Heritage Open Days

Here are images from day 3 (out of 4) of our opening to the public for Heritage Open Days.

HUNDREDS of people came to visit the tower and they left HUNDREDS of £s in donations for the Friends of the Settle-Carlisle Line.

People were very generous in their praise for the restoration.   Some visitors had to be moored to the buffers while their people did boring things.

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Grumpy's Shed

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Four views of Grumpy's shed after two full days of help from Peter Bennett.   Peter and I slaved through the first two of the four Heritage Open Days to finish the back wall of the shed and to clad its western wall (lower right).   Each of those vertical boards is a two-man lift, being 3" thick pitch pine.

The eastern gable well is supposed to be of similar construction but we shall have nowhere near enough of this magnificent timber to do it with long enough boards.   To make sense of what we have got, the obvious solution is to insert some windows into the eastern wall (on the blind side from public view).   Besides providing light for the workbench in the workshop windows will enable us to make full use of the shorter lengths of timber.

Top right are the shed plans and a picture of the shed as it was at Appleby.

Settle Down

I told you I had ordered a sign for the restored platform bench.   Couldn't resist the very obvious play on words.

Round the back

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We had a visit today from Stephen Garnett, the Craven Herald's multi award winning photographer.   He thought there might be some pretty pictures round the back of the tower - and how right he was.   These three pictures, in late afternoon sunshine, show how the embankment has been transformed into a very pleasing lawn leading down to what is now a very neat pathway covered in limestone chippings.

Less obvious, and deliberately so, is the two storey annex at the back of the tower.   Architect Stuart Green went to a very great deal of trouble to make this modern extension as unobtrusive yet stylish as possible.   It has worked.

What's this?

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Tony Beckwith of Ribblehead kindly wheeled this along to the water tower today to add to the ambience.   As you see it is a North Eastern Railway item.   Tony liberated it from York Carriage works, where he used to work.    It was one of a pair.   It is precisely 2 feet in diameter and is very heavy.   Unlikely therefore that it was a wheel from a platform hand cart.   There is no key-way inside the hub so it was meant to rotate freely on a shaft.   I wonder if  the pair of wheels and their axle were for internal use at the carriage works for moving heavy components around the place.

Anybody have other ideas?

Seen in South Africa

Had a brief visit today from a couple of cyclists from South Africa.   I don't think they had cycled here from South Africa but they had seen Restoration Man IN South Africa back in February and they were visiting Settle on account of it!   Fortunately they will be here next Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday so will be visiting during Heritage Open Days.

We have heard of people seeing the programme in Spain and the Canary Islands but this is the first time South Africa has cropped up.

They were kind enough to say how amazing they thought our project was - to the extent that they had come all this way.

Most encouraging.

It's the wrong colour

Settle-Carlisle stalwart Tom Algie very kindly donated a set of Midland Railway cast iron bench ends to the project.   These are nowadays as rare as hens teeth and we were very grateful for them.  In preparation for the Heritage Open Days I built up the bench and have painted it Brunswick green to match the tank's background colour and that of the water crane.

As I was applying the final brush load a voice boomed out from the station drive.   "It's the wrong colour!   Midland Railway benches were blue."   Not a lot of people (me included) know that.   Brunswick green it is and Brunswick green it stays until somebody with the motivation and the correct paint wants to pick up a paint brush.   I shall require proof mind.

In case you are wondering, there will be a sign on the back-rest in the next few days.   Watch this space.