Industry in Calverley Woods

[The Parksider]

It was suggested Calverley Colliery may be in the woods behind the church in Calverley. Found nothing to do with coal, and on return can't even find a reference to the colliery on archive mines lists!!But twas interesting after a couple of hundred yards down into the woods when you get to the little cottage because it had an old gas lamp outside it. Second I have found in a week! The standard by "Fred Dyson" of Leeds. Nearly knocked on the door to offer a tenner for it!Further on in the woods on the left I saw a number of brick foundations of building, with some concrete slab floors. maybe 7 or 8 altogether. A wood now - at some time a series of buildings.I also noticed the mud bridleway hid underneath a cast concrete roadway, then better remains of more buildings on the right???Leaving the roadway around the back of these I came to a sheer drop over a high stone face. Standing at the top you could look across the tops of some very tall trees, then it occured to me this may have been a large quarry at some time.Skirting the high stone outcrop you drop lower into the wooded valley where there's a couple of odd deep hollows and a sunken pathway or ravine or whatever it was? It certainly was walled both sides and in parts is six foot deep. How very odd???Turning around and going back up to the main path I followed that down through a gate to a whole street of houses in the wood itself!!! Some real beauties - fancy living in the woods!on return and back to the quaint cottage for a second look at the gas lamp, I forked off right to leave the wood along Wood Lane and noticed it was firstly cobbled, then the roadway rose up from ground level to be banked up up to eight feet above the floor of the woods like railways often are.As you head towards the end there's two rows of stones laid lengthways - very very odd?? Did these cover a power cable for the quarry? Was the raised roadway a route for carting stone - because when you come out on the main road only yards up from the church the grassy verge has several very large stones randomly sat there.Anyone any info or thoughts????

[sundowner]

Hi Parksider A few years ago i took my metal detector in the same woods.In the area of the building remains i found some bits of pottery with the W.D arrow on them i wonder if this was some sort of army camp or POW camp? We will see if anyone on SL can shed more light on this.    

[trophy]

I thought the buildings in the woods were the remains of the guys firework factory which blew up late fifties.

[chameleon]

Remember this thread Parksider?http://www.secretleeds.co.uk/forum/Mess ... ighLight=1

[Uno Hoo]

chameleon wrote: Remember this thread Parksider?http://www.secretleeds.co.uk/forum/Mess ... ighLight=1 Thanks for putting the link in. It pre-dates my time in this forum, but as an ex-Calverleyite I've read it with great interest. Seems to answer all the queries posed in this later thread.The quarries were worked until the early 1960s. At one stage there was an ex-United Counties single-deck bus used as a canteen, and by coincidence I was this year reading the book "Glory Days - United Counties", one of the excellent series of histories of the former BET and Tilling Bus Companies, and in it there's a photo of that bus in that location.Mrs Hoo, as a little girl, was bridesmaid at the wedding of the daughter of one of her mother's friends to a Polish man. She's not certain, but I think the groom had lived in the camp in Calverley Woods. It had been used to house Displaced Persons after WW2. The bride had lived in Greengates, so it seems plausible.It was also nostalgic for me to see Celia Croft's name mentioned, as I knew her well.