Tong Park

My camera club will hold its biennial exhibition this summer, so I've been choosing a few photos to have printed. Stage two of the process is to get them mounted, so I trotted off to the picture framer that I use, in Baildon. It was a very cold, frosty day but, as the sun was shining, I also took the opportunity to have a short walk round nearby Tong Park.

Tong Park was a mill village that was built by the Denby family around their Tong Park Mill in the 1850s. Unlike Saltaire, little now remains of their empire. The mill finally closed in the 1990s and is now an industrial park. Some of the original village was demolished from the 1960s onwards and now the area is a pleasant and mixed residential zone. There are a few rows of Victorian terraced houses still dotted around. Interestingly, I noticed some of them are 'back to backs', where the houses share party walls on three sides, with only the front wall having a door and windows. They were often badly built and came to be considered unfavourably, so most have now disappeared.

What does remain is the mill dam, nestled in the Gill Beck valley. It provides a tranquil focal point in an area of grassland and woods, rich in wildlife and unusual plants that thrive on the glacial moraine.

The ducks were rather bemused that the lake was completely frozen over. They just stood around, seeming rather fed up with things. 

Climbing out of the valley, there was a good view back over the lake towards the Hollins Hall golf course and, to the left, the rather picturesque cricket ground. On the hillside (where the evergreen tree is) stands a war memorial, erected by the Denby family to commemorate the men from Tong Park who died in WWI.