Burnley’s Rubbish

Now, before you get the wrong idea we don’t mean that Burnley is rubbish, in fact with the Weavers’ Triangle visitor centre in Burnley, they’re trying quite hard to make the canal a ‘nice’ place to visit (although it wasn’t open today).

What we’re talking about is the rubbish found in the canal in Burnley. Last night we were tied up outside of the Canal & River Trust Burnley offices, and in their compound was an assortment of metal ‘things’ evidently pulled out of the canal.

Whilst some looked a bit rusty, there were some shopping trolleys in super condition amongst the haul.

The offices provide secure moorings for the night – the reputation of some northern towns is a bit scary, but probably totally unjustified, however it’s nice to sleep in peace sometimes !

Here we are moored outside the rather elegant CRT Burnley offices – converted from an old warehouse. The boat behind us is Gerry and Sandie’s – they have the ‘near’ twin (or sister/brother maybe) engine to that of our Brutus. You can just see Gerry.

We moved on a bit today – in the rain. We thought we’d moored up in a place called Church. Turned out we are in Olwaldtwistle – not sure if the village is as quaint as the name, however a quick ‘google’ of the local gossip revealed the headline news that an ‘Oswaldtwistle tree was still to be axed, despite appeal’.

Masons’ Marks

We climbed up the Greenberfield Locks, on to the canal summit at Foulridge, through the summit tunnel, and then down the other side to Burnley. Passing through the Foulridge tunnel was a less bumpy experience for us than ‘Tim & Pru’ on Ch 4’s ‘Great Canal Journeys’ !

The stones lining the lock chambers frequently have an obvious mark on them, but what are they for ? Here are some examples ….

 

Well, when this canal (and others) were being built, local men were employed in the quarries and as stonemasons. What we see on the stones are known as ‘masons marks’.
These marks were carved by individual stonemasons and, have the appearance of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

In practice the marks were used to show supervisors which mason was responsible for a particular run of work over a known period.
This arrangement provided an early form of quality control, as well as allowing piecework assessments to be made prior to payment.

Interestingly, only one or two marks seemed to be duplicated, so perhaps there were a lot of stonemasons.