Lancashire: Brief Historical and Descriptive Notes

by Leo H. Grindon

The slope which looks upon Yorkshire marks the boundary of the famous "forest of Pendle," a territory of nearly 25,000 acres—not to be understood as now or at any former period covered with great and aged trees, but simply as a tract which, when the property was first apportioned, lay ad foras, or outside the lands deemed valuable for domestic purposes, and which was left undisputed to the wild animals of the country. Immense breadths of land of this description existed in England in early times, and in no part was the proportion larger than in Lancashire, where many of the ancient "forests" still retain their primitive appellation, and are peculiarly interesting in the marked survival among the inhabitants of the language, manners, and customs of their ancestors. Generally speaking, these ancient "forests" are distinguished also by dearth of primitive architecture and of rude primeval fences, the forest laws having forbidden all artificial hindrances to the chase, which in the refuges thus afforded to "deer," both large and small, had its most ample and enjoyable scope.

From the summit of Pendle, all that is seen from Whalley Nab, now diminutive, is renewed on a scale quite proportionate to its own nobleness. The glistening waters of the Irish Sea in the far west; in the north the mountains of Westmoreland; proximately the smiling valleys of the Ribble, the Hodder, and the Calder; and, turning to the east, the land as far towards the German Ocean as the power of the eye can reach. When the atmosphere is in its highest state of transparency even the towers of York Minster become visible. Well might the old historian of Whalley commend the prospect from mighty Pendle as one upon which "the eye, the memory, and the imagination rest with equal delight." To the same author we owe the showing that the common Lancashire term Pendle-hill is incorrect, seeing that the sense of "hill" is already conveyed, as in Penmanmawr and Penyghent. "Nab's Hill" would seem to involve a corresponding repetition, "nab" being a form of the Scandinavian nebbé or nibba, a promontory—as in Nab-scar, near Rydal, and Nab-crag, in Patterdale.

All these grand peaks belong essentially to the range reached another time by going from Manchester to Littleborough, ascending from which place we find ourselves upon Blackstone Edge, so lofty (1553 feet), and, when climbed, so impressive in all its circumstances, that we seem to be pacing the walls of an empire. All the topmost part is moorland; below, or upon the sides, there is abundance of the picturesque; precipitous crags and rocky knolls, receding dells and ravines, occurring frequently. Many of the dells in summer bear witness to the descent in winter of furious torrents; the broad bed of the now tiny streamlets that fall from ledge to ledge being strewed with stones and boulders, evidently washed down from the higher channel by the vehement water, heedlessly tossed about and then abandoned. The desolate complexion of these winter-torrent gullies (in Lancashire phrase "water-gaits") in its way is unique, though often mitigated by the innumerable green fern-plumes upon the borders. The naturalist's enjoyment is further quickened by the occurrence, not infrequently, of fragments of calamites and other fossils. The ascent to the crest is by no means arduous. Attaining it, provided the atmosphere is free from mist, the prospect—now an old story—is once again magnificent, and, as at Rivington, made perfect by water. Nowhere perhaps in England has so much landscape beauty been provided artificially and undesignedly by the construction of great reservoirs as in the country of twenty miles radius around Manchester. The waters at Lymm and Taxal belong respectively to Cheshire and Derbyshire. Independently of those at Rivington, Lancashire excels both of them in the romantic lake below Blackstone Edge, well known to every pleasure-seeker as "Hollingworth." The measurement round the margin is quite two miles; hills almost completely encircle it, and, as seen from the edge, near Robin Hood's crags, so utterly is it detached from all that pertains to towns and cities as to recall the remotest wilds beyond the Tweed. Hollingworth Lake was constructed about ninety years ago with a view to steady maintenance of the Rochdale Canal. Among the hills upon the opposite or north-western side of the valley, Brown Wardle, often named in story, is conspicuous; and adorning the lofty general outline may be seen—best, perhaps, from near "Middleton Junction"—another mamelon—this one believed in local story to be a haunt of the maidens of the Midsummer Night's Dream.

IN THE BURNLEY VALLEY

Looking westward from the Robin Hood pinnacles, the prospect includes the valleys of the Roch and the Spodden—the last-named stream in parts wild and wilful. At Healey its walls of rock appear to have been riven at different times. Here, struggling through a lengthened and tortuous cleft, and forming more than one lively cascade before losing itself in the dingle below, so plainly does the water seem to have forced a passage, asserting mastery over all impediments, that in the vernacular this spot is called the "Thrutch." The first phrase heard in a Lancashire crowd is, "Where are you thrutching?" The perennial attrition of the broken and impending rocks causes many of them to terminate in sharp ridges, and in one part has given birth to the "Fairies' Chapel." The streams spoken of have their beginning in the lofty grounds which intervene between Rochdale and Cliviger, and include aspiring Thieveley Pike. Thieveley in the bygones served the important use of a station for beacon-fires, signalling on the one hand to Pendle, on the other to Buckton Castle. The prospect from the top, 1474 feet above the sea, comprehends, to the north, almost the whole of Craven, with Ingleborough, and the wilds of Trawden Forest. The nearer portions of the Lake District mountains, now familiar, are discernible; and on sunny evenings, when the river is full, once more the bright-faced estuary of the Ribble. The view reaches also to North Wales and Derbyshire, the extremities of this great map being quite sixty miles asunder.

Cliviger, after all, is the locality which most astonishes and delights the visitor to this part of Lancashire. Soon after quitting Rochdale, the railway passes through the great "Summit Tunnel," and so into the Todmorden Valley, there very soon passing the frontier formed by the Calder,[36] and entering Yorkshire. The valley is noted for its scenery, new combinations of the most varied elements, rude but not inhospitable, rising right and left in quick succession. Turning up the Burnley Valley, we enter Cliviger proper: a district having a circuit of nearly twenty miles, and presenting an endless variety of the most romantic features possible to mingled rock and pastured slope, constantly lifted to mountain-height, the charm of the huge gray bluffs of projecting gritstone augmented in many parts by abundance of trees, the predominant forms the graceful ones of larch, birch, and mountain-ash. The trees are now very nearly a century old, having been planted during the fifteen years ending with 1799, yet, to appearance, still in the prime of their calm existence. A striking characteristic of this admired valley is the frequent apparent closing-in of the passage by protruding crags, which nevertheless soon give way to verdant curves. Cliviger in every part is more or less marked by crags and curves, so that we incessantly come upon vast green bowls or hemispherical cavities, the bases of which change at times into circular plateaux, at midsummer overlaid with carpets of the prettiest botanical offspring of the province,—

"In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white,

Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery."

For introduction to these choice bits it is needful, of course, to leave the main thoroughfares and take one of the innumerable by-paths which lead away to the lonely and impressive silence of the moors, which, though desolate and sometimes bleak, have a profoundly delightful influence upon the mind. Their interest is heightened by the portions which are vividly green with bog-moss, being the birthplace of important streams. No slight matter is it to stand at any time where rivers are cradled. Here the flow of water is at once both east and westwards—a phenomenon witnessed several times in the English Apennine, and always bidding the traveller pause awhile. The Ribble and the Wharf begin this way; so do the Lune and the Swale: playmates in childhood, then parting for ever. Similarly, in Cliviger Dean the two Calders issue from the same fragment of watery waste, destined immediately for opposite courses. Hard by, in a stream called Erewell, at the foot of Derply Hill, on the verge of Rossendale, may be seen the birthplace of the Manchester Irwell.