Saltaire Hydro scheme approved… maybe…

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Steve Bottoms

Just a brief note to highlight this story in yesterday’s Telegraph and Argus (click to go there)

Bradford Council yesterday gave its initial planning approval to the hydro power scheme for the weir in Roberts Park (see earlier posts under ‘Saltaire Hydro’ category on this site). However, it appears that the scheme’s opponents will fight on, and are raising the question of whether or not all the heritage bodies involved — given that the hydro site is in a World Heritage Site — have been properly consulted.

Personally I’d be rather surprised if due process has not indeed been followed with this. The heritage issue is the obvious one to address in this instance, after all, and UNESCO gave the plan its approval quite a while back. The T&A story raises a number of issues around who has or has not been consulted — but then it also claims that the installation will be a “giant” turbine, which is a bit of a daft exaggeration (given that the design is actually quite small scale). So who knows what to believe…

It’ll all come out in the wash, no doubt.

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A postscript to the above: courtesy of a Kirkgate Centre tweet, I’ve just come across THIS ruling by the Charity Commission – which was issued on March 26th (in response to THIS appeal by the Friends of Roberts Park). It would appear that due process has NOT – as far as the Charity Commission is concerned – been followed. Bradford Council may have got itself into a conflict of interest situation over proposing to parcel off part of the park for energy purposes…. Clearly this is going to run and run.

Talking and Walking (on Water)

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Steve Bottoms

We’ve had a busy couple of weekends, doing a lot of talking and a fair bit of walking, not necessarily at the same time. This photo was taken just this morning…

The location is Dockfield Terrace, and that’s my colleague Lyze (pronounced “Lizzie”, not “Lies” as one person mistakenly assumed — as Lyze says, “it’s my own fault for being pretentious”) standing with David, who kindly agreed to be photographed for this blog. David has lived in the Dockfields area since 1947 (that’s 68 years and counting), and is currently 500 pages into writing his life story — some of which we heard recounted as anecdotes! He’s one of the people who turned up to a community meeting that we organised this morning for local residents, at Q20 Theatre on Dockfield Road (thanks Q20! we are collaborating with them to deliver a river- and canal-themed version of their Shipley Street Arts Festival in June… more on that another time).

At the meeting we heard quite a few local concerns… everything from the need for speed controls on the main road (used as a rat run to avoid Foxes Corner) to very genuine concern about the wellbeing of this family of swans…

The swans have recently taken up residence on the canal bank above, having abandoned their previous nest — pictured below, on the track between Dockfield Road and the canal towpath…

… there was some debate among the residents who attended the meeting about what had happened here, but general agreement that at least one and possibly all of the swans’ eggs had been stolen by someone unscrupulous, and that the swans had been driven away from this spot in fear… Whatever the correct story, it was striking how much the residents concerns were with the canal, and its resident wildlife, as well as with the roads, traffic, etc. Even though Dockfields is a very industrialised area with little obvious green space, the river and especially the canal give the area something special that people clearly value… (For more on swans at this time of year, see Canal and River Trust’s page about caring for them.)

We’re working, in connection with Kirkgate Centre, to try to build community connections in the Dockfield area, with a view to ensuring that people’s concerns are listened to and acted upon. This includes understanding how their sense of connection with the local waterways might be a positive asset that can be built upon communally. We’re also working on the same process in the Higher Coach Road area, on the Baildon side of the River Aire. Last Saturday morning we had a parallel community meeting, this time kindly hosted by the Bradford Rowing Club…

What is Maggie Roe saying to Paul Barrett? Caption suggestions please…

Here’s Kirkgate Centre’s Paul Barrett, pictured outside the club after the meeting (on a gorgeous, crystal clear day!), talking to landscape specialist Maggie Roe — who is very struck by the distinctive layout of the Higher Coach Road estate (see other blogs on that!). And here’s a shot from inside the club, showing the aftermath of a very positive and productive discussion with residents… I love the fact that Paul and Sara are both checking their just-taken photographs of the post-it notes!

Sara Penrhyn Jones is a filmmaker who was visiting us for the weekend from Aberystwyth, in Wales (like Maggie, she is part of the wider “Hydro-Citizenship” research project that Multi-Story Water is now a part of). Maybe she’ll have some film footage for us to share on this blog soon. Here she is armed with cameras again the following day — Sunday 19th April — on the canal towpath in Saltaire with Lyze…

… the other people in shot are some of the people who had gathered to go for a guided walk with me from this spot. As part of Saltaire’s “World Heritage Weekend” celebrations, I led a version of our Salt’s Waters walk — which will soon be available as a downloadable audio guide, for anyone to undertake whenever they like… although on this occasion we went with the low-tech, interactive option. The walk goes from the bottom of Victoria Road in Saltaire, and then heads west along the Aire, via Roberts Park and the Higher Coach Road estate, before turning uphill – alongside Loadpit Beck – on the way towards what little remains of Titus Salt Junior’s Milner Field mansion.

A key feature of the audio mix will be Eddie Lawler’s beautiful song, The Ballad of Little Beck – written in honour of the unassuming stream that goes runs down through the grounds of Milner Field, and was once dammed as a boating lake. Eddie came along on the walk last Sunday and performed the song live, standing on the earthworked banking that takes Titus Jr’s coach road right across Little Beck (which trickles through at the base). It was a “shivers down the spine” moment, for me at least…

I don’t have other pictures of the walk, because for the most part I was too busy conducting it — talking and walking — to be taking photographs. But the merry band of travellers who came along on the journey were a great bunch to spend a couple of hours with. As I’d hoped, moreover, they had a good few suggestions (and one or two corrections!) to feed back into our work on the audio narrative…

So a big thanks to all those who contributed to a very enjoyable afternoon. Here are a few of you, enjoying Eddie’s music…

Bradford’s “Conceptual” Canal

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Steve Bottoms

Just last week, the new cycle route between Shipley and the centre of Bradford was officially opened. Broadly speaking, it runs parallel with the line of Bradford Beck — which also means that it traces the former route of the Bradford Canal.

This shot looks south down the green space that runs alongside the Canal Road towards Bradford. The canal itself would (as I understand it) have run along on the left, roughly where you see the path, while the Beck — then as now — ran at the bottom of the valley. This is the spot, in fact, where my short film Wading to Shipley begins from – except that in 2012 when we shot that material there was no such clear access to the Beck at this point (that new bit of fence demonstrates that access might be a bit too clear without it!). This next shot is a few yards further downstream past the bridge…
Here you can see the high retaining wall/flood defence that pens the Beck in at this point. The area to the left (east) used to be an impassable area of undergrowth…

But it’s now been cleared out completely in the construction of this path. Hopefully in due course there’ll be some replanting and other improvement because it looks a wee bit bleak just here…

As you begin to walk towards Shipley, the new path forks neatly in two directions. The main path follows what would have been the route of the canal, while the lower path heads down to a small footbridge across the Beck…

The bridge has been there for a long time, but access to it — and across towards the station — is now much clearer… also making the Beck that bit more accessible.

Here’s a close-up of the notice in the last-but-one picture above. Bradford Council (as it has done in other places flagged up on this blog) has taken care to ensure that this new path is designated as a temporary right of way — that no precedent is being set which might, through use and custom, establish this as a permanent public right of way. This means that, in the future, they can choose to close the path, build over it, whatever. An understandable disclaimer perhaps, but a rather disappointing one for anyone dreaming of a greater sense of “public commons” rather than slightly grudging “permission”…

This shot, taken further along, looks back down the path towards the back of the sign, and Bradford beyond. This might become quite a pleasant, wooded walk in time…

Further along still, the trees open out and you can look across the valley to Shipley station. Here the Beck is only visible via the retaining wall that cuts across the land…

And here the path brings us out onto Carnegie Drive, Windhill, looking towards the main Leeds Road — with the railway crossing the bridge to the left… Remember again, this is roughly the trajectory of the old Bradford Canal. And now, closer still to the road, take a look across to the red-brick building just visible, in the middle distance, between the two blue cars pictured below…

The red-brick building, pictured again on the right here (this time we’ve crossed the Leeds Road to the other side), is the old pump house for the Bradford Canal… and the path marked out down the middle of the car park you see here would have been the line of the canal itself… connecting towards the route we’ve just traced.

The pumphouse was built in 1872, by the Leeds-Liverpool Canal Company, after they took over the Bradford Canal. It had been closed for some years, following a major canalside cholera outbreak! The seriously polluted condition of the water was in part due to the poor water supply from central Bradford, as it trickled down through the many locks on the way to Shipley… So the LLCC’s solution in the late nineteenth century was to establish a pumping system that re-cycled water from the Leeds-Liverpool end all the way back up to the Hoppy Bridge end in Bradford….

Here’s the pumphouse viewed closer up, on Dock Lane — and beyond it the original lock-keeper’s cottage, built in 1774 when the canal first opened. (The first sections of the Leeds-Liverpool canal to be cut in 1773 and 1774 were those between Shipley and Skipton: together with the Bradford Canal branch line, this allowed the first cargoes to be shipped between Bradford and Skipton…)

And here is all that’s now left of the Bradford Canal — the stumpy-looking mouth opening out onto the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, just a little further down Dock Lane from the pumphouse. So although the new cycle route stops rather abruptly when you hit the Leeds Road, all cyclists need to do is cross over it, whizz down Dock Lane, and then join the LLC towpath on the other side of the swing-bridge… They can then follow the towpath all the way to Leeds if they want — meaning a clear cycle route from Bradford to Leeds, via this northern hinge at Shipley (exactly what the canal system used to do, and what the Leeds to Bradford Forster Square train route still does…). But let’s head back to the pumphouse…

It’s a simple but also rather beautiful, chapel-like structure which currently stands empty. It had been converted for private residence a few years ago, but then it came up for sale and Bradford Council purchased it strategically — with a view to the so-called “Bradford Masterplan” scheme of 2003 (by architect Will Alsop) which would have involved re-opening the Bradford Canal. So for example the lock chamber behind the pumphouse — pictured below — would have been dug out again and filled with water.

The white barriers here aren’t original canal furniture – apparently they were put in by the people who last owned the pumphouse, for a bit of, well, fake authenticity… Anyway the point is that nobody is now talking seriously about re-opening the canal, which would be ludicrously expensive (in an age of austerity…) and of dubious economic, cultural or ecological benefit… Much better to treat the Beck properly if you want to make a feature of water along this particular valley… But people in the Council are apparently still talking about the notion of a “conceptual canal” — marking the line of where the canal once stood, by interventions such as the new cycle path. So the pumphouse stands at a strategically important juncture in this “concept”… Let’s take a look inside…

The building is now subdivided into upper and lower floors, where once it would have just been a single chamber housing a pump engine. The lower floor is currently without light (the windows are shuttered; electricity cut off), but in torchlight you can see some serious bowing in the floorboards that will need sorting out if the building is ever to be useful again… Upstairs it’s much brighter and more welcoming…

xx… except that it is weirdly subdivided by things like this mezzanine, presumably added to create an extra bedroom space. The master bedroom, pictured in the two images below, is the largest room, but has a very peculiar-looking WC in one corner…

Pictured on the left here is Dave Partridge, Economic Development officer with Bradford Council, who kindly showed us around the building. Dave is interested in the building being used for socially constructive purposes, in line with the “conceptual canal” idea… and so my colleague Trevor Roberts, pictured below, is concocting a little scheme to put the pump house back into use…

Trevor runs a social enterprise called Canal Connections, which is all about using the waterways to reconnect people and places in novel ways. He sees the pump house as a potential meeting place — a site for conversations, exhibitions, and so forth — that highlight the importance of the waterways to the history, heritage, and perhaps futures of not just Shipley but also — by extension to the south and east — Bradford and Leeds. The pumphouse stands at an axis point, a conceptual hinge if you like. It has spaces that could be put back into social use, both inside and outside. What would you dream up for it, if you were planning Bradford’s “conceptual canal”…?

Higher Coach Road Dreaming…

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Steve Bottoms

If you live on the Higher Coach Road estate, you should have been invited (this week) to a neighbourhood meeting at the rowing club on the morning of Saturday 18th April, from 10.30am. Organised by Shipley’s Kirkgate Centre, in conjunction with the Multi-Story Water project, this an opportunity for residents to share their thoughts and concerns about the neighbourhood and maybe dream up some future improvements… We also have some suggestions for a bit of a community festival to take place on the flood plain area in June, which we’d really like your input on.

This is Stewart Gledhill, of Troutbeck Avenue, standing in his front garden in front of the “bug hotel” he has built for the remarkable new nature reserve that Hirst Wood Regeneration Group have been developing on the other side of the canal. Stewart and his wife Pat (of whom I also had a really good photo that has somehow got accidentally deleted!) have been actively volunteering on that project, but they have also dreamed up a solid plan for what they’d like to see happen on the Baildon side of the river. Stewart sent me a detailed letter this week, which you can read here, accompanied by a sketch diagram of the esate, which you can see here. (Uploaded with his permission.)

Responding to an earlier discussion, Stewart has come up with a proposal to turn the muddy, uneven track beside the river (running the length of the Higher Coach Road estate) into a proper path. His suggestion is to use the same impacted hardcore surface that has been used on the footpath running past the rowing club, and indeed on the paths in the new Hirst Wood nature reserve. Stewart has proposed 3 stages that this could be accomplished in, and has even come up with a rough costing. His plan is a great conversation starter… will other people want to get onside with this idea, or maybe propose alternatives?

Stewart’s plan would be to build the path pretty much where the existing track is, and not do too much to disturb the trees and bushes along the riverbank (which provide important habitat for local wildlife). Pat, though, added a suggestion for a pond area with a view of the river, near the footbridge. She points out that some of the trees on the riverbank do need managing, if they’re not to becoming hazardous. She pointed this out to me, for example…

This tree came down, Pat says, in just the last week or so, given the high winds and rain we’ve been having. It has fallen across the pipe bridge of the Graincliffe Acqeduct (which carries Shipley’s water supply down from the moor and across the Aire at the end of the estate). If this large tree ends up in the river — as seems inevitable — it could end up causing a serious obstacle in the water … it might catching on Saltaire weir, where another tree has also lodged recently… If it got downstream as far as Baildon Bridge, it could create a serious damming hazard there (a recurring problem there, which has caused flooding in the past). The question is, though, who is responsible for clearing the tree? If it was actually in the river, it would be the Environment Agency’s job to clear it — but placed where it is, suspended on the acqueduct, it may be Bradford Council’s… One of those tricky jurisdictional issues that often don’t get solved easily. All the more important, maybe, that local community members take the initiative sometimes?

Dockfield Memories

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Steve Bottoms

This is Chris Uttley, who grew up on Dockfield Road. He’s holding up a 1970s photo showing himself (the little one), his brother, and his grandmother, standing in front of Junction Bridge on the Leeds-Liverpool canal — where it intersects with the now filled-in Bradford Canal. This photo is taken from the opposite bank to the one Chris is holding, since there are new-build flats occupying the space in that photo now. But you can still clearly see the bridge, and Junction House to its left, in both pictures. It’s disheartening to realise that the sorry state of disrepair into which Junction House has fallen has been within Chris’s lifetime. (And those trees now in front of it are clearly younger than him.)

Chris lives in Stroud now, in Gloucestershire, and works professionally in water and environmental management. He says that this has everything to do with having grown up on Dockfield Road — sandwiched between the canal and the river. With Bradford Beck to the west and fields to the east, residents used to think of the area as an “island”. Chris came across our project accidentally, online, and we arranged to meet up with him recently when he came back up north to visit his parents. Chris combined walking his dog and talking with us…

As it happens, this coincided with a day of knocking on doors in Dockfield Road and Dockfield Terrace that we (my colleague Lyze and I) were doing as part of our research — and in conjunction with Kirkgate Centre’s community development initiatives. So we got the perfect start when Chris ran into his old neighbour Sue, hanging out washing in the yard, and we were invited in for a cup of tea and a trip down memory lane. Sue’s a little older than Chris, so they weren’t quite remembering the same generation of childhood antics in the area — but their memories were very similar. All kinds of malarkey got up to along the canal and, to a lesser extent, the river… “We were poor economically,” Sue remarked, “but we were rich in every other way.”

Sue feels now that the sense of community in the area is not what it used to be, which is perhaps inevitable when you have strong memories of what it was like when everyone living around you was also working in the local mills and factories (rather than commuting into Leeds, etc., as happens now). Still, the impression Lyze and I had from our initial round of doorknocking was of a friendly, engaging community of residents who often knew each other well. More on this to follow.

Meanwhile… this graffiti patch on the wall beside the canal, on the approach to Junction Bridge and Dockfields, has become a bit of a local battlefield. You can see from the paintwork that the more political statements have been painted over — presumably by the Council (?) — and then RE-stencilled again by the activists. What’s interesting here is that nobody attempted to just erase the whole thing… It’s a nice patch of colour on a nasty grey wall, after all, with pretty butterfly pictures on it… So if we just take away the complaints about capitalism, maybe it’ll all be OK? The yellow has of course been chosen, though, because of it’s connection to the yellow livery of Bradford-based retail chain Morrisons… who are planning to build a big old supermarket next to Bradford Beck only a couple of hundred yards from this spot…

Multi-Story Water

Celebrating Shipley and its waterways

Monthly Archives: April 2015

Saltaire Hydro scheme approved… maybe…

Talking and Walking (on Water)

Bradford’s “Conceptual” Canal

Higher Coach Road Dreaming…

Dockfield Memories