Blue houses in Guycroft, Otley

hamerr · Post by **hamerr** » Mon 29 Mar, 2010 12:15 pm

Does anyone know why these houses are made of blue bricks? http://www.flickr.com/photos/vertigogen/44442496/

drapesy · Post by **drapesy** » Mon 29 Mar, 2010 10:17 pm

err.. because they ran out of green ones????Seriously though - I've often wondered about these fascinating buildings!!

Post by **cnosni** » Mon 29 Mar, 2010 10:44 pm

drapesy wrote: err.. because they ran out of green ones????Seriously though - I've often wondered about these fascinating buildings!! Steve you are needed on the station thread,old Scarborough pub and all that

drapesy · Post by **drapesy** » Wed 31 Mar, 2010 12:20 am

cnosni wrote: drapesy wrote: err.. because they ran out of green ones????Seriously though - I've often wondered about these fascinating buildings!! Steve you are needed on the station thread,old Scarborough pub and all that Looks like its all sorted now, before I got a chance to look at it. The Scarbrough, like so many pubs, is certainly a rebuild of an earlier inn .-the previous building was originally called the King's Arms and dates to the late 18th century to my knowledge - possibly much older than that.

Glenny3363 · Post by **Glenny3363** » Wed 31 Mar, 2010 11:06 am

I used to live on Guycroft, virtually next to the blue houses, always puzzled me why they were made from blue glazed brick! they look like the inside of a Victorian toilet!!Don't know why, but the bottom terrace, at the back has the odd green and brown brick, just placed randomly here and there on the wall!!Very strange. Will get a photo if I can and post it

Glenny3363 · Post by **Glenny3363** » Wed 31 Mar, 2010 2:56 pm

Picture from the front first!

Glenny3363 · Post by **Glenny3363** » Wed 31 Mar, 2010 3:02 pm

and here are the random odd coloured bricks I mentioned. But they are only on the bottom end terrace, strange that they are only on one house and was it the builders taking the mick??Very odd, any one got any ideas?It can't be that they ran out of the correct coloured glazed bricks, it being a terrace surely the walls of the terrace/s went up at the same time, so why only on one house?Puzzling!!

BLAKEY · Post by **BLAKEY** » Wed 31 Mar, 2010 4:48 pm

Despite all these admittedly strange oddities of colouring, I've always admired the Guycroft houses. Especialy in the sombre conditions of the time that they were built they must have brought some welcome brightness to the neighbourhood even with the discrepancies in the colours.Just a little point of industrial history interest - in the days of the Ledgard buses when people from Newall would normally have to pay more to travel beyond the Manor Square stage there was a "special fare" - "FARNLEY LANE TO GUYCROFT" which was cheaper than paying to the Golf House in Bradford Road. This was a very valuable help to print engineering workers at Dawson Payne and Elliott and would save them a good bit twelve times a week (Saturday morning work was common in those prosperous days.)

StuHudson · Post by **StuHudson** » Tue 16 Aug, 2011 5:08 pm

Hi! I'd been told that the tiles which cover these houses were originally intended for a swimming pool, however construction on the pool was cancelled after the tiles had already been produced. Since someone then found themselves with a load of tiles and nothing to do with them they were sold to the people building these houses.Not sure how much truth there is in it but it sounds reasonably plausible and I like the story!

Richard A Thackeray · Wed 12 Oct, 2011 11:11 am

I've been meaning to take a photograph for ages of some 'blue-bricks' that are used as 'in-fill' on the access road to the back of some houses adjacent to ours.They look very similar indeed, I thought about them a lot on Monday, as I almost slipped on them coming to he end of my run home from work