Life and death of a village

This is the transcript of an article that appeared in the Pontefract and Castleford Express dated Friday 30th December 1955. The writer was “Sotto Voce” (John Hargrave). It tells the story of the last days of the village of Bowers Row, situated between Great Preston and Allerton Bywater in the Parish of Great and Little Preston. The story includes the memories of some of the last residents.

LIFE AND DEATH OF A VILLAGE.

With the glimmer of candles in smoky lamp glasses, a waggonette creaked to a halt beside a four-square block of buildings which arose out of the night bound fields like a fort in the desert. Full of their weekly trip to Castleford, the passengers and their cheerful noise gradually dissolved amongst the streets and houses. Lamps gleamed from the windows.

Across the road, colliery workshops, steaming and shining with a reassuring refulgence, proclaimed the reason for a village in this remote spot. And secure in its future, Bowers Row settled down for another night.

It was a ghost I saw, of course, a dream of the past. Even as it flickered before my eyes, hammers were thundering on the shaking walls of houses and gables were falling in a shower of brick dust.

Beyond stretched street upon silent street, gaping windows, sagging doors, sparrow ­ haunted bedrooms.

Here and there a rain stained book of poems, or the remnants of a doll, told that children played here and filled the old school building nearby with the welcome of their voices. But now no more. The children, their parents, the proprietor of the empty store and Post Office, gone, all gone. Bowers Row was dead. I was looking at a corpse. And the crash of masonry foretold that the earth would soon be disencumbered even of that.

Used as they were to the hard ways of a much harder world than ours, could those early inhabitants of Bowers, those sweating colliers who ripped out hand-got coal, fifty, one hundred years ago, have fore born a shudder if some prophet among them had revealed that their grandchildren would see the day when not a trace remained of the close community in which they moved? Somehow the shudder communicated itself to me in the pale winter sunshine, as I watched the starlings fly straight through empty houses and saw Bowers Row crumble before my eyes.

The shudder sent me seeking more knowledge of Bowers Row. What did this dim phantom know which set disturbing visions swirling amongst the debris? A demolition order for more than 130 houses surely calls for no psychic melodramas these days. Slum clearance is going ahead everywhere. Surely, we are not to be haunted because we have provided better houses for several hundred people? But still the ghostly question marks turned and twisted amongst the weed-grown garden patches.

I sought inspiration in the sentinel shape of the old Nineveh pit’s massive ruined engine house, sprouting grasses and elder thickets across the railway beyond the rooftops.

I looked to the silent outlines of the Victoria and Albert pits across the road, whose shafts no longer receive the colliers of Bowers – or any other place. They gazed inscrutably back, while I reflected that, anyway, there was still work and to spare for colliers, and at no great distance.

But still the brooding spirit of Bowers pressed me hard. I knew what it wanted of me now ­ to hear its story, the story of a community which rose like a mushroom in a field, and in like manner departed.

Who could give me that story, except that some of those who had once been part of it, were spread now, in houses built by the Tadcaster Rural District Council at Swillington and Great Preston? So that is how I started on my sentimental journey, linking memories which stretched across 100 years, with a ghost at my heels.

Yet the handiest link was waiting just across the way from the derelict village, among the ten “prefabs” which sprang up after the last war, to keep it company. There lives 73 year old Miss Alice Bullock. She was born in Bowers Row at 12, Princess Street, of a family (and not untypical Bowers family in those days) of eleven. That family included Mr J.A. Bullock, who rose from the position of pit pony boy to become the manager and agent of a colliery, and is now the efficiency expert for the Castleford Area of the National Coal Board.

Their father, Mr William Bullock, was one of the founders of the Methodist Mission whose little building still stands, and still carries on its work and Sunday School, in spite of its departures. Though how it does so would probably constitute a story in itself.

From Miss Bullock we may learn how the roots of Methodism struck and held in this isolated village, where hard work and make-your-own-play were the principle rules. Cottage meetings gave them their first grip: and after a variety of improvisations, including a zinc hut, the present brick building arrived 28 years ago. A representative of “The Express” saw it opened.

Miss Bullock speaks of four or five pits in the vicinity, all with the typical nicknames which mark the miners touch – the Victoria (“Johnny”), theAlbert (“Star”), the Lowther (“Middle”), denoting the connection of the Lowther family of the former Great Preston Hall, Fleakingley Beck and the West Allerton (“Old Engine” or “Nineveh”) whose boarded shaft I had stood upon and whose engine house is built of such massive slabs on sandstone that one wonders how the hauliers of a more primitive era wrenched them into position. So much for the industry; but Miss Bullock also painted a lively picture of the village that was.

She thought the owners from whom the name derives – Thomas and Robert William Bowers – came about the middle of the nineteenth century. For the boys in the village in her day it was the natural thing to go to the pits as soon as they were old enough. The girls, like Miss Bullock herself, sought employment often in domestic service, or what was then known as “plaace”. There was no village pub -the nearest was at Allerton Bywater or Kippax -but no doubt there was ale in Bowers, for few isolated houses went without their own barrel in those days.

Transport was chiefly by rail – such as was undertaken and that meant a walk to Kippax Station. But for the journey to Castleford a wagonette service was run by Mr Stokewell, who would wait until there was a “load” and charge 8d. for the return journey. Later, Messrs Box, of Castleford, operated a service on Saturday afternoons and evenings.

The wagonettes were drawn, sometimes, by three horses, and would come royally back on a night, lamps gleaming, horses steaming, hoofs echoing -though fog caused many an anxious moment on the lonely, empty, unlit roads.

Miss Bullock also recalls that the village had its policeman, at the end house in Queen Street: that at one time – what memories the name brings back to the older folk! – there was a Band of Hope; and that, with all its isolation, Bowers in her younger days was a unit and a force.

The next link was found in a new council house in Well Close, Great Preston, where 85­year-old Thomas Walker Crossland fitted more segments into the picture -to the satisfaction of the clamant spirit at my elbow. Mr Crossland moved out of Bowers in August, after living there for 58 years. For 25 years he sold newspapers in the streets. And sometimes, as he looks upon the diminishing ruins he thinks, ” I would like to back in my old house”. It was the older folk, of course, who felt the change most and Thomas an old Woodlesford footballer, dwells often on the days when the Bowers United played in the Barkston Ash League and in the Castleford and District League.

Like many other Bowers man, he must have sport in the picture, and if it was local sport, needing local enthusiasm on which to feed, so much the better. A bowling green at the Institute (which took over the school premises) also claims his memory and he looks back in pleasure at the relaxation, and the skill, it engendered.

He remembers the take – over of the pits by Pease and Partners, who retained them until they were Nationalised and he considers after Vesting Day, miners could be assured of steady work, whereas in the old days it was on a one-day-a-week basis.

It occurred to me that illness could be disastrous in a shut – off place like Bowers, but Mr Crossland, in common with others, says the people were generally healthy, and did not need doctors much. That was perhaps fortunate, for there was no resident doctor. One living at Methley had a wooden “surgery” at Great Preston, and later held his consultations in a scullery. Another, Dr. Gains, came from Kippax, and turned Mr. Crossland into the study of ambulance work in 1907, after the latter had successfully treated a cut artery by following the instructions in a book. For all that, Mr. Crossland recalls a measles epidemic – a general one in 1912, which involved the village, and in which he lost two children.

Scarcely a house in the village was untouched.

Among other memories of his are an explosion at the Albert pit in 1894, in which four men were killed, and the year 1896, “a terrible one for work”, when terrible adversity overtook the village and the introduction of street lighting in 1905. An anecdote about himself illustrates the toughness and stoic simplicity of life which was part of the village miner in earlier days. When he fractured his leg in 1900, he strengthened it by sitting for an hour or so each day – for a month – in Hemishor Well, so that the water of the well played on the limb until it felt numb and dead. He has walked many a hundred miles since – as becomes a colliery veteran who started work down Fleakingley Beck pit at the age of 13.

It was Mr Crossland, too, who first mentioned a feature of Bowers which had a characteristic ring -a family which, for perhaps a century, led village and chapel life -the

Blackburns. In their day he remembers a “wonderful” choir and a chapel “packed to the doors” at anniversaries.

For more about the Blackburns I spoke to another Bowers veteran, Mr Albert Dawes, now aged 77, of Berry Lane, Great Preston. He describes them as the “leading family” in village and chapel life. The late Mr James Blackburn, he says, was the agent for the collieries, and was succeeded by Mr Wm. Blackburn, who was the colliery manager. The youngest son was the colliery engineer.

When Mr Dawes arrived at Bowers, over 70 years ago, there were the makings of a village and “oldish houses” in existence. They were built, he says, of hand-made bricks, probably brought from a neighbouring brickfield in Springfields, where both men and women worked. A pit official from his 23rd year onwards, first as a deputy at the old “Star”, then as on overman and then the same at the Primrose Colliery, where he stayed until he retired seven years ago, his minds eye holds a map of underground workings accumulated over the years.

As he talks, the hearer can visualise the chipping and burrowing and the changing face of the underground world which sustained the life of Bowers and other communities in this pit strewn area. Its ramifications seem to lie like an open book before this man, who started work at the West Allerton Colliery at an age when most children today are still receiving school milk. In his words comes the ebb and flow of the industry’s lifeblood down the years -the “drying up” of the Lowther pit about 60 years ago, the opening of the Beeston seam at the “Johnny” and the end of that, the exhaustion of the Flockton (he called it the “Brown Metal”) seam ……… drifts, shafts, workings, their ancient and modern developments. A packed history, but implicit with the knowledge that, unlike agriculture, mining is based on expendable reserves, and it is always moving imperceptibly to the end.

He remembers back-stretching days of hand-got coal, when rates for a deputy varied between 6s. 9d. and 7s. 6d. a shift. After work and pay like that, Bowers had to make its own enjoyment after days like that there were nights when visitors had to be conducted to the distant station. And yet there was an issue of medals for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and jollifications when King George V and Queen Mary celebrated their Silver Jubilee.

For 22 years after he left Bowers he lived at Astley but he still talks of the isolation and the lack of conveniences. At one time people fetched water from a neighbouring spring in the days before, 60 years or so ago, pipes were laid and street taps – with the inevitable queues – were instituted.

Another whose life has been changed by the passing of the village is the former postmistress, Miss Lillian Dyer, now looks back on her past in Bowers Row from a modem, streamlined Post Office in Great Preston.

Her connection dates only from about 1945, but her father took over the the office in 1926 and before him there was a Mr. S. Cubar. The Dyers lived at Woodend, and their business premises were of the lock-up type, so they were both “in” and “out” of Bowers. Yet they knew many people. “The older folk felt the move a bit.” says Mrs Dyer, “but the houses are much nicer here and they have hot and cold water and electricity.”

I felt the melancholy spirit which prodded me on must take notice of that. But Miss Dyer endorsed Mr. Crossland’s words -“Everyone seemed healthy, it was nice and open out there.”

As far as I can gather almost all the houses were originally four – roomed, except for one which was specially extended. That was the house of Horsforth – born Mrs Mary Ann Greany, aged 86, a widow, who now lives in Berry Lane, Great Preston. The story of that house and its people, told now by Mrs B. Kelly, one of the Greany family of 13, perhaps speaks of the heart of Bowers like no other could. It is an echo from another world. No. 1 School Street, housed a community within a community, for there was not only the family of Mr. John Greany and his wife. Mr Greany was an Irishman, and Irishmen were always welcome at his home. And no-one, Irish or otherwise, would fail to find lodgings there if in need, so the house was always crowded. The legendary extension was made through the intervention of the Blackburns. Another bedroom and another sitting room was built onto the back.

Bought bread, even if it had not been unthinkable, would have been unavailable at Bowers. Hence, in addition to her other chores, and without aid of modem amenities, Mrs Greany had a daily “bake”, that would constitute a full-time job for some housewives today. Twenty four newly-baked loaves on the table – about average daily consumption – was no uncommon sight at No.1 School Street. But the children were happy amongst all this work, for the Greany’s recognised that there was little for them in way of amusement and allowance was made. “We could have a party everyday if we liked” said Mrs Kelly.

Although the were Roman Catholics, and the village was predominately “Methodist”, the Greany’s were greatly respected and liked. Mr Greany worked as a fan engineman at Fleakingley. He was on of the prompters of the move for the Roman Catholic Church which now stands at Woodend, and he helped build it during the First World War. Before that the Greany’s would walk to Castleford and back every Sunday, for Mass.

Still living with the Kelly’s is Mr. Pat Greany, aged 93, the brother of the late John Greany.

And so the links stretch out across a century, a taut and certain chain with lives of people past and present, whose fortitude sustained an industry’s formative years in an age of accepted austerity.

No doubt there are many more who could speak for Bowers Row. No doubt there are many gaps in the story now revealed. But for the present, we must return to an empty village, gradually disappearing as winter creeps over the land. Perhaps the end of the story was in sight when the schoolchildren left Bowers for a new building at Brigshaw, as far back as the early thirties. The old building, after a lease of life as the Institute, now awaits the conversion to a factory for a Leeds firm.

But the last chapter did not open until the recent increased post-war building activities enabled the Tadcaster Rural District Council to offer to the inhabitants new homes on its estates at Swillington and Great Preston. When that was possible, the Council made a demolition order for the 130 or more houses at Bowers Row. Not all the families were rehoused in council houses. The Coal Board found homes for some, others provided their own. There came a concerted move in the summer of 1954 and another in exodus to council houses in the autumn. Finally, about three months ago, the last inhabitants said goodbye to Bowers and the Post Office was about the last to close.

And so back to the shudder. Even the disclosure of a warm human story did not charm it away. Why not? I asked myself. Bowers is not the first village to disappear from the Yorkshire landscape. Even now, a dead village is being excavated in the Yorkshire Wolds.

But the ghost of Bowers rose once more above the smokeless chimney stacks and whispered some strange things. In the past, the growth and decay of a village has been the process of centuries, a change so gradual that it was scarcely perceptible from one generation to another. By comparison 100 years is but a moment. The life and death of Bowers has the speed of the jet age. Coal brought Bowers, not gradually, but at a bound. Modern legislation has removed it – at a stroke.

I countered with a last plea that the haunting would might cease: “Surely one cannot imagine that the breaking down of the isolation of the miner is other than good”. Came the answer” Heaven forbid. But its the speed ….. the finality. In the years to come there will be no romantic excavations of the dead village of Bowers Row, because there will be nothing left to excavate. Bowers is the microcosm of a vast revolution, in which the old order not only changes, but is eliminated. Is the pattern of that revolution strange to you?.  Will the tide of accelerated change sweep on, stripping the future of the landmarks of your lifetime?. That is why you shudder, my friend, and well you may”.

Against the pressure of this ghostly logic I sought vainly for a loophole, a flaw. The thread of continuity is never completely broken ….. something is always left to testify what has gone before. Then my eyes alighted on the Mission Hall, still standing, still witnessing, still alive ….. .

A workman gave a signal. A lorry’s engine roared. A rope tightened and half a house came crashing down. When the brick-dust and the starlings settled. I saw beyond the river. The air was clear.

I turned towards the new estate and the new year and this time left the shudder behind.