Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
At the Strands, the canal overflowed the towpath, leaving grassy debris along the lower wires of fences. Both canal-side pubs – the Bingley Arms and the Navigation – had their cellars flooded. Further downstream at Broad Cut Low Lock, one boat sank and two were dumped on the banking by the flood waters.
There are plans to build 4 million homes on the green belt according to today’s Telegraph.
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.
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.
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