Walking Salt’s Waters

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Steve Bottoms

High time I updated this blog. There’s been lots happening behind the scenes, as a new phase of the Multi-Story Water project slowly swings into gear. In the last month or so there’s been planning meetings with those excellent people at Shipley’s Kirkgate Centre, plus the appointment of a wonderful research associate in Lyze Dudley (of whom, more another time), and lots more besides — all irons in the fire for what’s going to become a 3-year project working directly with various local groups and individuals to develop discussions and creative projects around the future social and environmental potential of Shipley’s waterways (please do get in touch if you’d like to know more). In the shorter term, though, there are also plans afoot for a contribution to this year’s Saltaire Festival, in September…

Here’s the ‘bard of Saltaire’, Eddie Lawler, snapped last week up at Hirst Weir (which has yet another tree straddling it…). Eddie and I will be presenting a one-off gig on September 18th at Half Moon Cafe in Roberts Park — Eddie playing his guitar and singing, me doing a little spoken word… It’s a double act we first developed on the Blue Route of our performance tours in 2012-13 (see ‘Performances’ tab), and which we both enjoy. The Half Moon event will really just be a public launch, though, for a longer-lasting but less visible performance — which you’ll be able to experience in the form of a downloadable audio guide. This will take listeners on a walking tour from the bottom of Victoria Road, in the heart of Saltaire, and north-west to what remains of Milner Field, the grand mansion built in the 1870s by Titus Salt Jr., and now just a pile of stone overtaken by self-seeded woodland…

The audio guide, titled Salt’s Waters (Eddie’s suggestion), will connect mill and ruin via various local waterways. There’s the River Aire and Leeds-Liverpool Canal, most obviously, but also Loadpit Beck (which flows into the Aire near Bradford Rowing Club, and which marks the boundary line between Baildon and Bingley land). There’s also the even lesser-known Little Beck, which passes through the Milner Field estate and was once dammed to create a boating lake for Titus Jr. and his family and guests (who included royalty, no less!). Little Beck is the chosen subject for the new song Eddie has written to be mixed into the audio guide, and which will thus have its world premiere at Half Moon Cafe. It joins other watery songs in the Lawler canon, including those dedicated to the Bradford Canal (written for Blue Route), and of course Bradford Beck — an older song which is now the unofficial theme tune of the Friends of Bradford’s Becks, and also features (thanks Eddie!) on my short film Wading to Shipley. That film, incidentally, was expertly edited by Lee Dalley, of Leeds University’s Workshop Theatre, who is pictured above with Eddie last week… (they had just met for the first time!)

Lee has generously undertaken to sound-design our audio guide — mixing my words and Eddie’s music with layered sounds of his own… So he came out to walk the route with us and record sound samples along the way. Here he is with his recorder (and Eddie) underneath the Barden aqueduct — which crosses the Aire at one end of the Higher Coach Road estate. Lee wanted to catch the echoing sound of the river’s flow, as heard just here… He also will have captured the electronic click of my phone-camera taking this shot, but when I apologised he said he loves that kind of random sound interference. Who knows, maybe the ‘pling’ will find its way into the final audio mix!

It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, walking with Eddie and Lee up to Milner Field — so enjoyable in fact that I forgot to take any more pictures en route, and just revelled in the company and the ambient sounds of flowing water, rushing water, gurgling water, wind in the trees, multiple forms of bird-song, footsteps going over wooden stiles, bike wheels on the towpath… you name it. You notice all this so much more acutely when someone keeps shutting you up to record them! (or at least, I do…) I just hope my narrative can do some kind of justice to the sounds that walkers will be hearing both around about them and in the mix…

There is one other picture I just want to share here though… It was taken just before the previous one, as we walked through the grassy flood plain area that separates the Higher Coach Road estate from the river. I was fascinated to notice that, this year, the council’s mowers have largely refrained from cutting the grass back — except along the riverside path that is traditionally beaten out only by walkers’ footsteps. You can see that mown bit to the left of the picture here… and in the centre and right, the long meadow grasses that have grown up unhindered…

I need to find out whose idea it was to leave the grass uncut… and also what the residents make of it! One of the findings of our previous research work on the estate (expressed in our Green Route performances, that came through it) is that many of the residents have felt that the mown grass field was both: (a) a bit daft – since the council’s mowers would come and chew up the grass even in wet weather – when parts of this flood plain area just become a big squelchy puddle!; and (b) a wasted opportunity – since some other, more imaginative arrangement, like a reeded wetland area, might attract more diverse wildlife and thus also be more interesting for residents and visitors… Interestingly, this new wildflower meadow option seems to be a sort of cautious step in that direction… although it might also be purely a result of council budget cuts making mowing less frequent! I must investigate… (… he dons a deerstalker and strides off into the long grass…)

Wading to Shipley

Posted on August 31, 2013 by Steve Bottoms

We’re pleased to announce the online premiere of a new short film, Wading to Shipley, which we’ve been finishing this summer since the conclusion of our live performance dates in July. The film traces a walk down – and in – Bradford Beck, coming into Shipley, and combines music and narration with visuals. To view the film and read more, just click on the “Bradford Beck” tab on the menu bar above, and selected “Wading to Shipley”. Enjoy!

Mink vs. Pigeon! (and other Shipley wildlife)

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Steve Bottoms

Saturday 13th was “Shipley River Day”, which started out with our “family adventure walk” around some of Shipley’s river and canal intersections. Thanks to the eagle eyes of participants such as the Aire Rivers Trust’s Kevin Sunderland, it was also quite a nature walk… Kevin spotted this mink swimming along Bradford Beck right outside McDonalds, then leaping into a hole in the river’s side wall that appeared to be its cave or nest…

Cute little fellow – although of course mink are also an invasive, non-native species that do a lot of damage (not unlike McDonalds!). Perhaps aware of this, a local pigeon appeared to be trying to “take out the invader”…

This particular battle ended in a no-score draw. We moved on, away from McDonalds and up across the canal on Gallows Bridge… (That’s me in the fetching hi-viz vest.)

We moved up the canal, collecting litter for our “Nasty” bag and feathers, pine cones, leaves etc for our “Nice” bag… There was a lot more nasty than nice, and people got surprisingly zealous about picking it up (we ended up employing a second nasty bag…). Meanwhile we also marked out path by chalking comments and markers along the way… We couldn’t get a decent photo of the shoal of bream we spotted, but it was duly recorded nonetheless!

I didn’t get the name of the walker above, but below is David Brazendale, communing with cloud reflections at the mouth of the Bradford Canal…

And along Dock Lane, cutting down from the canal to the Aire, there was no escape for this bit of (misspelled) wildlife:

The water level of the Aire itself is pretty low just now, with so little rain recently, but the surroundings are lushly green nonetheless – a corridor of nature even in urban Shipley.We set off down the neglected riverside path (an ancient right of way) and it felt a little like bushwhacking… Along this route there was much less rubbish than on the canal path, which says something about its relative lack of foot traffic. There was still lots of other stuff to spot though!

Eventually, we reached the main road and crossed back across the Aire on Baildon Bridge, noting the local heron at the far end (a familiar sight for seasoned weir watchers…).

Thanks to everyone who came on the walk for such a great, collective spirit of inquisitiveness and playfulness. And for picking up quite a substantial amount of rubbish along the way!

Following the walk was our event at Kirkgate Community Centre, designed as a means to combine creative activities for kids (and adults) with an opportunity to discuss Shipley’s rivers, community and history with a variety of “experts”… We had lots of maps up, information on display… the whole thing was beautifully set up. What we hadn’t bargained on at the time of organising this, however, was that Saturday ended up as the hottest day of the year… and who wants to be indoors in a community centre when there’s sunshine to be enjoyed? Come to that, who wants to be indoors at all..? Shipley’s town centre shops were largely deserted too… We did have a few people through the doors, but it would be difficult to call this particular event a resounding success! My thanks, nonetheless, to all the people who turned out to present stalls and talk to people… they mostly ended up talking to each other (!), but several people said it was a useful networking opportunity, so that’s something I guess!

Jonathan Moxon (Environment Agency) with Rebecca Slack (water@leeds)

Barney Lerner (Aire Rivers Trust), Danny Jackson (Bradford Council rights of way manager), Kevin Sunderland (ART)

Some things change, some stay the same…

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Steve Bottoms

In preparation for next month’s re-mounting of our Multi-Story Water performance tours, I went walkabout around the Aire in Shipley the other day. I wanted to make sure that the script for our Red Route tour is up to date, and so the first port of call was Lower Holme, where that route finishes up – the site of the demolished mill still referred to locally as “C.F. Taylor’s”. I popped in to visit Margaret Wright, who lives in one of Lower Holme’s former mill cottages, and who has been a great supporter of our project almost from Day 1. (Here’s Margaret with her dog Millie, right.) I had been expecting to find the derelict mill site populated by trucks and workmen, because my understanding was that developer James Marshall was wanting to have work completed on the site by this autumn. (James has been pro-active in liaising with Lower Holme residents about his proposed retail development, and addressing their concerns – see previous blog posts on Lower Holme.) However, there is no sign of any work even having been begun, which is bewildering for Margaret and the other residents… After so many years of putting up with an ugly metal fence and a wasteland (and the social nuisance factor that comes with it), they must be wondering when the build is ever going to happen… That said, the current word is that the remaining Lower Holme mill building (left), which is in an increasingly poor state of repair despite having been converted as flats a few years ago, is to be pulled down as part of the new development. Margaret proudly told me that James had even asked some of the residents what they thought should be done with this building – convert for offices, social housing, or knock it down? – and that they had asked him to get rid of it. So now it’s going, and for once people feel like they have been consulted! But as I say, there’s still no visible change on site…. except for the appearance of black plastic bins along the path leading down to the footbridge across the river! These have nothing to do with the developer and everything to do with the residents. For years, Margaret herself has been taping black bin liners to the fencing so that dog-walkers had somewhere to put their muck and litter… Bradford Council will take no responsibility for doing this, even though this path is part of a much-used right of way across the river, because Lower Holme is an “unadopted road”. A group of residents, however, have finally managed to get some money together to purchase 3 bins to put up down the length of the street (including this one opposite Margaret’s house). Slingsby’s, the retailer on the other side of the fence, agreed to sell the residents 3 of these bins for the price of 2, and even to install them professionally… A gesture of neighbourhood goodwill that the Council might do well to learn from? This simple change has made a big difference to Margaret – creating a sense that things are finally starting to look up in the area. She and other residents are still having to empty the bins though (and the dog dirt they hold), into their own wheelie bins… Talk about “above and beyond the call of duty”!

The most visible change to the path of our Red Route walk since last September is actually along the river path between Salts Mill and Baildon Bridge, where the “Aire Sculpture Trail” has just been unveiled. It was officially opened on May 25th as part of the Saltaire Arts Trail weekend, by Andrew Mason – the developer who built Victoria Mills (he also figures prominently in Red Route!). This is because the funding for the Sculpture Trail actually comes from him, via Bradford Council, who levied “Section 106” charges on the Victoria Mills development. These funds, it was agreed, were to be used in the restoration of the rather neglected footpath linking VM with Saltaire. There’s an irony here in that, currently, the gate from the VM complex onto the footpath is kept padlocked for security reasons… so residents can’t easily use the path anyway. But the rest of us benefit from the entertaining, colourful sculptures that were commissioned from the HIVE Studios (based downstairs from Kirkgate Community Centre in central Shipley).

I think my favourite is this little fellow, perched at the end of the footpath on Baildon Bridge in his yellow rubber ring (or dinghy?). (Given that Baildon Bridge has a history of flooding problems, he might well need that ring at some point in the future!) The sculptures were created by artist Mick Kirby Geddes in collaboration with children at Wycliffe Primary School – and apparently there have already been some complaints that the sculpture trail is “childish”. It’s not high modernist art, certainly, but that’s clearly not its purpose – it’s there to be fun and attractive and provide something for families to do on a quiet afternoons. Of course, I could pick holes and complain that some of the sculptures seem to have little to do with the riverside setting, and could perhaps have been a bit more consistently themed (this snowman on the wall of Victoria Mills is a little on the incongruous side!). But that may be to miss the point: what is clear is that this rather narrow, uninviting piece of footpath has been rendered much more inviting and friendly by the presence of these sculptures – there’s a sense of welcome and warmth here, which is no doubt what was intended. It remains to be seen, of course, how well the new additions to the setting will be maintained — and whether the footpath itself will get the continued maintenance it very much needs. For now, though, a round of applause for HIVE, Mick Kirby Geddes, and the children of Wycliffe Primary…

Rights of Way

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Steve Bottoms

One of the most intriguing questions to explore in the Shipley area, in relation to the river and canal, is the question of public rights of way. Over hundreds of years, certain riverside tracks have developed a status as public footpaths which is now legally enforcible. “Once a highway, always a highway,” is the old adage – according to Bradford Council’s rights of way manager Danny Jackson. Except of course, as Danny’s the first to acknowledge, there are exceptions to that rule. In the 19th Century, after buying a huge swathe of land to the north of the river, all the way from Milner Field to the west, down to Lower Holme in the east, Sir Titus Salt succeeded in having pedestrian access rights moved away from the riverside and onto his new Coach Road. Originally, Coach Road was a private road for vehicles, but a public one for pedestrians. The same went for the Victoria Road bridge at Saltaire: pedestrian access rights were moved to this bridge, and Salt took away the ancient river crossing consisting of stepping stones! In the 1960s, when the road bridge had to be demolished as unfit for vehicular traffic, a new footbridge had to be built by law, in order to restore the public right of way!

Anyway, Sir Titus’s legal footwork explains why, today, there is no official riverside path on the north of the river betwen Baildon Bridge and Hirst Wood. Once you get to Hirst Wood, it reappears: there’s a lovely walk up to Dowley Gap and beyond. But the path running east from Baildon Bridge towards Charlestown (featured in my recent “Lower Holme – picture story” posting), is in a much more precarious state. Though utterly neglected, it’s still there – having survived all the mill demolitions going on around it. But in places the path is very narrow and even treacherous underfoot. Riverside rights have clearly not been at the top of the planning agenda in that area…

Recently, I took a walk with Danny Jackson along a stretch of river path that Bradford Council are paying particular attention to at present. This stretch, also ancient right of way, runs along the South side of the river, between Salt’s Mill and Baildon Bridge. With us on this stroll was my 7-year old daughter Eleanor (seen here outside Saltaire’s gorgeous URC church), who was entrusted withthe task of photographing whatever she thought was worthy of note along the route. The images below are a child’s eye view of the path and its various delights…

Danny and his colleagues have been charged with opening up and improving access along this stretch of path, because it links Saltaire to the recent residential conversion at Victoria Mills. In order to secure planning permission, the Victoria Mills development had to agree, under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act of 1990, to commit funds for these ‘highway’ improvements (it’s all detailed online here). The irony, though, is that there is currently no demand from the residents of Victoria Mills to use this riverside path – and the gate that would provide access to it is normally padlocked for security reasons. Instead, the residents tend to use the nearby canal towpath for walking. So what would really encourage use of this rather run-down path?

We began on the canal towpath outside Salts’ New Mill, since the mill itself prevents any direct access along the riverside at this point. It’s tempting to blame Titus for this too, but in all likelihood the path would always have bent around the water mill (Dixon’s) that was on this site before Salts. Eleanor’s picture highlights the rather unkempt, overgrown state of the path even in this World Heritage Site section.

When you cut down towards the river though, things rapidly become much less inviting…

The river path is slippery with moss in numerous spots…

… and decorated with charming touches (though Eleanor felt this could be a place to hang art work!)

Time to let Eleanor’s eye do the talking…

Eleanor liked these thistles a lot… They’re wild flowers, of course – ‘weeds’. As I discussed with her, letting things grow, or ‘letting things go’ isn’t always a bad idea. The thing she liked most on this walk were the little blue flowers on this plant (and others like it) growing unbidden out of the perimeter wall at Victoria Mills… It’s a cliche to say it, perhaps, but nature will find its own right of way….

A Midsummer Night’s Dream…

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Steve Bottoms

The other night, Monday June 25th, I had the opportunity to join David Robinson and his dog Oscar on their evening walk up to Shipley Glen from the Higher Coach Road estate. Despite having spent a lot of time now, working on this project in the vicinity of the river, I hadn’t previously been up the hill for want of someone to show me the way around. David generously offered to do the tour – and we just happened to pick what turned out to be an utterly glorious evening of midsummer weather…

Our luck with the weather was all the more remarkable given that, only a few days earlier, the miserable rainy conditions we’ve experienced during much of June resulted in flood warnings across the county. Although the worst of it was in the Calder Valley rather than the Aire, the high water here was still more than apparent at the swollen Hirst Wood weir just yards upstream from David’s house (which faces directly onto the river). In the image above, a tree has been carried downstream and caught on the weir – it’ll have to be cleared by the Environment Agency, I presume.

David told me that he received an automated call from the EA on Friday night advising him to take precautions and move personal items upstairs because the Aire was about to burst its banks. Despite having never previously received such a call (he didn’t even realise he was in the system), David “ignored it and went to bed” – quite confident that there was no danger of the water coming anywhere near his house. Sure enough, the Aire did break its banks that night, but did not encroach far up the green flood plain. Which sort of begs the question of who the “experts” in these circumstances actually are…

David’s walking tour took me up the hill from his riverside estate, walking initially through a meadow which can’t be farmed as it’s preserved as an SSSI (site of special scientific interest). Popular with dog-walkers, and on a night like this rendering great views of Shipley and Saltaire across the river – that’s the Shipley parish church to the left.

We made our way up through the steeply rising oak woodland of Shipley Glen, up to the plateau area at the edge of Baildon Moor (above), where the Victorians used to flock for fairground attractions. Traces of the old downhill Toboggan ride (early roller coaster!) are still apparent in rocks where postholes and some old ironwork survive.

We encountered a much more intriguing Victorian relic, though, when heading back down through the woods and West towards Milner Field. Here’s the small reservoir (above) that was built by Titus Salt to siphon water from the Trout Beck (the stream that meets the Aire just yards from David’s house). According to David, this provided Salts Mill with a back-up water supply in order to sustain its own dying operation. And it’s the water channelled from this reservoir which is then pumped across the Aire by those dome-shaped pumping stations near the weir. Around this now-neglected reservoir there’s an intriguing set of engineered channels, again showing evidence of the recent high water… David said that the debris caught in the image below was not there the last time he’d walked this way, only days previously…

A little further to the west, and we entered through the neglected gateway to the Milner Field house and estate built by Titus Salt Jr. to show off his family’s wealth… There’s a long, winding road – largely overgrown – lined on both sides with many non-oak trees that were clearly planted as a kind of botanical avenue en route to the house. But the house itself is long gone… Salt’s Mill and its industrial village survive as a World Heritage Site, but his son’s grand house is nothing but ruination, lost in the undergrowth of the oak woodland that has reclaimed the site…

In the image above you can see traces of low archways (perhaps once the mouths of ovens??), amidst many other mossed-over loose stones. Wandering around this site is like finding a stately home as a disassembled jigsaw, strewn all over the place. You try to puzzle out what part of the house might have been where, but there’s very little to go on.

Following the gothic mystery tour, we made our way back along the river through Hirst Wood, in positively idyllic conditions as the evening sunlight showcased individual trees in glorious colour. The water is high, but this only adds to the sense of a wooded landscape blending and almost merging with the waterscape….

And finally, back towards Saltaire and the train back to Leeds – the sun still setting at 10pm… Thankyou David Robinson, for a really inspiring, intriguing evening.

Walking with Kevin Sunderland (Aire Rivers Trust)

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Steve Bottoms

I had a very enjoyable meeting today with Kevin Sunderland, co-founder and chairman of the Aire Rivers Trust – a voluntary, charitable organisation dedicated to improving conditions in, on and around the River Aire and its tributaries — especially Bradford Beck. Kevin is a retired accountant, a keen angler, and a mine of information about these rivers and their use and history. Today, though, what he and I looked at, especially, was rubbish!

“Meet me at the back of the Aldi car park at 11am!” he told me. It sounded a bit like some dodgy drug deal or spy rendezvous, but I dutifully turned up at the appointed time and place. The car park shared by Aldi and McDonalds, in central Shipley, is skirted on two sides by Bradford Beck, as it flows towards the Aire, but you’d never know it unless you were looking for it. And what Kevin wanted to show me first was the great pile of industrial waste across the Beck from us, teetering on the edge of a sheer drop into the river. “Bit of wind or rain and that lot’ll be in the Beck!” Kevin pointed out. He’s also tried to point this out to the owners of the site, but he can’t get them to do anything about it. Perhaps the attitude to this particular bit of river is – out of sight, out of mind.

And that’s pretty much the story all over. We walked all around this bit of central Shipley… along the banks of the Beck (the bits we could get to) and also along the Aire, east of Shipley weir – where the Beck joins the main river. There are warehouses, superstores and old industrial buildings all around this area, and a lot of them seem to be run by people with little or no regard for the river they back onto – to judge by the rubbish (mostly packaging materials) strewn all over the river banks. Kevin says that, as head of a charity, it’s not his place to “name and shame” businesses, but I don’t have to be so polite, so let’s name the B&M garden centre for one… There’s cardboard and cellophane sheeting lying around all over the place at the back of their store (bit of wind, in it goes…), and we found one of their shopping trolleys lying in the Aire just downstream. Again, Kevin had phoned the manager about this, but nothing had been done. So together we fished it out and wheeled it back (covered in mud and moss) to park it outside their front entrance. That was today’s bit of environmental activism!

I asked Kevin if his concern about all this littering was primarily about trying to conserve water quality, or making life better for fish and birds, or what. Well, he said, he’s concerned with all of that — and he stresses that, generally, water quality in these rivers is a lot better than it used to be. There’s also a surprising amount of wildlife (we spotted trout in the Aire, lots of birds…). But cleaning up rubbish is as much about “aesthetics” as anything, he says. And surely a university arts professor like myself should have an eye for such things too…

Along Bradford Beck, just down the back of Shipley rail station, we found a whole string of trees covered in debris like this, stranded on trees since the last high water event. It’s basically sewage, Kevin points out — the stuff people flush down their loos in Bradford. Most of the older drainage pipes are also sewage pipes, and sewage solids are supposed to be skimmed off before the liquids get near rivers, but in storm conditions the theory doesn’t always work in practice… We looked for fish along here too — apparently there have been minnows on this stretch lately, but the trout that were here got killed a while back by some kind of pollutant, and they haven’t yet returned.

Kevin’s tour eventually took us up the Beck almost the whole way into Bradford. He pointed out, for example, some of the old culverting — artificial brick bottoming for the Beck designed to speed up the water flow and thus get all the crap out of the city as soon as possible… But this stuff is terrible for supporting any kind of river life, except the odd duck bobbing on the surface…

Eventually we got as far back upstream as the point where the Beck disappears under one of the old mill building (now commercial offices). It flows underground through most of Bradford’s city centre. This point where it emerges into daylight is, Kevin points out, distinctly stinky… (the people in these offices must have to combat the smell everyday!) Bradford Beck used to be known as one of the most polluted rivers in the country. It’s not like that now, but the sewage smell here is still quite noticeable…

As I say, I really enjoyed meeting Kevin. He pointed out a lot of the less pleasant aspects of the rivers here, but his enthusiasm for further improving the situation is infectious. I suspect he’ll have many other stories to tell us as this project continues…

Multi-Story Water

Celebrating Shipley and its waterways

Category Archives: Walks