Pendlebury Station and Clifton Hall Sidings
 

Pendlebury Station has been long gone. Even the platform itself has been removed. I can remember it as a boy walking along the connecting bridge/corridor from the entrance door with the booking office on the right to the steps down to the platform, also on the right hand side as you walked in.
The bridge across seemed quit narrow if you compare it to that at Atherton Station which is in a way similar but not the same. It was a longer bridge as it had to go across the fast lines as well as one of the slow lines. There was a signal box near to the blue brick bridge which is still there and carried Clively Road across it. This road was only accessible by foot once you had crossed it as it actually split into a fork and went down either side of the tunnel mouth of Clifton Hall Tunnel. The tunnel had been filled in when I used to go down there but the top of the tunnel coping stones had been uncovered gradually by the weather erosion although they were subsequently recovered. The railway lines were still in place to Clifton Hall Sidings but were disused. The area around was a great place for boys to play and explore as a lot of the old railway had been abandoned but not removed. It lay in this state for a number of years before gradually being removed.

:) I used to live a couple of hundred yards from Hindley North station until about 1958. That was always a well kept station.
Mickey

Hello Ian,
I used to go onto Pendlebury station after school (I used to walk home from Cromwell Road Juniors to Agecroft Road). I got to know the Stationmaster (Chief Porter!) and the signalman very well. The signalman was Mr Jack Robinson who lived on Dauntsy Estate. He taught me all I know about signalling and allowed me to help in the box. The only signal that I couldn't pull off was the down express distant which was about 200 yards beyond Agecroft Road, nearly a mile from the box, it was too heavy for a ten year old boy. The powers that be would have had a fit of the vapours if they knew that a ten year old boy was signalling all the trains between 4.30pm and 5.30pm - the rush hour! Oh happy days!
I wonder if the orange coloured stream is still running about 100yards east of the railway? I remember falling in it once - did I get a hiding!

Pendlebury
 

Hi Tony,
The orange coloured stream you mention was probably Slackey Brook which ran all the way along at the back of the railway where the land fell away sharply into the area we called "Down Beggars". It ran into the old sewerage works which was disused when I went but a great place to explore. It has all been filled in and landscaped now and new houses are even starting to encroach upon the area from the Agecroft road end. The rush hour that you mention was a hectic time for us after school as we would congregate on the Swinton side of Pendlebury tunnel and wait for the Blackpool and Southport trains to go through. The high point of the evening came when the Windermere express came through. We would go down to the bottom of the embankment and watch for it pounding up Pendlebury Bank looking through the tunnel. it was very often a Britannia Class Pacific and I guess I must have seen almost half of the Class on that express.
Ian

Hi Ian,
The area bounded by the railway, Agecroft Road, Lumms Lane and the Clifton Hall railway line was a very dangerous boys paradise when myself and pals played there, it is such a pity that it has been landscaped. It was dominated by the "Tipping Rucks" (spoil heaps) from Wheatsheaf and Newtown collieries.
The orange stream ran out under Lumms Lane just before the Z bend into Carrs Mill Dam which was filled in when Dauntsey Hall? was pulled down to make way for the breeze block factory (about 1952). I don't know what was in the stream water but it was full of horse leaches up to 10 inches long!
There was an aerial ropeway from Clifton Hall to a return wheel near the main railway which was used for the spoil buckets. It was the height of folly to ride the buckets from the wheel, across the valley and jump off onto the spoil heaps before you reached the tipping arm! Doing the gained you great quedos, King of the slagheap!
Riding the tubs on the little rope railway from Newtown colliery to Clifton Hall was also great fun. How nobody got killed or even badly hurt, I shall never know!

Hi Tony,
Your knowledge and memory of that area goes back a lot further than mine. The things you got up to sound outrageous. Although it was dangerous it was probably the kind of thing that was part of the adventure of growing up, learning by the risks, bumps and knocks you take. Todays children seem over protected and less able to grow up with such adventure and discovery as there was. I may be wrong but there seems to be so much boredom and apathy in so many youngsters these days. I never had a minute to spare as a lad and it sounds as if you were just the same. We had our interest in steam railways, watched rugby (and played it in the park), went fishing, camping, cycling, bird waching played kick can and rallyo 123 in the street until dark and then went into each others houses playing cards and playing records etc. How can anybody be bored!.
Ian

Hi Ian,
My time playing in the area was 1946-52. I moved then into Irlams o'th Heights and found things like Scouts and ATC instead of risking life and limb around Clifton Hall. I went to school with a girl who lived at Clifton Hall Farm, it was still a working farm then! Wheatsheaf and Newtown Collieries were still in full production; Clifton was still a Junction and trains went through Black Harry Tunnel!

went to the lowry museum last year at salford quays,they were showing an old film about the artist ls lowry..you see him coming out of pendlebury station,fascinating stuff.

Really? I would love to see that.

get yourself down to the lowry-and its free,it was definatly pendlebury station as a friend of mine was with me and she lives on crescent avenue-off bolton road and next to the line,she was the one who shown me where the station stood,lowry came out of the station and above him was[british railways pendlebury].

Thinking about it I have recently visited a bit of trackbed around the area.
In the childerens hospital a few years back there was a picture of the station.

If L.S.Lowry was filmed coming out of Pendlebury station, he may have been visiting my uncle, William Clifford Evans, who lived at 306 Bolton Road with my grandparents. L.S.Lowry and my uncle were both employed together as Salford City Council rent collectors until they retired.

maybe he was heading home?seen a report on local news that lowry lived in pendlebury in later years,the people who owned his house thought they would make a killing when they sold it-but they didnt,theres a street named after him off station road too.

Lowry's house was closer to Swinton than Pendlebury, so why he'd get off at Pendlebury I don't know, unless it was his grandparents he went to visit.

L.S.Lowry lived on Station Road in Swinton, a couple of doors up from Dudley Road. A schoolfriend of mine lived next door! (Funny old fella! Lowry, not my friend.)
His house was 100 yards from Swinton station.

Agecroft Road
 

Hi Ian

Your posting evokes great nostalgia in me! I grew up in Pendlebury, just off Hospital Road and went to Grosvenor Road Primary and then Wardley Grammar School. In the mid-sixties I was mad keen on train spotting and used to go every evening to what we called 'The Sandhills' on the Pendlebury side at the top of Agecroft Road. The star attraction was, as you mention, the early evening service from Manchester Exchange to Windermere which was almost always hauled by a 'Brit'. By this time they were pretty neglected, although only twelve or thirteen years old - no trace of BR Green under the black grime, missing name plates and sometimes emitting jets of steam where they should not have emitted jets of steam! Nevertheless they were a credit to Robert Riddles as they stormed up the incline from Pendleton with a plume of smoke rising from the chimney like a small nuclear explosion.

The old L&Y fast tracks must have long gone, but I do remember that the 72 inch diameter Haweswater Aqueduct crossed Agecroft Road on the lower side of the railway, and that one night in the sixties, after heavy rain in the Lake District it burst and flooded the Dauntsey Road Estate where my grandparents lived!

I also remember the wilderness of the old sewerage farm and the spoil heaps between there and Lumn's Lane where we used to play, strictly against our parents' instructions. I used to hunt for fosils in the slag heaps. They were very numerous, usually of million-year old ferns.

One of my grandfathers washed buses at Fredrick Road Depot, while the other was a collier at Wheatsheaf Pit. My father was a tool-maker at Exide Batteries ('The Chloride') and my mum worked at the builders' merchant which was built on the site of the goods yard at Swinton Station.

I left Pendlebury in 1973 to go to university in London and have never returned.

Thank you all for re-kindling so many happy memories.

Hi Fergus,

You must have sat on the same wooden fence that I used 10 years earlier! I lived in Beverley Road. In the late 50's, the "Windermere" usually had a rebuilt Scot in charge.

I thought it was still warm! I don't remember the Royal Scots, but my first notebook (now lost) which I think would have been for 1964 mentions the rebuilt Patriot 45530 'Sir Frank Ree'.

Fergus

Hello Fergus
You mentioned your father worked at Exide Batteries. There was speculation that chloride was stored in the Black Harry tunnel during the 2nd War, and that might have weakened the roof sufficiently to cause the 1953 cave-in. Do you have any memory of chlorine-filled rail cars stored in the Clifton Hall tunnel? I am fascinated with the Black Harry history, and story, and have walked the route a number of times between Clifton Junction, up and over to Patricroft Station (very difficult to reach, now, using old ROW). Thanx for any info! Sam

Hello Sam,
There was nothing stored in the Black Harry tunnel during the war. I walked through it several times before the cave-in, it was dark and full of rats and dripping water. Coal trains ran through it from the Rossendale direction and Wheatsheaf and New Town collieries transfer sidings to Liverpool. Until the accident, a regular passenger service from Bacup to North Wales used the line on Saturday morning. It was usually powered by a 4-6-2T, I used to see it passing Swinton Park golf course when I was caddying for extra pocket money.

Nice picture. What's the line that bisects the picture halfway up? I assume that's either the start of the A580/A6 running up the right side of the picture.

Hi, I'm new to this site, just stumbled upon this thread whilst researching the local history of Pendlebury :) I'm amazed at how long this thread has been active, it's such an interesting topic, I live just off Hospital Road, so I'm always keen to find out more about the area.

Anyway, I have cut some stills from Dimbleby's A Picture of Britain, which show artist LS Lowry leaving Pendlebury Station, which was mentioned earlier in the thread.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...pendlbury.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...pendlbury.jpg/

I would very much like to see the images that have been taken of Pendlebury station from the bridge on Ethel Avenue, as the links posted I think have expired, if anyone can help I would very much appreciate it.

Thanks...

Hello Jon,
Have looked at the attached photos, they brought back a few memories especially the shot of LS Lowery standing in Hope Street with the Acme Mill in the background. The view of all the chimneys and huge mill was not taken in Pendlebury, there were never so many chimneys in Pendlebury and the only mill was the Acme on Bridge Street. I think that it may have been in Pendleton taken from Broughton Road with Pendleton Broad Street station in the mid/foreground (the corrugated roof).