OLD LNWR PHOTOGRAPHS – WHERE AND WHEN? Part 3 HUDDERSFIELD, HILLHOUSE and LEEDS, COPLEY HILL

Harry Jack

One group of three Bleasdale photographs, Crewe Goods  No.72 and No.317, and DX  No.34, together contained many clues: a 40ft turntable , a large gable-ended brick shed with a tall chimney behind, an overhead travelling crane, an engine shed  to the right and a typical north of England wooden fence to the left. Despite all this, identification proved elusive. None of the Ordnance plans revealed any likely site and an early notion (based on the architecture) that it might be Sutton Works  on the St. Helens Junction was disproved by one of the railway plans in Huw Edwards’ collection. I had begun to wonder about exotic places like Jockey Lane Works , Warrington, when I saw a plan in, Neil Fraser’s ‘Hillhouse Immortals’ of Huddersfield shed in 1878. This showed a different layout from that on the earliest Ordnance plan which was surveyed ten years later. Everything matched the details in the photographs; the shed in the background was clearly the wagon works, which explained the travelling crane, and the loco shed was on the right. Correspondence with Neil confirmed all this, and gave another three engines known to have been at the shed. Among the eight men (and a boy) on or beside the engines Neil thought he recognised William Underhill, one of the drivers he wrote about in ‘Hillhouse Immortals’.

Further discussion with Neil solved another long-standing puzzle. Several Bleasdale photographs show a distinctive little stone building with a clock in its roof pediment. Again, the presence of a turntable suggested an engine shed, and one of the engines in the group, Webb Precursor  ARAB, was said to have been shedded at Leeds Copley Hill. The background had been painted out on this one, but details of the track identified it as one of the series. Plans of Copley Hill revealed a small building to the east of the shed. Its size, position and even a lamp on the corner were just like the one in the photographs, and being shown on a plan published in January 1850 it clearly dated back to the opening of the line. This might explain the rather stylish classical architecture. perhaps by the same hand as Huddersfield station.

The Copley Hill group includes the Webb Precursor ARAB, DX No.1247 and No.1248, Crewe Goods No.506 and Special Tank No.2093. Another, which although without the clock background looks very likely to have been taken just to the right of the others, is Crewe Goods No.153, which was recorded in the area in the late 1870s. To be continued ...