WHEN a picture of Back o'th Bank cooling tower, taken from Ullswater Street, appeared in Looking Back a few months ago, Mrs Sheila Crook, of Crossdale Road, Breightmet Fold, Bolton, sent a cutting to a former employee of Bolton Power Station, Alf Obersby, who now lives in Victoria, Australia.

He was delighted to see it. "What memories the photograph brings back," he writes.

"If you look closely at the photograph you can see dirt on the pavement - that was ashes from firegrates put down so that people could walk on the ice on a cold winter's day.

"When the cooling tower first came into use, probably about 1950, there were complaints from around the Ullswater Street/Blackburn Road area that we were covering everything with a layer of ice - footpaths and roads were dangerous, and if there was any wind, front doors froze up.

"I can remember spending days inside the cooling tower measuring rainfall and wind velocity. Can you imagine coming out of that warm, horrid atmosphere into a Bolton winter's day. I eventually had a dose of bronchial pneumonia, although I often wonder if it wasn't Legionnaire's Disease - unknown in those days, I think.

"We went as far as Tonge Moor in one direction and up Halliwell Road in the other, measuring the artificial rainfall.

"Eventually the cooling tower was operated at near half load to prevent creating a nuisance - the innovative design didn't work, and they never built another like it anywhere."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.