Bus passengers stood on seats to get through (From Keighley News)

Bus passengers stood on seats to get through

8:01am Thursday 21st January 2010

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A reminder of Keighley’s occasional unfortunate extremes of climate, this was the view along Dalton Lane, on September 20, 1946, after a night and more of torrential rain had caused the worst floods in then living memory, with the River Worth bursting its banks below Dalton Lane and near its confluence with the River Aire.

The mill clock appears to show ten minutes to ten. We can imagine how gingerly the vehicles were feeling their way through the waters.

The flooding was arguably even more serious at Stockbridge, where buses managed to get through during the earlier part of the morning — “with the passengers standing on the seats”, in the evocative words of the Keighley News of the time.

But traffic had to stop when two lorries and the Riddlesden bus became marooned.

Driver Tommy Blackie “rescued” conductress Miss May Tonkin by “pulling her through a side window in the bus and giving her a piggy-back to dry land.” It was late afternoon before vehicles could run again, through traffic being meanwhile diverted via Harden and Cullingworth.

The photograph was taken by George A Shore and supplied by Mr Allan Hindle, of High Spring Gardens Lane, Keighley.

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