The History of the Northolme Estate 1939-1979

The History of the Northolme Estate 1939 – 1979

Steven Marshall

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the degree of

BA (Hons) History

Supervision: Dr S. A. Caunce

HY3990

April 2014

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Dedicated to

Helen Plummer

1941 - 2014

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the following people for their help in compiling this dissertation:

Dr Stephen Caunce, History Department, University of Central Lancashire, for his unwavering

support and guidance; Earby and District Historical Society, for unlimited access to their

archives; Bob Abel, Wendy Faulkner, Margaret Brown, Ken Ranson, Peter Dawson, Margaret

Greenwood and Stephanie Carter. For their interviews, Helen Plummer, Brian Plummer, Roger

Pickup, Patrick Murphy, Peter Stuttard, Ernest Newton and Robert Anderson, for their

contributions great and small.

To Christine Hession for her endless support, encouragement and ability to proof-read, you truly

have been a rock.

Finally to all the people of the Northolme Estate who played a major role in providing a history

worthy of recording.

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CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS, PICTURES AND MAPS 5

INTRODUCTION 6

EARBY AND ITS GROWTH 12

SHADOW FACTORIES IN THE EARBY AREA 15

A WORK FORCE ON THE MOVE 17

BUILDING THE RANCH 19

AFTER THE WAR 25

NORTHOLME ESTATE, A COMMUNITY CENTRED 33

CONCLUSION 37

APPENDIX 41

BIBLIOGRAPHY 44

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Illustrations, pictures and maps

1 Google Road Map 2012 7

2 Old OS map of Earby. Map ref. HOSM44247 before 1939 9

3 OS Map of the Northolme Estate 1973 10

4 Taken from the 1974 town booklet * 11

5 Essential War Workers of Grove Mill, Earby * 18

6 Grade II Listed Phoenix prefabs in Wake Green Road, Birmingham 19

7 Airoh designed prefab and brochure 19

8 Construction drawings of prefabs, Peter Dawson and * 21

9 Earlsdon Ave from Warwick Drive 22

10 Prefabs (evening) on Warwick Drive (the Tops) 22

11 Northolme under construction. 22

12 69 Kenilworth Drive 22

13 Northolme from the South 22

14 The Garden on Churchill Ave 22

15 Northolme estate (1945) showing 168 prefabricated homes 23

16 The Arcon Five Standard 1945 Prefab Layout was based upon the Phoenix prefab Earby

http://www.codnor.info/Needham_street.php 24

17 Original community building shown with extension on the front 33

18 Prefabricated Community Centre, Warwick Drive, late 1980s 36

19 Brick Built Centre on what was Churchill Ave, 2014 36

20 Map of the Ranch, 2014 36

*by Kind Permission of Earby and District Historical Society Archives

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The History of the Northholme Estate 1939-1979

“Every community needs an idea of itself in order to survive, a clear self-image that makes it possible to tell the difference between itself and other communities”.1

INTRODUCTION

In 1941, the devastation of Coventry and other industrial centres by the German Luftwaffe, led

to ‘shadow factories’ making strategically important items being set up in apparently safe areas

around the country. Rover tank production and Rolls Royce aircraft production, together with

warehousing for vital supplies, were secretly located in the small Yorkshire/Lancashire border

industrial town of Earby. This is the focus of this dissertation. Amongst other things, these

factories led to the influx of a workforce from Coventry and the Midlands unlike anything seen

in the area before, including many female workers making their contributions to the war effort.

The dissertation will examine the effects that the arrival of the manufacture of armaments had

on life in this town then and in ensuing decades and on its economic growth. The localised basis

will provide a very tight focus, and allow great attention to detail, while taking into

consideration the general historical context.2

The focus of the dissertation is the Northolme Estate, colloquially known as ‘The Ranch’, which

was created to house the outsiders, or ‘offcomeduns’ as they were generally known in typical

Yorkshire fashion. This paper will explore how the estate became a permanent part of Earby life,

but has somehow retained its semi-detached status to the present day. This allows the

dissertation to address a number of social issues that arose on this estate and exist to the

present day. Most incomers left but some decided to stay; their reasons for staying, and for

coming in the first place, will be investigated. The Northolme is particularly significant as one of

1 Rodney Castleden, The Element Encyclopedia of the Celts, Harper Collins 2012 London p xi 2 British shadow factories were a plan developed by the British Government to implement additional manufacturing capacity for the British aircraft industry, in the build-up to World War II.

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the first prefabricated estates built in England and the views of tenants on such housing, then

and subsequently, will also be examined.3

It will consider the historical reasons behind the estate’s construction which has played a pivotal

role in the overall rate of Earby’s growth in comparison to the growth rate of neighbouring

Fig 1 Google Road Map 2012

3 Developed by the Air Ministry under the internal project name of the Shadow Scheme, the project was created by Sir Kingsley

Wood and headed by Herbert Austin.

Earby

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towns such as Colne, Nelson and Burnley. It will attempt to link both the history of the area and

the effects of governmental changes made during the war years of 1939-45.

Earby is a small town of 6,116 people (2014), (4,625 in 1938). Historically part of the West

Riding of Yorkshire until 1974, it is now within the Borough of Pendle, Lancashire. Earby was an

Urban District, however it is now classed as a small town, part of a very complex urban rural

system within the mostly rural West Craven Area of Pendle. It is approximately five miles north

of Colne, seven miles south-west of Skipton, and eleven miles north-east of Burnley. The parish

had a population of 4,348 recorded in the 2001 census.4 On the south-eastern edge of the

town, on a connecting road between the A56 and the B6383, one mile from the small village of

Salterforth, lies a small housing development of semi-prefabricated Spooner-built council

houses built in the mid 1950s - this housing estate, named by developers The Northolme Estate,

is commonly known as ‘The Ranch’.5

Little has been written about this particular subject even though there have been papers based

around prefabricated housing, shadow factories and the contributions of a female workforce.

It is hoped that “The History of Northolme Estate, Earby 1939 – 1979”, will provide some

significant conclusions about prefabricated housing, social cohesion and social migration. This

dissertation will consider differing aspects of Britain’s pre-war housing and works policies; the

decisions to incorporate prefabricated buildings as part of the pre-war rebuilding strategies; the

effects on insular communities; and the social and cultural interactions as a consequence of

housing policies adopted, with direct implications on the Northolme Estate. The following

sources are therefore of some importance: Professor Peter Malpass has done much work on

4 "Parish headcount". Lancashire County Council. Retrieved 2009-01-10. 5 Post-war temporary prefabricated (prefab) houses were the major part of the delivery plan envisaged in March 1944 by war-time Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and legally outlined in the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944, to address the United Kingdom's post–World War II housing shortage.

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British Housing Policies from the 1940s to the present day which will be considered within the

dissertation.

Fig 2 Old OS map of Earby before 1939. Map ref. HOSM44247

“The History of Prefabricated Housing” by Brenda Vale, looks in some detail at the architectural

plans of post-war prefabricated housing policies adopted, which in turn give depth to the

policies adopted by the British government in post-war Britain and the onset of the ‘New

Jerusalem’ perception to housing shortages immediately after the cessation of the Second

World War. i

The dissertation will also consider in some detail the type of war-time production that was going

on at the shadow factories secretly located in and around Earby with Rover Tank production and

Rolls Royce aircraft production; and the influx of a female workforce to the area and the

contributions they made to the war effort. Penny Summerfield gives a great insight into the

mobilisation of young, single women during the early periods of the Second World War. They

were taken from their loved ones in cities such as Barnsley, Doncaster and Sheffield, to a rural

area, to share rooms and accommodation with complete strangers, while carrying out essential

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war work.6 G. Bernard Wood’s book, “Yorkshire Villages”, gives an insight into the small village

or town mentality of the populations of small rural communities in Yorkshire and the growth or

lack of growth, of such villages.

Fig 3 OS Map of the Northolme Estate 1973

Earby was originally one of these villages. While the village of Earby has now grown into a small

town, its overall social mentality seems to have become stagnant and failed to grow at the same

rate as the town’s physical boundaries. This gives some substance to the concept of

‘Offcumden’ and the levels of discrimination that can often be directed at strangers from

unknown places. It is still not uncommon to walk into a busy and rowdy pub in Earby to be met

with complete silence and suspicious eyes.

6 Earby War Workers, Mrs. Williams, Craven Herald 26/2/1954 Earby Archives, Mrs. William’s experiences of being a forced migrant worker during the Second World War.

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The dissertation will consider the social changes and overriding effects on both the local

community and on the people effectively drafted into this area from an inner city environment

and how these changes, to such diversely opposing communities, have given rise to a possible

unique form of discrimination, that has had a ripple effect upon the town for over seventy

years, predominantly during the 1970s and 80s.

It is this discrimination and its historical context that will be the main focus of the dissertation,

supported by the works of Norman Fairclough, C.E.M Joad, J Black and also Secord and

Blackman’s work on social psychology, with some insights into social cohesion. Earby and The

Ranch are very distinctive, in that during the period of the Second World War, significant events

were taking place within this small Yorkshire town that would subsequently have a greater

impact on the social changes within the town and the nation for many years to follow.

Population since 1911

1911 Census … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 6,032 1921 Census … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 6,024 1931 Census … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 5,522 1938 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 4,625 1945 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 4,991 1951 Census … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 5,348 1955 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 5,210 1961 Census … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 5,152 1962 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 5,150 1963 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 5,130 1964 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 5,110 1965 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 5,100 1966 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 5,030 1967 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 5,010 1968 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 5,010 1969 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 5,010 1970 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 4,990 1971 Census … … … … … … … … … … … … ... … … 4,816 1973 Registrar General’s Estimate … … … … … … … … … 4,820

Fig 4 Taken from the 1974 town booklet By Kind Permission of Earby & District Historical Society

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EARBY AND ITS GROWTH

Artifacts have been found, including hand tools and arrowheads in the fields near the

Northolme Estate. The Earby area has been inhabited continuously since the Bronze Age and

many Bronze Age.

However the greatest impacts upon the local community were the Danish and Norwegian

Vikings. Earby is on the border between the two differing Norse invaders: Norwegian Vikings

who invaded from the west after travelling around the north of Scotland and settling in the

Wirral and the Danes, invading from the North Sea, via Jorvik which is now York. The town gets

its name from its Viking heritage, as does the estate. The name ‘North Holme’ is thought to be

of Norwegian origin, meaning the North Farmstead, or northerly farmstead, which gives some

weight to the theory that the Vikings who settled in the Wirral and the Isle of Man were the

area administrators, rather than the Danes from York who are believed to have administered

the nearby towns of Skipton and Ingleton.

From this point very little seems to have happened until the emergence of the Industrial

Revolution and the rise of the Yorkshire and Lancashire cotton trades. Some large and small

towns in the north of England developed and expanded in the 19th century following the

Industrial Revolution; with the textile industry leading the way. The industrialisation of textiles

spawned many other industries, such as engineering, chemicals, canals and railways which were

developed to support the new textile factories. Earby also benefited from these advances in

textile production and was not that dissimilar to the nearby town of Colne. Until 1770, Colne

had apparently been a village of about 250 yards in any direction. A good deal of handloom

weaving was going on and, stimulated by its long tradition as a market centre, Colne became

sufficiently popular as a centre for the merchandising of woollens, and later cotton. There

followed an influx of newcomers, largely from Craven and the West Riding of Yorkshire, as the

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increase in wage-earning potential brought the poorer paid agricultural workers into the ever-

growing urban areas; Earby at this time was no exception.7

Earby had been a sleepy backwater, reliant on farming augmented by cottage spinning and

handloom weaving of wool. A sudden change, bringing a mix of entrepreneurial mill owners like

the Bracewell family who were local land owners, builders and the influx of agricultural workers

in search of better wages, increased the population and the size of the village, into a small town

growing in many ways at the same rate as its neighbouring towns. In just two years, between

1907 and 1909, Earby’s population had increased by 1,7808.

The first attempt at factory textile production is seen at the end of the 18th into the 19th

centuries and stemmed from the demise of corn-milling in the area. The building of the Leeds

and Liverpool Canal made it cheaper to bring flour in from areas of the country where it could

be produced more economically; it also allowed building materials to be moved quickly and

cheaply, influencing industrial growth.

The major development in Earby was the building of its first purpose-built textile mill by

Christopher Bracewell in 1840, called the New Shed. The Bracewells expanded and some ten

years later, Christopher Bracewell built Victoria Mill as a spinning and weaving factory.

The Bracewell’s were considered to be very hard task masters and Christopher Bracewell Junior,

better known as ‘the Master’, virtually controlled Earby for a large part of the 19th century. The

only way to escape this family’s control was to leave town and find work elsewhere and this is

what people did. Many men would rise early and walk to Colne or Nelson for the better wages

than be content with the low wages Bracewell paid, however the very poor did not always have

the option because of mounting debts to the mill owners. This was not an uncommon

occurrence considering the town’s isolation from the main transport routes (which impacted on

the cost of cotton production).

7 Spencer, Wilfred.M Ed (1968) Colne Parish Church Burial Register 1790-1812. Sankeys Pub, Nelson. 8 Carter, S. (2013). A brief history. In: E&DHS The Clatter of Clogs. Earby: Earby and District Historical Society.

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By this time the railway had reached Earby, making it even easier to bring in building materials,

such as slate and bricks and also raw cotton and conversely, take finished goods away. The

population of Earby began to grow with the availability of employment at the ‘Big Mill’. Towards

the 19th century the cotton industry locally went into overdrive, with new mills springing up.

Again, Earby was no exception and within a couple of decades Grove Mill, Albion Mill, Spring

Mill, Brook Shed and an extension to Victoria Mill were built. The influx of people to work in

these mills led to a building boom. Most of the terraced houses at the western side of the town

were built. By 1907 there were seven mills running almost 7,000 looms; by 1914 there were

sixteen cotton manufacturers in Earby; almost 9,000 looms. Earby had become a busy little self-

contained town with textiles dominating not only industrial life but every aspect of social and

daily life. Families such as the Bracewells and the introduction of steam powered factories, had

transformed Earby from an agriculture subsistence village into a thriving industrial urban town.

By the beginning of the 19th century, Earby had its own deep-seated community of working class

weavers and cotton workers, many from rural communities.

Soon after the First World War, came the end of what was considered to be the Golden Age of

Cotton; workers had gone off to fight in the trenches overseas; markets were lost, never to be

recovered completely; the population of Earby began to fall as workers and their families moved

away in search of better employment. Despite attempts at diversification, one by one Earby’s

textile companies closed down.9 Earby began to fall behind its neighbouring towns, such as

Colne and Nelson; like its close neighbour Barnoldswick, its growth began to stagnate. This

area, where the Pennine moors run into Craven sheep grazing country, while there seemed to

be an abundance of water, was proving to be deficient for further industrial growth and the

industrial terrain, its isolation and the lack of transport routes, effectively cut it away from the

access enjoyed by the larger Lancashire towns.

9 Carter, S. (2013). A brief history. In: E&DHS The Clatter of Clogs. Earby: Earby and District Historical Society. 1-10.

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SHADOW FACTORIES IN THE EARBY AREA

In 1941, with the devastation of Coventry and the emergence of ‘shadow factories’10 making

strategically important items being set up in apparently safe areas, Rover tank production and

Rolls Royce aircraft production were secretly located in and around Earby. Among other things,

this led to the influx of a workforce unlike anything seen in the area before, including many

female workers making their contributions to the war effort.

By 1941, the Lend-Lease agreement reached with America eased the burden on Britain’s

economy and the need to earn foreign currency through exports. The major contribution of the

cotton industry to the war effort was through it contracting and subsequently releasing labour

to fill the ranks of the armed forces and provide premises for the storage of munitions.11

Surplus mills were mothballed and productive capacity was reduced by 30-40%, enabling mills

to become available for a variety of uses, but mainly as storage. This happened to Spring Mill

and Grove Mill in Earby and others in many areas in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Earby was

certainly not out of reach of the German Luftwaffe, in fact it would have been on, or very near,

the flight path for raids on Manchester, Liverpool or even Bradford. It was believed however

that Lancashire cotton and Yorkshire woollen towns, would not be subject to the same aerial

bombardments that such cities as Manchester and Liverpool had to endure;12 that a rural

location could provide some safety against any large scale aerial attack and would hopefully

result in less collateral damage.

10 A shadow factory was a term given to dispersed manufacturing sites in times of war to reduce the risk of disruption due to enemy air-raids and often with the dual purpose of increasing manufacturing capacity. The shadow factories as the name implies, were replicas of the original factory, manufacturing the same products. Before World War Two, Britain had built many shadow factories. 11 Fowler (2003) p185. Pilkington (1947) p 82-83. And Dupree (1987) pp 2-4, 21, 47-49. Dupree,M.(ed) (1987), Lancashire and Whitehall: the diary of Sir Raymond Street,Vol1 1931-1939 and Vol 2 1939-1957. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp2-4, 21, 47-47. 12 Fowler (2003) p185. Pilkington (1947) p 82-83. And Dupree (1987) pp 2-4, 21, 47-49. Singleton (1947) p 84.

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Many industrial premises were requisitioned during the war for the war effort – Earby had

several mills and four were requisitioned. Spring Mill as a tobacco warehouse, part of Victoria

Mill was used to store shell cases and Grove Mill and Sough Bridge Mill were placed in the hands

of the Rover Company. The mill at Carleton-in-Craven was also requisitioned, as was Bankfield

Mill in Barnoldswick, later to become the Rolls Royce factory.

Because of internal problems, (see Appendix note 1) production at Grove Mill at least was

switched to making components for tank manufacture. A tank was brought to Earby to show the

employees the finished article. Local historian Peter Dawson remembers the occasion well, the

caterpillar tracks of the tank caused considerable damage to the pavements in Earby.

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A WORK FORCE ON THE MOVE

Relocating a factory also meant relocating the work force and these people would need

housing. At the start of the war there were many empty houses in Earby and the surrounding

district, as many textile workers had left the area in search of work elsewhere. In January 1941,

a Register of available local accommodation was drawn up and by March 1941 the local Billeting

Officer reported that it was proposed to billet 1,500 transferred workers within the Earby

District, expected in the early May. Meetings took place between the council clerk and surveyor

with representatives of the Rover Company and the Air Ministry.

The Air Ministry proposed to requisition land at the top of Salterforth Lane for the purpose of

erecting ‘hutments’ to house employees of the Rover Company. The council approved the

temporary erection of the proposed hutments for the period of the emergency. There is little

evidence to substantiate the make of prefabricated housing that was used on the Northolme

site, however extensive research has reduced it to just a small number of possibilities, one being

the Unity Structure which was from a construction company based in Rickmansworth.13 Using a

common single storey-level precast reinforced concrete panels, they produced various updated

versions of their bungalow with twin-storey house variations. The Phoenix, designed by Laing

and built by themselves as well as with partners McAlpine and Henry Boot, looked much like an

AIROH14. Davies indicates that the AIROH house was designed to make use of spare capacity in

the aircraft industry and was made in five factories scattered around the country. He further

states “it was that rare thing in the history of prefabricated houses: a truly mass-produced

product, with a central front door, but was far less aesthetically pleasing”.15 A two bedroom in-

situ pre-formed design with steel frame, asbestos clad walls and an innovative roof of tubular

steel poles with steel panels attached, the Phoenix prefabs cost £1,200, each constructed on

site; the specially insulated version designed for use on the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides cost

13 Rickmansworth is a small town in south-west Hertfordshire, England, situated approximately 20 miles (32 km) northwest of central London; this is in keeping with Peter Dawson’s explanation of Pollards Construction being a London based company. 14 AIROH stands for Aircraft Industries Research Organisation on Housing

15 Davis, Colin. (2005) The prefabricated home, Reaktion Books Ltd London: pp197.

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£2,000. In November 1941 Earby Urban District Council agreed to undertake on behalf of the

Ministry of Aircraft Production, the management of the 176 married quarters in the process of

erection. With official complaints coming from the local landowners and farmers, Earby had

over three hundred workers billeted on a voluntary basis and saturation point had almost been

reached according to records obtained from the Lancashire County Archives. Some four

hundred evacuated children were also billeted with families in the area and compulsory

accommodation plans would be put into operation if no more voluntary billets were

forthcoming by February 1942. Fourteen married quarters had been completed and a

considerable number were expected before the end of March. By then almost 568 persons, all

transferred war workers, had been billeted in Earby creating the need to implement rapid

housing.

In 1945 the Craven Herald reported a bid to get a reduction in rent and the Northolme Tenants

Association threatened a rent strike. At a meeting chaired by Mr John O’Toole, it was resolved

to withhold rent payments until a settlement with the Ministry of Supply and Aircraft

Production was obtained. They gained a reduction of four shillings a week and the rent was

reduced from twelve shillings to eight shillings.16 It was this type of solidarity that forged the

cohesive nature of the Northolme community.

Fig 5 Essential War Workers of Grove Mill Earby By Kind Permission of Earby and District Historical Society

Archives

16 "Shadow Scheme: Morris Motors Ltd". National Archives. Retrieved 2010-11-20.

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BUILDING OF THE RANCH

The Ministry of Supply decided that temporary accommodation would be needed in Earby in the

form of an estate of prefabricated houses. A total of one hundred and sixty eight prefabricated

semi-detached bungalows were built, for a population of around five hundred adults and

children. The Community Centre would probably have been built last, once the houses had been

finished.

Peter Dawson recalls his memories from 1941 and his involvement in the building of the

Northolme Estate. The following transcript is taken from an interview with Peter Dawson.

I was still at school when a start was made on what is now the Northolme

Estate. Its official name was Earby Camp and all documentation, eg delivery

notes were addressed accordingly; to others it was nicknamed The Holy City.

We used to go up Salterforth Lane to watch the huge earth-moving machines

leveling the ground which became Warwick Drive. On part of the site there was

a large depression which the earth-movers were filling by scraping soil off the

higher ground into the hollow. We had never seen the likes of those enormous

earth-movers which were towed by large track-laying tractors fitted with a

bulldozer blade. I had no idea that I would be working there when I left school.

In those days you normally finished school at the age of 14 and on the Friday

we left, all the boys were told to report to the Labour Exchange in Earby. The

following Monday we were given a ‘Green Card’ with a number and told to

Fig 6 Below now Grade II listed

Phoenix prefabs in Wake Green

Road, Birmingham

Fig 7 Airoh floor plan similar to the

Phoenix prefab

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report to the building site office at 7.30am. The firm given the contract to build

the prefabs was Pollards, a London based company. At that time, anybody of

working age was subject to the ‘Essential Working Order’. Under the Emergency

Powers (Defence) Act. The Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin, had complete

control over the labour force and the allocation of manpower. We had no choice

in the matter. Each of the men and boys working on the site was given a lead

disc with a number stamped on it. At the end of the working day (5.30pm) the

disc was handed in and this was used as proof of your attendance at work. A

time-keeper was employed instead of a clocking-on machine We worked on

Saturday mornings to make up our 48-hour working week. For this, the wage

was 30/- (£1.50p) for a 14 year old boy.

The whole site was like a scene from the Western Front of World War I. There

were duck boards to walk on, but if you slipped off, you were knee deep in mud.

I was told to report to the concrete gang; I would be wheeling barrow loads of

concrete. They were very heavy and difficult to manoeuvre over the rough, soft

ground the prefabs were built on. The concrete rafts were 60ft x 30ft and 6

inches deep and the concrete gang were on bonus work. They had to lay one of

these bases a day. Once the concrete was set, the joiners and bricklayers

moved on to start the construction of the house. I was later moved from that job

to asbestos cutting.

Flat sheets made from asbestos-reinforced cement were delivered to the site in

8ft by 4ft sections, a quarter of an inch thick. The usual size sheets used in the

construction were 8ft by 2ft (called standard sheets) which meant that the

delivered sheets had to be cut into two equal pieces. The sheets were cut into

sets sufficient for a pair of semi-detached prefabs and the ‘Heavy Gang’ moved

a complete set onto a base ready for construction to begin. All the cutting was

done outside, in all weathers. We made a shelter out of waste timber and old

plywood. Tools used for the cutting were curved blades made from old files,

these were bent to shape and hardened and made very sharp. The sheets were

not cut all the way through but sufficiently deep to enable them to be snapped

into two pieces; the edges produced were quite rough and had to be trimmed

using a rasp to take off the rough edges.

No one was provided with any protective wear, not even a pair of gloves and our

hands got very sore, probably due to the lime in the asbestos/cement mix.

Some of the timbers used were treated on site with preservative. The lengths of

wood were immersed in long metal tanks which were filled with a green rot-

proofing liquid which I think was called Solignum, very much like today’s

Cuprinol. This was delivered in 45 gallon drums. One of the big jobs which had

to be done was the installation of all the services; water supply, gas, electricity,

surface water drains and the biggest job, the laying of sewer pipes.

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Fig 8 By Kind Permission of Peter Dawson and Earby and District Historical Society Archives

The main sewer ran down Salterforth Road, it had to be deep and it was

stepped down. A mechanical digger was used to do most of the excavation and

this ran down each side of the trench. The depth of the trench meant that the

ground was unstable so the sides had to be shored up with timber. One day a

man was working in the bottom of the trench when the timber supports gave

way and he was buried alive as the sides collapsed inwards. It took a while for

his work colleagues to dig him out and to get him to hospital in Colne. However

it was too late, he died from his injuries.

When the houses were finished the internal floors were coated with Trinidad

Lake Asphalt giving the bare floors a very black and shiny appearance and

providing a damp proof layer. A porch was built over the door of each house

which was inevitably used for storing prams, they were called ‘pram sheds’. In

those days prams were quite large and would have taken up a lot of room inside

the house. The porch also provided shelter, being on the top of a hill the houses

were quite exposed to the elements. Skilled workers were very hard to find in

the building trade as many had been called up into the forces and skilled men

like joiners had to be brought out of retirement.

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Fig 9 Earlsdon Ave from Warwick Drive Fig 10 Prefabs on Warwick Drive (the Tops)

Fig 11 Northolme under construction. Fig 12 69 Kenilworth Drive

Fig 13 Northolme from the South. Fig 14 The Garden on Churchill Ave

By Kind Permission of Earby and District Historical Society Archives

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Every Tuesday I went with a man to Colne taking very large sacks to

Riddihough’s sawmill, we went to fill the sacks with sawdust which was used as

insulation material in the cavity of the prefab walls. I used to treat this as a day

out and in winter months it felt warm in the sawmill.

Most of the roads on the estate were named after places in the Midlands where

many of the workers came from. With names such as, Warwick Drive (City in

Warwickshire); Mosley Avenue (suburb of Birmingham 2 miles south of city

centre); Earlsdon Avenue (a district of Coventry); on the opposite side (South) of

Salterforth Road were Kenilworth Drive (a town 9 km southwest of Coventry),

Tyseley Grove (a district in the southern half of Birmingham), Chesford Avenue

(Chesford Bridge is between Leamington Spa and Kenilworth). In my opinion

the site for the estate was chosen to be handy for the shadow factories in Earby,

Sough (Rover Co.) and Barnoldswick (Rolls Royce). In fact they would be within

walking distance. Later on, some of the prefabs were used to house single

women brought in from the Barnsley and Wombwell mining area of South

Yorkshire. These houses were used as hostels and each house accommodated

several girls, some were on Churchill Avenue and some on Earlsdon Avenue.

Peter Dawson

Fig 15 Northolme estate (1945) showing 168 prefabricated homes

24

Fig 16 The Arcon Five Standard 1945 Prefab. This Layout was based upon the Phoenix Prefab as built

in 1941 on the Northolme Estate, Earby http://www.codnor.info/Needham_street.php

25

AFTER THE WAR

During the Second World War almost four million British homes had been destroyed or

damaged and afterwards there was a major boom in council house construction.17 The bomb

damage from the war only worsened the condition of Britain's housing stock, which was in poor

condition before its outbreak. Before the war, many social housing projects were built, however

the bomb damage meant that much greater progress had to be made with slum clearance

projects. In cities like London, Coventry and Kingston-upon-Hull, which received particularly

heavy bombing, the redevelopment schemes were often larger and more radical.

In the immediate post-war years and well into the 1950s, council house provision (See Appendix

Note 2) was shaped by the New Towns Act 1946 and the Town and Country Planning Act 1947,

of the 1945–51 Labour government. At the same time, this government introduced housing

legislation that removed explicit references to housing for the working classes and introduced

the concept of ‘general needs’ construction (ie that council housing should aim to fill the needs

for a wide range of society). In particular, Aneurin Bevan, the Minister for Health and Housing,

promoted a vision of new estates where "the working man, the doctor and the clergyman will

live in close proximity to each other".

Many homes were typically semi-detached or in small terraces. A three-bedroom semi-

detached council house was typically built on a square grid seven yards (21 feet (6.4 m)) on the

side, with a maximum density of no more than 12 houses per acre (30 houses per hectare;

around 337 m² or 403 sq. yd. per house), meaning that most houses had generous space around

them. For many working-class people, this housing model provided their first experience of

private indoor toilets, private bathrooms and hot running water. For tenants in England and

Wales, it also usually provided the first experience of private garden space (usually front and

17 "United Kingdom" Section VII (History), J1 (World War II and Its Aftermath), J2 (Postwar Britain), MSN Encarta Online

Encyclopedia, 2006. Archived 2009-10-31.

26

rear). The quality of these houses, and in particular the existence of small gardens in England

and Wales, compared very favourably with social housing being built in Europe in this period.18

Towards the end of the 1950s the Conservative government began to re-direct the building

programme back from ‘general needs’ towards inner-city slum clearance. At the same time the

rising influence of modernist architecture, the development of new construction techniques,

such as system-building (a form of prefabrication), and a growing desire by many towns and

cities to retain population (and thus prestige) within their own boundaries (rather than ‘export’

people to New Towns and ‘out of boundary’ peripheral estates) similar to the Northolme estate

but on a larger scale, led to this model being abandoned in Britain's inner-city areas.

The use of system-building methods, while essentially a speedy construction alternative, was

later seen as possibly being a short-sighted, false economy, as many of the later houses are in a

poor state of repair or already demolished. On many estates, older council houses, with their

largely superior build quality, have outlived them.

Council tenants also faced problems of mobility, finding it hard to move from one property to

another as their families grew or shrank, or to seek work. Despite the building, there was a

constant demand for housing, and ‘waiting lists’ are maintained, with preference being given to

those in greatest need. Malpass concluded that some evidence and reasons for a new

interpretation of the housing-welfare state relationship in Britain. The main points were, first,

that established ideas about housing and the post-war welfare state needed to be modified to

take account of the evidence that housing was not just different from the other services, it was

shaped by different forces.

Were these different forces evident at the time or did they manifest themselves in other forms

based around the issues of relocating dispossessed workers; had the new post-war government

18 R. Burdett, T. Travers, D. Czischke, P. Rode and B. Moser, Density and Urban Neighbourhoods in London: Summary Report

(Enterprise LSE Cities, 2004), pp. 13-14.

27

forgotten its responsibility to the thousands of workers lost in the rural backwaters; had the

victory of 1945 whitewashed over the social issues that the war had given impetus to.

“In 1945 at the end of World War II, my dad was de-mobbed from the Royal Navy, he had been an aero-engine fitter on aircraft carriers. Shortly afterwards he got a job at Rolls-Royce in Barnoldswick and so, in April 1946, when I was six months old, we moved from Ashton-under-Lyne, near Manchester, to live in Earby. We lived firstly at 22 Warwick Drive with my aunt and uncles, who like my dad, had got jobs at Rolls-Royce, then we moved into a prefab at 16 Chesford Avenue on The Ranch.

The prefabs were constructed from asbestos sheeting with a corrugated roof, and were very basic; they had an asphalted floor, a black-leaded range in the kitchen and a small fireplace in the living room. My initial memory is of it being so cold. There were three bedrooms and a separate toilet and bathroom which for the times was quite posh. Each prefab had a large amount of garden on all three sides and many people grew their own vegetables. Times were hard and nobody had very much money, so the house was

very basically furnished. I can still visualise in the living room a table, peg

rug, two chairs and a sideboard on which dad had a fish tank. Parents

were strict in those days but we were given a lot more freedom than

today’s parents would do. My bedroom consisted of a bed and a wicker

basket in which I kept my worldly goods, clothes, toys and my treasured

books.

A memory that still makes me laugh to this day was the whole school sat in

the hall listening to a commentary on the radio about the eclipse of the

sun. The internet tells me this was on Wednesday, the 30th June 1954.

One of my jobs was to go on my bogie and get a sack of coke from

Victoria Mill, which used to stand across from what is now the bus station.

Going there was a wonderful trip, going down the steep hill on my bogie

and quite often crashing into the hedge that surrounded the field in front of

North Holme farm. The trip back was quite different though. With a heavy

bag of coke loaded onto the bogie and having to pull it up the very steep

hill, it would take me ages.

When I was twelve I got a paper round with the newsagent which was part

of the small buildings next to Doug Hornby’s barbers’ shop by the old

railway crossing. The round included Kelbrook and Sough so I had to do it

28

on my bike and every Friday I was paid my wage of two shillings and

sixpence.

There were no TV or computers in those days, all entertainment was self

made, we would play out in the streets as late as we were allowed, the

street lights would enable us to stay out and continue playing until the

dreaded cry “time to come in now”. The games we played were endless:

Marbles, Relieve “O”, kick-the-can, carts/bogies, hopscotch, telephones

made from tin cans and string, etc.

My brother Les and I had a tent and we would go camping by the beck

side in the fields at the back of the estate by the railway bridge. Not very

waterproof, we spent many a wet night in it.

Summer time would be spent playing on the Bristol Tractors football field,

two fields down from the estate towards Sough. Football and cricket

matches, which could be fifteen or more a-side, were played for hours on

end. The Dell, an old stone-quarry in the field at the rear of Kenilworth

Drive, next to the railway line, was a favourite place to play hide and seek.

Winter was spent sledging in the fields or skating down the ginnel path to

the fields.

Being keen on football I first played for Salterforth primary school team

against teams from schools in Barnoldswick. I then played for the estate

junior team in the local league where games were played on Saturday

mornings.”

Ken Ranson

The prefab houses were built with a limited life expectancy “for the duration of the emergency”

ie for War time. When the war ended in 1945 it was obvious that it would be a considerable

time before the country got back on its feet; some food rationing didn’t end until 1953. The

prefabs were therefore kept occupied.

The negotiations to transfer the prefabs were protracted (see Appendix Note 3) and the prefabs

were becoming the worse for wear and some were unoccupied, being unfit for use. A Spooner

design of timber framed construction was opted for with 2 or 3 bedrooms. In July 1951 – after

five years of negotiations with government ministries and various planning authorities, the first

sod was cut for the redevelopment of the estate. It was estimated that the building of 150

29

houses would take three years. It is these building that are now the predominant houses upon

the estate today. In just sixteen years the prefabs had been replaced by two-storey semi-

prefabricated homes and all that remains of the prefabs is the concrete foundations, scattered

beneath and around the new estate. In essence the pre-Arcon Five prefabs had not really been

up to the job; while they lived out their fifteen year life, many prefabs from the 1950s still

survive today.

In 1952, The Craven Herald reported that of the first phase of 50 houses, only twelve had been

occupied, a further 16 were under construction, of which ten were nearing completion.

Progress had been painfully slow, caused not least by a lack of skilled workmen in the area.

(Earby Archives)

Many factors began to affect Earby and the community: the collapse of demand that hit the

world cotton industry in 1952-53 ensured the death of the now desolate and derelict mills that

dominated Earby.19 While many people within the Earby community were being squeezed by

the economic state of the nation and growing unemployment, there was still the need to

develop new housing and local people only saw the development of housing in the Northolme

area of town. Those offcumdens, who had both money and employment were now benefiting in

the form of new purpose-built spacious homes; this perception that outsiders were receiving

the best that the government and local councils could give, formed a deeply ingrained prejudice

which, while it had always been there in the form of suspicion against outsiders, was now

elevated to a new type of discrimination against anyone who lived upon the Estate.

Armorides,20 who by this time had acquired Grove Mill, had a ring-fenced agreement with Earby

Urban District Council to prioritise and provide homes for its growing work force. This led to a

second influx of workers relocating from all over the north of England, Scotland and Ireland. The

Northolme was primarily occupied by people from the Midlands, but now this growing

community included Irish, Scottish, Northumbrians, Mancunians and Liverpudlians. A deep

suspicion permeated every sector of the community, old and young alike; the perception was, if

19 Rose, Mary.B (1996) The Lancashire cotton industry since 1700, Lancashire County Books, p 140. 20 Armoride’s was during the 1960,s the largest employer in Earby; based in Grove Mill it produced plastics for the automotive industry and the Ministry of Defence.

30

you live on The Ranch you were not one of us and if you are not one of us, you are not trusted,

liked or even tolerated.

This was never more obvious than in the school yard as children from The Ranch were

victimised and bullied at Springfield Infant and Alderhill Junior School. However children who

attended Salterforth Junior School or St Joseph’s Roman Catholic School at Barnoldswick, did

not encounter this attitude at such an early age, but did fall victim to it once they entered the

centre of Earby or left the estate. The result was that during the early 1960s, most of the young

children that lived on the Estate banded together and played together in large groups within the

confines of the Estate boundaries and few children from Earby ventured further than the old

railway crossing. Whenever these two opposing groups met, it invariably meant trouble and

fighting. By the mid 1960s there were over one hundred young people of varying ages, between

nine and nineteen, living upon The Ranch and gathering together for self preservation whenever

they ventured from the Estate to play in the parks and open fields around Earby. This, coupled

with the growing mistrust of even the adult residents, ensured the area gained a reputation for

troublesome people and feral youngsters across the whole of the local area and as so often

proved, ‘expecting trouble, causes trouble’. Throughout the sixties, seventies and early eighties,

the Ranch was synonymous with trouble, bad debtors, drunken louts and bad parenting and the

only way to rid oneself of this reputation was either to move away or deny your address.

“I was right good at cricket, I could have been professional who knows but I was

good, but when I went to join Earby Cricket Club I was told “what you doing here

you’re a Rancher, we don’t take Ranchers in this club.” I hated them for that; you

don’t knock back kids with talent just because they come from a council estate”.

Patrick Murphy

“I hung around with lads from the Ranch, it meant nothing to me where you’re

from, hell we lived in a back-to-back behind the old Co-op, you cannot get more

rundown than that. I was perceived as a trouble maker because I ran with the

kids off the Ranch; even I could not get past the clique attitudes of the cricket

club, I ended up playing for Thornton”.

Roger Pickup

31

“We lived on Selbourn Terrace just off Red Lion Street, just over Keb Bridge, it

was a dump; damp, wet, cold and prone to flooding every time the beck ran its

banks. I had loads of mates when I lived down there but as soon as my mum

moved onto the Ranch it was like I had the plague. I was bullied so bad mum

moved me from Alderhill to Salterforth school. It was OK for a while but once I

joined secondary school and was back in the mix with all the kids from Earby, it all

started again; I finished up moving in with my Grandma in Carshalton, Surrey”.

Robert Anderson

“My mum moved to Nelson because I could not go out without some kid picking a

fight with me. If they did, I didn’t run, I just punched their lights out. Problem was

the next thing that happened was the local bobby knocking on the door. It didn’t

matter whether I beat up one, two or more, I was always considered to be the

protagonist. Mum just got sick of it and moved to Nelson nearer her job”.

Peter Stuttart

“My dad captained Earby Football Club for fifteen years, was well known and

respected, half the town filled All Saints Church the day of his funeral. He would

have turned in his grave if he had known I was turned away from the team for

being a Rancher; bloody hell I had played three seasons as a semi-professional, I

even played against Leeds United, but I was always considered to be a Rancher

and Ranchers were just not good enough for their team”.

Steven Marshall

“The youth club was the old community centre, which later became an egg

packing station It looked like a ranch house and gave the estate its nickname.”

Ken Ranson

“I lived on the Ranch from 1980, until 1998 when I flew the nest. My memories

there will never be matched, in particular reference to 'tuthersiders', we competed

against the 'otherside'; we played them at football on the front park and we played

them at hare and hounds where the entire Ranch was the boundary. They were

amazing games, very competitive and often ended in a punch up or a fall out, all

forgotten the following day because we were Ranchers”.

Glenn Evans 21

21 Taken from the Earby Ranch website and accessed on 2012.8.15 15.38

22 Cohen. Stanley, (2002) Folk Devils and Moral Panic, Chapter one “Deviance and Moral Panic” Routledge : Abingdon. p36-41. 23 Feldman. C.J, (2009) We are the Mods (A transitional history of a sub-culture), Peter Lang Publishing: New York pp15

32

“I moved to the Estate in the nineteen sixties and have now lived here almost fifty

years, I am only just starting to feel apart of the town, I suppose it’s because I

never lost me Geordie accent, I think they are getting used to me now, Oh but I

still get some canny looks from some of the locals, their not keen on us Ranchers

are they? Hey but when have I ever cared what people though. If they don’t like it

well they know what they can dee.”

Helen Plummer

Cohen would suggest that one of the most recurrent types of moral panic in Britain since the

Second World War, has been the emergence of youth culture,22 exclusively working-class,

cultures associated with violence, Mods, Rockers and Skinheads.23 Feldman’s perception was

this grew from the eradication of National Service, giving youths more leisure time. While many

of the youths on the Ranch associated themselves with all the aforementioned groups, their

association with the estate was greater, and one would find Mods, Rockers and Skinheads, even

Teddy boys, grouped together in many a skirmish against any non-Ranch protagonist group;

while musical tastes and fashion differed, the need for overall self-protection and community

identity would always prevail.24

33

NORTHOLME ESTATE, A COMMUNITY CENTRED

Not everyone was happy to stay in the rural backwaters and, as Malpass indicated previously,

many people felt left behind and deserted by the government. Many people returned to their

native Midlands, though some decided to stay within the industry now established within the

Earby and Barnoldswick area. However some were adamant that this peaceful rural backwater

was the last place they wished to be.

Fig 17 Original community centre building shown with extension on the front

The original community centre was a very large semi-prefabricated building, complete with a

bar, small stage, snooker tables and one room at the end which was used as a library that would

double on Saturdays as a cinema; however the Community Centre did not stay open for long.

(See Appendix Note 4)

Parents on Earby’s Northolme Estate wanted the chance to turn a derelict building on the estate

into a new community centre and they were prepared to be fully self-supporting with no

financial assistance from Pendle Council. (See Appendix Note 5)

The NPA (Northolme Parents Association) was disbanded after the failure to secure a

community centre. A later association (the NRA), The Northolme Residents Association were

34

successful in securing a community centre. The old centre was demolished due to renovation

costs and a new prefabricated centre was once again erected upon ‘The Ranch’.

The Northolme Residents Association aim was to increase the quality of life for long-term

residents. They wanted to make the estate more attractive to people wishing to buy houses

from residents who had taken advantage of the Right to Buy option, to reduce crime, anti-social

behavior and the negative perceptions and to increase facilities for the residents and tenants.

When Earby Urban District Council handed over administration to Pendle Borough Council,

many viewed this as an equally negative situation. The standing joke being that if one was

evicted from Colne or Nelson, then the punishment was being sent to The Ranch, a place with

no facilities and limited transportation, away from the hustle and bustle of life in larger towns.

This mix of anti-social families, mixed with the offcumdens, increased the perception of

negativity. As a result, the Northolme estate was seen as run-down, with high crime and anti-

social behavior.

Pendle Council reneged upon their original plan to replace the portacabin centre with a

purpose-built centre similar to the centre provided on the Glenroy estate in Colne. This resulted

in many of the NRA founding members stepping back from a predominantly council-controlled

residents association run by a few elderly pensioners, who in the view of the younger set were

unwilling to fight for any rights. This resulted in the land that is now White Leys and Craven

Court and also the area once known as The Dip, being sold to developers. This apathy effectively

killed the militant attitude of the residents and, to some extent, the community spirit that had

been so prevalent since 1943. There are two camps of thought: there are the people who say “I

live on the Ranch” who embrace the achievements of the residents over the decades, who carry

the label with an element of militant pride; and the people who wish not to be associated with

the negative connotations of the Ranch and state “We live in Northolme”. Whichever camp one

decides to settle into, the history of the estate can never be rewritten. Without the aspirations

of both camps, the opportunities of reviving the community spirit will always be a difficult

35

challenge. The development of the new houses brought with it new people and a new lease of

life to a failing social community; more needs to be done to ensure that The Ranch’ does not slip

back into the old negative perceptions. People who have lived on the estate for many years are

still passionate about how life was, also the new residents claim that life is better; the area is

safer for children; and the quality of life good. It can be said that the Northolme Residents

Association has had a resounding positive influence on the lives of the many residents of the

estate; the question on the lips of many natives of The Ranch is, “can it last?”

The NRA was always seen as a militant group against the local authority, succeeding with

campaigns such as dropped kerbs; traffic calming measures and cyclic maintenance schemes;

these ensured that not only was the quality of social life enhanced, but also that the housing

stock was improved to the national standards for council houses. It was part of the consultation

process that has now seen the introduction of the Tenant’s Contracts and was instrumental in

gaining two safe play areas for children. Not only did the NRA look after its own community, its

members instigated and formed the (PTF) Pendle Tenants Federation and supported other

residents associations in Pendle to gain the same quality of service from Pendle Borough

Council. Its monthly newsletter ‘The Ranch Rag’ informed its members of all activities ongoing

and throughout Pendle, it supported applications for help with council issues and was

instrumental in introducing a monthly Citizens Advice Bureau page, which later became a

weekly drop-in service with the local CAB. This became the blue print for other residents

associations newsletters, not only in Pendle but further afield, as copies were distributed to

family members or ex-residents that lived away.

The Northolme Estate or as it is better known ‘The Ranch’ was always seen as synonymous with

negative connotations. This was perceived to be because it was first occupied by people from

city environments thrust into a rural backwater; as today, the two extremes never seem to find

a common ground. The influx of offcumdens was met with suspicion and caution. History tells us

that strange people from strange places have always been viewed in the same way and so the

label “Rancher” stuck. This mix of multi-diverse city dwellers never really became accepted into

36

the local community. Therefore as a result the Ranch became an insular community. The same

community spirit that had survived throughout the war and the past five decades was high and

proactive, crime and anti-social behaviour was on the decline; people began to want to live on

The Ranch or at least live in the Northolme area of Earby.

Fig 18 Prefabricated Community Centre, Warwick Fig 19 Brick Built Centre on what was Churchill

Drive, late 1980s Ave, 2014

Fig 20 The Northolme Estate as it is today (2014) By kind permission of Pendle Borough Council

37

CONCLUSION

The years 1939 to 1979 were significant in the history of the Northolme estate; its origins as an

open meadow, compulsarily purchased by the Air Ministry at a time of national upheaval which

angered the local farmer and so angered his neighbours and workers; to all intents and

purposes it was the loss of good agricultural land at a time when the government were

increasing land use to feed the nation. However national security was paramount and the

production of essential war supplies took priority. The introduction of outside workers from

Coventry and the Midlands, even female munitions workers from cities in south Yorkshire, only

exacerbated the ongoing concern many Earby folks had at that time. Localised doorstep

employment was affected to some extent.

Predominately it was the arrival of such city folk with city attitudes that fuelled the discontent

of the local small town residents, who in most cases were unreceptive to strangers with city

expectations. To the same degree, these city folk with their city life styles, were thrust into a

rural backwater with little of the transport and facilities they were used to.

Away from their extended families, and the perpetual bombing raids on our industrial

heartland, these accumulated problems and the constant stresses that war time brings,

manifested itself into a divided community rather than a supportive and responsive community

pulling together for the greater good. While there was seldom any open hostility, other than

towards the common enemy, there was an underlying mistrust of people that were not of one’s

ilk.

When the hostilities ended, many returned to their home cities, some stayed by choice and

some by necessity. The prefabricated houses of the Northolme Estate that had proved to be

38

freezing in winter and hot in summer, slowly began to deteriorate and proved wholly

inadequate for the growing families that lived there. The introduction in 1952 of the overall plan

to replace the asbestos-cement hutments with purpose-built semi-prefabricated two-storey

Spooner housing was great news for the tenants who would be re-housed as each new set of

council houses were completed. This however did not sit well with the locals who had also

suffered alongside these offcumdens, with similar stresses, concerns and losses, only to find

that the priority for this new housing was to go to the people that were already resident upon

the Estate; while this would seem to be the logical progression in times of hardship, logical

thought can often be misplaced.

This misplaced logic fuelled the mistrust and the insular conditions between the born and bred

locals and the introduced offcumdens. The Ranch was seen as a rough place with rough people;

the introduction of prioritised workers from Newcastle, Scotland and Ireland in the 1960s

perpetuated the belief that everyone on the estate was bad, rough and not to be trusted. The

name “Rancher” became synonymous with criminality, anti-social behaviour, women of ill-

repute or less than respectful morals and wild feral children.

To some extent this was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. The discrimination young children

experienced in the school yard ensured that the majority of youngsters banded together and

therefore were often seen as a gang of kids or thugs; dependent upon the age of the group, and

like most children who will often push barriers, mischief and unacceptable behaviour was not

uncommon.

The interviews carried out showed predominantly the frustration youngsters felt. While the

words of Mr Ranson did not indicate any form of discrimination or prejudice just after the War

and the experiences of Mr Dawson were only of the construction, the people interviewed that

were born in the mid-fifties and early-sixties, show that by that time, a deep-seated resentment

towards ‘Ranchers’ was ever present. This in turn was reflected back towards the people of

Earby by the youth of the Ranch.

39

From 1939 to the end of the war in 1945, life on the Ranch was taken up with work and the job

of surviving and winning the war; everyone was in the same boat and too busy to take general

dislikes and discrimination to heart. However the end of hostilities and National Service

brought about a different attitude. Aneurin Bevan’s concept that "the working man, the doctor

and the clergyman will live in close proximity to each other" had for most of the working class in

Earby failed to materialize and Cohen’s suggestion for moral panic and the emergence of a

youth culture of working-class feral gangs, was prevalent within the boundaries of such a small

town.

The Ranch therefore was often seen as the diseased part of a rundown, stagnant town with its

mix of Irish, Geordie and Scottish kids; the virus amongst the good clean folk of this idyllic rural

Shangri-la. While this was a vision obviously seen through the rose-coloured glasses of small

minded and blinkered folk, it was sufficient to take a hold and fester. Curtis’ perception of one

in three men under thirty having a criminal record was not wasted in the demographics of the

Estate. As Roger Pickup states on page thirty, “running with the kids from The Ranch tarred

them with the same brush”. It was easy to identify Ranch kids, they were seen as the great

unwashed, and they looked and sounded different. In fact, many were accused of trouble just

because there were no identifiable youths amongst the group; therefore logic meant that it

must be kids from The Ranch.

By the mid seventies, residents upon the estate began to see the pattern that was emerging;

long-term residents were now getting drawn into the new anti-social groups that were being

sent from Nelson and Colne by Pendle Housing. At this point, what was an informal support

mechanism changed into a more formal and political movement, with the aim of cleaning up the

estate. This was in effect, the birth of the now established Northolme Residents Association.

For a brief period, the deep-rooted sense of community cohesion began to rise and bring

together the community spirit that had seen the tenants and the country through the war years.

The Northolme Estate, Earby is in many ways no different from any other council estate in the

country, it is undoubtedly the people that make the community and it is the community that

40

enhances the area. As Castleden so eloquently puts it “Every community needs an idea of itself

in order to survive, a clear self-image that makes it possible to tell the difference between itself

and other communities”. The Northolme Estate has a history full of interest and intrigue; it is

multi-faceted and multi-cultural with a multitude of people that have moulded The Ranch into

an identity that is recognizable to most communities within close proximity. The Ranch is the

community that set itself a challenge as far back as the 1940’s and has successfully maintained a

blatant difference between itself and the neighboring communities. Throughout the 1990s The

Ranch set the standard for community cohesion within the Pendle district and still leads the way

in maintaining its pride in both its origins and its relationship with the local population of Earby.

The Ranch is now an integral part of Earby’s history and identity and while most people will

struggle to direct anyone to locations in Earby such as Aspen Lane or Southfield Terrace

everyone knows the areas and street names on the Ranch, Kenilworth, Warwick, Morsley, and

Earlsdon still stand out as prominently as the old concept of offcumdens ever did. While

differing accents are now commonplace the people of the Ranch are now accepted members of

the greater Earby community and bring richness to the cultural diversity that makes up the

population of a small semi-urban rural town.

41

APPENDIX

Appendix Note 1

Much of Rover’s car manufacturing capacity was diverted to aircraft production. The Rover

Company was awarded a contract to develop and manufacture Sir Frank Whittle’s new jet

engine design. In 1941 Rover set up a new laboratory for Whittle's team along with a production

line at their unused Barnoldswick factory, but by late 1941 it was obvious that the arrangement

between Whittle and Rover was not working. Whittle was frustrated by Rover's inability to

deliver production-quality parts, as well as with their attitude of engineering superiority and

became increasingly outspoken about the problems. The trouble between Rover and Whittle

became a ‘public secret’ and late in 1942 Rover and Rolls Royce did an exchange deal. Rover

decided to trade the jet factory at Barnoldswick for Rolls-Royce's tank engine factory in

Nottingham.

Appendix Note 2

A council house, otherwise known as a local authority house, normally part of a council estate,

is a form of public or social housing. The term is used primarily in the United Kingdom and

Ireland. Council houses were built and operated by local councils to supply uncrowded, well-

built homes on secure tenancies at reasonable rents to primarily working-class people. Council

house development began in the late 19th century and peaked in the mid-20th century, at which

time council housing included many large suburban ‘council estates.’25

Since 1979, the role of council housing has been reduced by the introduction of Right to Buy

legislation, and a change of emphasis to the development of new social housing by housing

associations. Nonetheless, a substantial part of the UK population still lives in council housing. In

2010 about 17% of UK households lived in social housing. Approximately 55% of the country’s

social housing stock is owned by local authorities (of which 15% is managed on a day-to-day

basis by arm's length management organisations, rather than the authority and 45% by housing

associations).26

25 Hollow, Matthew (2011). "Suburban Ideals on England's Interwar Council Estates". Retrieved 2012-12-29.

26 Jump up Cowan, David (2009), "Trust, Distrust and Betrayal", MLR 72 (2): 157–181

42

Appendix Note 3

Negotiations for transfer of the estate from the Ministry of Works to the Earby UDC were

started in 1947 and it was not until 1950 that they were concluded. In a House of Commons

debate of 19th July 1950, the local MP, Mr George Drayson, asked the Minister of Works – “if he

will give the date when he expects to transfer the Northolme estate to the Earby Urban District

Council”.

Mr Richard Stokes (The Minister) replied – “Negotiations for the sale of the Northolme estate to

the Earby Urban District Council are not yet complete, but I hope it will be possible for the

estate to be transferred to the council in November of this year.” (Earby Archives)

By April 1950 the Council resolved that the prefabs be demolished and because of the need to

complete the project quickly, ‘non-traditional-type dwellings would be erected’ and that a

complete survey of the estate be carried out to ascertain bedroom requirements for the tenants

to decide which type of dwelling would be appropriate.

Appendix Note 4

An advert in the Craven Herald dated October 1952 states in describing the Northolme

Community Centre, it was “Once the centre of social activity ...”

The building lay empty, apart from the library, for some while until a group of

youngsters helped by a man called Walter (Wally) Thornton ‘did it up’ in 1957;

cleaned and painted it and started a Youth club; mothers would take it in turn to

supervise. The youth club attracted youths from the town and also Barnoldswick.

There were generic club facilities until it closed in about 1960. In 1961 Dalesfarm

Eggs Ltd took over the lease for use as an egg packing station. It was at this time

the extension of a loading bay to the front of the building was built. After the egg

packing station closed, Pendle Borough council used it as a paper baling unit.

Ken Ranson

43

Appendix Note 5

Members of Northolme Parents Association (NPA) went to Tuesday’s meeting of the

Development Services Committee (DSC) where it was then decided that the plans sub-

committee hold a site meeting with parents at the former egg packing station which is now

owned by the council.

The Association wants to pay rent and transform the building, currently used

by the council for storing vehicles, into its own community centre that will

incorporate a youth club and mothers and toddlers group. Each member of

the Association is prepared to offer their own skills and among the group is a

plumber, a joiner and an electrician. The Association was formed primarily

to arrange a Christmas party for the children on the estate and around 40

families are involved. Already around £200 had been raised in the past few

weeks but members realise that a lot more money will be needed. In a letter

asking local councillors for support, secretary, Mrs Sue Dwyer, said that the

estate was rather isolated from the rest of Earby. The Association plans to

run a mothers and toddlers group from within the building and a youth club

on alternate nights to the established one in Earby. Also the centre would be

available for other functions as the area requires” she says.

Barnoldswick and Earby Times, 4th Dec 1981

Wartime planning for post-war housing in Britain: the Whitehall debate 1941-45 the journal Planning Perspectives Vol 18.Issue 2 2003 by Peter Malpass. 2 Brenda Vale. Prefabs A history of the UK temporary housing program, Pub Chapman and Hall 1995.

44

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