going to do is start here and explain why this is the was a good place to start
00:38the walk when this came out. Now I helped Burnley Council to produce this and it's
00:45been very successful. They've produced several more modern versions of this
00:51and what we have is a real facility for walkers and cyclists and it's one that
01:01should be better known than it is. So we'll start here at Burnley
01:07Station and we will enjoy our walk. Behind me is the remains of the Adelphi. It's a
01:18terrible ruinous state and should have been dealt with years ago but the
01:26council has never been able to find the money to do it. However Adelphi is on
01:32Railway Street and in the past Railway Street was a really vibrant street. We've
01:39got photographs of it showing the businesses there. I remember one of them
01:44in particular there was a soda fountain that made the most fantastic orange juice
01:50you could ever hope to drink. It was almost like soup really. It was thick and it tasted
01:59fantastically of orange. It was very sweet so the sugar might have had something to do
02:05with it. But it was wonderful stuff at the Southern Fountain and that was just down
02:12here. Other shops and another pub were in the area and we'll include a picture of
02:20what this street used to look like in the great days of Burnley Central Station.
02:27As we enter the park this image behind me of the natural history of the area reminds me of the
02:41dim and distant past when this area was known as Cronk Shaw Meadows. Now if you remember I've
02:48explained before you divide the word up into its two syllables Cronk Shaw. Now taking the second one first
02:58Shaw which is spelt as S-H-A-W or S-H-O-R-E mean both the same thing. Mean Woodland. But the interesting syllable is Cronk
03:12it's Cronk because this was where Burnley's cranes had their nests. Now cranes are very large birds
03:22they haven't existed in this area since Elizabethan times so the name must have been in use up until then
03:33up until then. But it survived until this became Thursby Gardens. So we're in what is now modern Thursby Gardens
03:43but in the past it was Cronk Shaw Meadows. The meadow of the cranes. As you can see the park widens at this point.
03:53At the early stages it's very narrow. This is because we're on an old mineral railway track. But to the left here
04:06behind these trees there was the extension to the Prestige building. That had its own railway line and the factory
04:16was quite a large building employing about 1800 people at one time. Of course the Prestige building
04:23still exists and we'll have a look at it later on. But behind me you can see the park going towards
04:34Colm Road. If you see any vehicles just going past in the distance that's Colm Road. But there are
04:41other old industrial remains that are worth showing you. And that's what we'll do now. Now this was a very busy
04:54part of Burnley. It doesn't look at all now. But behind me is the Colm Road bridge. And we're standing on
05:04where the railway track used to be. And the railway track linked Bank Hall Colliery and what was known
05:14as Bank Top Railway Station, later Burn Central. And coal from the colliery and other collieries in the
05:21area like Rulie and the one near Turf Moor were all brought to Bank Hall and then this little mineral railway
05:33used to go along this single track to Bank Hall. And coal was unloaded and from there it was taken
05:43all over the county and into Yorkshire. So this little walkway people don't realise what it was. But you can see behind
05:55it's a typical railway bridge isn't it? For a single track railway. And Burnley had lots of little railway
06:05lines. We're going to look at another one in a moment. We started this at the railway station, Burnley Central as it is now. And then we saw that we had walked along a mineral railway and now behind us is the
06:24remains of what in Burnley we call the Ginny Track Railway. Alternatively they are known as tramways. And it performed the same service as the mineral railway in getting coal from Bank Hall to the main line for distribution all over the county. But all that remains today, as you can see, is some stonework. And the
06:52is some stonework which formed part of a bridge across the canal. And on the other side, it went on an underground route to Bank Hall Colliery. And we'll look at Bank Hall Colliery in a future edition.
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