A TYPE of horse-drawn vehicle sometimes used by milkmen makes its way up Fell Lane, Keighley, with the former St John’s Hospital in the background.
The old-fashioned milkman, who was often a farmer, would ladle pints and half-pints straight out of a churn into the housewife’s jug. In the days before refrigerators, some made two deliveries a day.
The background reveals the extent of St John’s Hospital, built in the 1870s as the workhouse infirmary but subsequently known more kindly as the Fell Lane Infirmary.
After the abolition of the old Poor Law system in 1930, it came under the control of the West Riding County Council and developed a speciality in maternity, resulting in a sizeable proportion of the local population being born there.
St John’s patients were transferred to Airedale Hospital in 1970 and it was demolished three years later.
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