Broad Cut

There are plans to build 4 million homes on the green belt according to today’s Telegraph.

‘Sandstone causeway north west of Junction 39. Hawthorns and ash tree 8th March 1983.’

There’s a triangle of countryside at Broad Cut Farm, Calder Grove, near Wakefield, that has survived between to the river and the M1 where there’s a now plan to build a hundred of those homes plus 10 manufacturing units..

The causey stone public footpath in my 1983 drawing was originally a colliery tram road, where horse-drawn trucks were taken to Hollin Hall Coal Staith just downstream from Broad Cut Lower Lock. There’s a row of six ‘Old Limekilns’ next to them.

1854 six-inch Ordnance Survey map, made available by the National Library of Scotland

The small building at ‘Th’ Owlet Lathe’ in the top right corner of the map was a dovecote.

I perched on the southbound side of motorway embankment in 1983 to draw it:

Room for 260 pairs of pigeons

A ruinous dovecote stans close to the motorway embankment at Owlet Laithes, just north of junction 39. It is built of handmade bricks on a ssandstone base which acted as a damp-course. The roof is of large Yorkshire stone (andstone) flags held on to a rough-hewn timber framework by wooden pegs.”

Unfortunately this old building disappeared within a few years of me drawing it.