SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

Hi Exile in EssexI think the old buildings you refer to left of Bog Lane may be the old sewage works, built early 60s now no longer there. Bog Lane was an old childhood haunt of mine and my friends. Barnbow was at the end of the lane a mile or so.Rochewin

Thanks Rochewin!I didn't realise it was a sewage works. Bog Lane was a childhood haunt of mine as well, and 'chippy's quarry', also 'bluebell wood' on Rakehill Road between Scholes and Barwick. My parents used to tell us NEVER to go to any of these places, but we always did. Thanks again,Exiled in Essex

Apologies for raising the dead.Chip's Quarry is the one with the small and large part to it, sort of in a really funny place if you walked like you were going to Smeaton and went up the embankment before Barwick Road?Spent a lot of time there but never knew it had a name. There was some metal bits sticking out in the middle of it, the story was that it was the remains of a train that crashed into the quarry, and that on a night it came out to haunt the area, it was rather imaginatively called the 'ghost train'!Reputedly had Pike in it, but i never saw one, was told never to swim in it as they'd have my toes off. One of my friends fell in while balancing on a log/planky thing one day, and swore blind a spook pushed him.

There's a few bits around the site about this, the site of the old brickworks - never actually noticed the chimneys had gone until years after the event....!http://www.flickr.com/photos/chameleon2008/3442624922/

Cheers for sharing that, it looks so much smaller now than it did in 1977!Are the kilns still there? For years they kept saying it was going to be drained and turned into a playground, but i see from google maps that never happened!Those chimneys were way unsafe. You could get inside at least one of them, and climb partway up on the ladder.

Crazy Jane wrote: Cheers for sharing that, it looks so much smaller now than it did in 1977!Are the kilns still there? For years they kept saying it was going to be drained and turned into a playground, but i see from google maps that never happened!Those chimneys were way unsafe. You could get inside at least one of them, and climb partway up on the ladder. It's larger than it looks in that shot, alot of work was done but as alwys, looks as though up-keep was not considered. Seems to be stocked though, often folk there dangling the rod 'n line.

There's nothing there now apart from the water - the kilns and all remnants of the brickworks are long gone - although you would probably still find evidence of bricks, maybe! It is stocked, my brother in law likes to fish there. The chimneys were blown up around 1980-ish, I was at Scholes Primary School and saw it happen from the classroom window. I can't remember if I was in the 2nd or 3rd year juniors though but was definitely 1980-1982. The house I now live in was most probably built with bricks from that brickworks (I am now living in between Scholes and Barwick, no longer exiled in Essex!). I also once had the pleasure of falling in - myself and a friend were collecting toadspawn, I lost my footing and fell in. We had to get me dried at my friends house before I went home, otherwise my mum would have known we were somewhere we really shouldn't have been!