Jockey Springs, Ridehalgh Lane, Briercliffe, Burnley, Bb10 3Ra
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JOCKEY SPRINGS, RIDEHALGH LANE, BRIERCLIFFE, BURNLEY, BB10 3RA: HERITAGE STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF PROPOSED CONVERSION TO A DWELLING 1 Introduction 1.1 This heritage statement has been produced at the request of Barry Dugdale, via his agent Janet Dixon Town Planners Ltd, to accompany a planning application to Burnley Borough Council for the conversion of a disused water pumping station at Jockey Springs (NGR: SD 90596 34947) to a dwelling. It establishes the significance of this undesignated heritage asset and its setting (in accordance with Paragraph 128 of the National Planning Policy Framework ), which also demonstrates that it forms part of a wider, distinctive landscape, which was extensively managed for water catchment and supply in the recent past. 1.2 The statement has been produced by Stephen Haigh MA, a buildings archaeologist with over 15 years professional experience in the region, following a site visit on 25 April 2013. 2 The present site 2.1 Jockey Springs is the name given to the former water extraction and pumping station located in the Thursden valley, in the eastern part of Briercliffe civil parish. The site, which is enclosed by the remains of perimeter iron railings, comprises a small former infilled reservoir of about 150m 2, to the south of which stand two rectangular detached buildings, the larger one the former pump house etc and the smaller one a coal store, while on the north and west sides of the reservoir is a narrow channel which diverts a beck and surface-drained water, to avoid contamination. Access to the site is by a track off the public road, from the south. 3 Nature of the proposals 3.1 The proposals involve the conversion and extension of the existing buildings at the site into a single dwelling, with the domestic curtilage to be defined by the historic site boundary, and to incorporate some of the other structural remains associated with the site’s historic function. 4 Identified heritage assets 4.1 The site is considered to be an undesignated heritage asset, by virtue of its historic function as the principal source of mains water for Briercliffe, built in Stephen Haigh Buildings Archaeologist May 2013 Jockey Springs, Briercliffe: Heritage Statement page 2 1924-5, and largely unaltered since, despite its closure, believed to have been in the 1980s. 4.2 The wider landscape, in which water catchment, management and supply is prominent, can also be considered an undesignated heritage asset. The Thursden valley and the surrounding west-facing upland slopes above Burnley and its neighbouring towns were exploited from the early nineteenth century as a source of piped water, essential for the welfare of the growing urban populations and the effective functioning of the textile industry, which was the foundation for the development of this part of east Lancashire. 4.3 Other heritage assets in the vicinity include a grade II listed building at Broad Bank House, some 150m to the north-west of the site 1; the site of a demolished Primitive Methodist Chapel at Thursden, some 50m west of the site, and limestone hushings (resulting from the artificial erosion of the ground by water, to extract limestone or minerals), about 100m to the north-east of the site 2, but the intervening distances and the confined nature of the proposals mean that these latter sites and their settings would not be materially affected, and so can be disregarded in the present context. 5 The historical development of water supply in the area 5.1 Water from the Thursden valley was first authorised for extraction for supply to Burnley by an Act of Parliament of 1819, and a pipe was laid for this purpose from the Calf Hey Spring near Cockden, to the town; prior to this the town’s inhabitants had to rely on a single well for their drinking water. With the rapid growth of the town during the nineteenth century the primitive arrangement dependent on the spring soon became inadequate, and by 1829 new reservoirs had been built at Swinden and Heasandford, the latter being supplied by the same Calf Hey Spring, but providing a larger body of water which allowed the available supply to be better regulated, a particular consideration for mill owners. In 1846 a new act of Parliament presaged the construction of new reservoirs at Heckenhurst and Swinden, and then another phase of building and expansion took place in the 1860s, when the Lee Green Reservoir was constructed and the Swinden Reservoirs enlarged. During the peak period of Burnley’s growth, from the 1870s to 1900, an additional reservoir was built at Cant Clough, and the last of the major works, Hurstwood Reservoir, was completed in 1925 3, though a proposal made in the 1870s for another reservoir which would have flooded much of the upper reaches of the Thursden Valley was never implemented. Nearer Jockey Springs, but supplying Nelson rather than Burnley, the Catlow 1 National Heritage List no 1362048 2 Information from Lancashire Historic Environment Record;; PRN 6070 & PRN 15127 3 Historical information concerning Burnley’s water supply Anonymous typescript, Burnley Library Stephen Haigh Buildings Archaeologist May 2013 Jockey Springs, Briercliffe: Heritage Statement page 3 Brook was dammed to create the Coldwell Reservoir in 1884, and a second, upper reservoir was added there in 1935 (figure 1). Coldwell Reservoirs Calf Hey Spring Lee Green site of Reservoir Heasandford Jockey Reservoir Springs Twist Swinden Reservoir Reservoirs Hurstwood Reservoir Cant Clough Reservoir Figure 1: Locations of key water supply components east of Burnley (1:50,000) Reproduced by permission of Ordnance Survey© on behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. © Crown Copyright 1994. All rights reserved. Licence no: AL100034008 5.2 The various settlements within Briercliffe township (which lay outside the Burnley Corporation) largely depended on a number of scattered wells and springs for domestic water historically, which could not be wholly relied on in dry weather, and with the growth in population during the late nineteenth century there were increasing incidences of disease which were attributed to the inadequacies of the water supply. From the 1880s, a number of schemes were put in place to create a piped supply in Briercliffe, including the construction of the Twist Reservoir, though they could not keep up with demand and were found not to be Stephen Haigh Buildings Archaeologist May 2013 Jockey Springs, Briercliffe: Heritage Statement page 4 successful, in part because the water extracted from underground was too hard, due to limestone deposits. 5.3 The continuing difficulties eventually led to a trial drift being sunk at Jockey Springs in 1913, which established that an adequate and reliable supply of suitably soft and clean water could be obtained there, though it was not until 1924 that work began to build the necessary infrastructure to convey the water to the population. This comprised receiving chambers and a new, relatively small reservoir (of about 385m 3), from which the water was pumped through a 5” diameter pipe some 36 vertical metres to Herd House, where it filled an existing reservoir, from which it was then distributed to the end users by gravity. A gas engine drove the pump, powered by gas created on site from coal, and it was these latter processes which largely necessitated the two buildings which still occupy the site, though the water from the springs is no longer used and the reservoir has been infilled. 4 6 Details of the present buildings 6.1 Both buildings at the site have walls faced with coursed, local sandstone, and flat, reinforced concrete roofs, and appear to represent all those built in 1924-5, though the earliest available map which shows the waterworks is the edition of 1962 so it is possible that others have been demolished (figure 2 below). The larger building adjacent to the former reservoir seems to have housed the gas producer, engine and pump, though all plant has been removed. The entrances are in the south side, and windows face north over the reservoir. The smaller building, the former coal store, faces west and has a single wide doorway opening, and is very plain. 4 Frost, R 1982 A Lancashire Township: The History of Briercliffe with Extwhistle pp149-157 Stephen Haigh Buildings Archaeologist May 2013 Jockey Springs, Briercliffe: Heritage Statement page 5 Figure 2: OS map of 1962 showing the layout at that time (1:2500 plan SD 9034, enlarged to 1:1250) Photo 1: The site, taken from the north, prior to closure (by R Frost) Stephen Haigh Buildings Archaeologist May 2013 Jockey Springs, Briercliffe: Heritage Statement page 6 Photo 2: The site at present, taken from the north-east Photo 3: The present buildings, taken from the north-west 7 Assessment of heritage significance 7.1 The site at Jockey Springs clearly has heritage significance, given its historic origins as a water extraction site and pumping station, which represents an important stage in the development of water supply in the local area. It was the first centralized waterworks for Briercliffe which was successful in the long term, but its redundancy, brought about through continuing modernisation, means that the surviving structural remains are under threat. It is also significant as part of the wider surrounding landscape, in which water collection, management and distribution have played a major part over the last two centuries, and particularly so as it is perhaps a unique component of this landscape, as it exploited and pumped an underground source rather than storing surface run-off, which is the case with the larger surrounding reservoirs. Stephen Haigh Buildings Archaeologist May 2013 Jockey Springs, Briercliffe: Heritage Statement page 7 8 Assessment of the impact of the proposals 8.1 The conversion of the two buildings to a dwelling, to be achieved by the addition of a link between them and a second storey to the larger building, will have a positive impact on the heritage significance of the site and the landscape in which it is situated, by ensuring the long term survival of the buildings.