Anno wrote:Hi kid from Hunslet I remember exactly what you are talking about,used to pass it every day on way to school.
low grange rise belle isle
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kid from hunslet
- Posts: 5
- Joined: Wed 25 Feb, 2015 11:02 pm
glad someone else remembers it, the police station. I
[flash=][/flash]
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rikj
- Posts: 393
- Joined: Tue 20 Feb, 2007 4:59 pm
Re: low grange rise belle isle
A bit off topic here but, that open land down to the motorway has an unnatural look to it, and that turns out to be the case. Most of it is marked as having been open casted for coal, no date given, but it will have been post WWII.
As the site isn’t marked as an historic landfill site then the assumption is that all the broken overburden from the mining was simply piled back into the hole; usually with any old other gob that was lying around.
In 1989 Waddingtons commissioned a comprehensive series of boreholes, presumably with a view to building on the site. The boreholes show the opencast backfill to be a jumble of clay, gravels and various rocks and stones down to a maximum depth of 18m in places (around 60ft). In some places the bottom layer is made up of massive sandstone boulders over a metre in size.
There is another series of boreholes, undated, simply called “Stourton open cast”. They confirm the same miserable picture. Open casting really messes up the natural drainage of land. It looks as if there has been an attempt to remediate this as a manmade channel runs down the hill, under the motorways and into a large pond on the industrial estate.
As the site isn’t marked as an historic landfill site then the assumption is that all the broken overburden from the mining was simply piled back into the hole; usually with any old other gob that was lying around.
In 1989 Waddingtons commissioned a comprehensive series of boreholes, presumably with a view to building on the site. The boreholes show the opencast backfill to be a jumble of clay, gravels and various rocks and stones down to a maximum depth of 18m in places (around 60ft). In some places the bottom layer is made up of massive sandstone boulders over a metre in size.
There is another series of boreholes, undated, simply called “Stourton open cast”. They confirm the same miserable picture. Open casting really messes up the natural drainage of land. It looks as if there has been an attempt to remediate this as a manmade channel runs down the hill, under the motorways and into a large pond on the industrial estate.
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paulslo
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Sun 19 Apr, 2015 7:18 pm
Re: low grange rise belle isle
The area between Low Grange Crescent and Middleton Road culminated in the small police station at the junction of Middleton Road and East Grange Drive. It was big enough to have cells at the back. I think the police phone was actually built into the frontage of the building rather than as a stand-alone Tardis type feature (but I can't be certain of this). After the police stopped using it, the Coop milkmen used to store piles of milk crates at the side of the building. It was demolished in the summer of 1968.
The rest of the aforementioned land was called the 'spare ground' locally. Half of it was flat but overgrown except for an area large enough to serve as a cricket wicket - it had been worn away by consistent child use. We played rugby and football there as well, of course. The remainder of the spare ground was an elevated area - which we also used to play rugby and football on. I can confirm that this was ,indeed, a covered-over air raid shelter. Occasionally, (probably due to subsidence from mine workings underneath) the entrance became accessible and it was possible to go along a passage into the shelter. I was too scared ever to go beyond the first few feet. It usually got filled in again very quickly when these conditions arose. A photo on Leodis suggests to me that there might have been another entrance to it on Middleton Road. The shelter was demolished completely at the same time as the police station.
The 'spare ground' and police station are very special memories for me - especially the former. It would be amazing and wonderful if anyone could post photos of them - though its highly unlikely, of course, that anyone would have ever photographed them.
The rest of the aforementioned land was called the 'spare ground' locally. Half of it was flat but overgrown except for an area large enough to serve as a cricket wicket - it had been worn away by consistent child use. We played rugby and football there as well, of course. The remainder of the spare ground was an elevated area - which we also used to play rugby and football on. I can confirm that this was ,indeed, a covered-over air raid shelter. Occasionally, (probably due to subsidence from mine workings underneath) the entrance became accessible and it was possible to go along a passage into the shelter. I was too scared ever to go beyond the first few feet. It usually got filled in again very quickly when these conditions arose. A photo on Leodis suggests to me that there might have been another entrance to it on Middleton Road. The shelter was demolished completely at the same time as the police station.
The 'spare ground' and police station are very special memories for me - especially the former. It would be amazing and wonderful if anyone could post photos of them - though its highly unlikely, of course, that anyone would have ever photographed them.