THE
WATERSHEDS WALK
SECTION 1:- Keighley to the Dog and Gun.
The Watersheds Walk starts and ends in Keighley. You can park your car here and know that it will be waiting here for you when you get back. However between the start of the walk in Keighley and the end of the Walk (in Keighley!) is over 26 miles of upland walking, some a bit rough upland walking. the You could cheat by finishing in Oxenhope or Haworth and getting the bus or train back, but if you've set your heart on the complete and a unexpurgated version, then my advice is to prepare well. The trip is no pushover, especially in inclement weather, so you'll need to be well dressed, well shod and well rationed. By the time you get back to your car you will have acquired an intimate knowledge of the topography of Keighley and the Worth Valley, and you will also know something of its character, ecology and history.
The Watersheds Walk begins in Keighley, and that this point we separate the locals from the 'off-comer'd uns.' Most West Yorkshire folk know how to pronounce Keighley, but if you do have the misfortune to come from south of Watford, I'll be kind and put you out of your misery. Keighley is pronounced not 'Kayley' or 'Kylie' but 'Keethly'!
The route starts at Keighley railway station, which, unlike most stations, is divided into two quite different halves. The seedy run-down half belongs of course to British Rail, while the stylish marooned-liveried half, with smart lamps and platform shining like a new pin, marks the Keighley terminus of the Keighley and Worth Valley Light Railway - that magnificently preserved steam railway that attracts thousands of tourists each year, and runs from Keighley to Oxenhope via Oakworth and Haworth. It was beset by disasters when it was first built and was mercilessly lampooned by William Wright, the dialect poet of 't'Hoylus End'; its first sod was cut by mill magnate Sir Isaac Holden with a mahogany wheelbarrow and the silver spade! In the 1960s (like many a line) it fell victim to Dr Beechings' cuts and its fate seemed sealed. Nevertheless, thanks to the vision and far sightedness of local politician Bob Cryer and a few railway enthusiasts, it was resurrected, given a new lease of life and developed into the thriving tourist attraction it is today.
Not even those long-dead Haworthites who dreamt of a railway link to Keighley at the dawn of the Railway Age could have foreseen this: coaches, tourists, Americans, Japanese, clicking cameras, whirring videos... All the paraphernalia of the 20th century craze for Victorian nostalgia. Even if you are not local you will have seen the railway before - in the 'Railway Children', 'Yanks', 'It Shouldn't Happen to Vet' and a host of television productions.
Just beyond the station, the railway (and you) cross the River Worth. It isn't much of a river. In fact here, in the heart of Keighley's industrial sprawl, is a rather grubby little rill, rainbow sparkling with oil pollution, old bike frames and car wheels. It is also nearing the end of its journey. A few hundred yards downstream from here it flows into the River Aire .
Keighley is sited at a meeting of valleys. The Aire, which is flowing down from Skipton, is joined by two watercourses at Keighley - the Worth from the Worth Valley, and the North Beck from Newsholme Dean (which we will be encountering towards the end of our journey). All these water courses have been important to the establishment and subsequent history of Keighley, but pride of place must go to the humble little Worth, for Keighley must be the only town in Britain to have a motto beneath its coat - of - Arm's that is a deliberate and deeply meaningful : quote 'By Worth '. As we progress along the Watersheds Walk we will quickly learn that this motto is no idle boast.
On Low Mill Lane is Low Mill. This is where modern Keighley began, for the Industrial Revolution arrived here in 1780 with the opening of this, the first cotton mill in Yorkshire. Its owners, Clayton and Walshman, sent their child workers to Arkwight's famous mill at Cromford to learn the new processes. It is the 'new' mill of 1790 which survives here now, the old mill of 17 80 having been recently demolished.
Beyond Low Mill the Watersheds Walk ascends the old cobbled path towards Thwaites Brow and then bears right, across the top of Park Wood. Park Wood is a remnant of the Keighley Manor Hall Park; in the 19th century poor-quality coal was mined here in workings which employed women and children. Soon the Keighley to Harden road is encountered, and after a short descent to the right, down towards Keighley, a left turn leads on to do Glen Lee Lane, which in turn leads to Hog Holes Brow. Just below Hog Holes Brow, where the road winds uphill to the left, The Watersheds Walk bears right along a farm track, and here a fine prospect of Keighley opens up. Now is the time to stop for a quick breather and to examine Keighley in a little more detail.
Of Keighley's earlier history I will say little. Early wanderers left their flints, and iron age farmers their mysterious cup-and- ring rock carvings on the surrounding uplands. The old Roman highway to the fort at Ilkley passed nearby, crossing the Aire Valley near Hainworth Shaw, but there is no real evidence for the existence of Keighley until Domesday, when the name first surfaces in the form of 'Chichelai'. In 1513 a clearer picture emerges with the Flodden Roll, that list of Craven Yeomen who marched north with Clifford, the Shepherd Lord, to rout the Scots at Flodden Field. ( The Scots had frequently attacked Skipton, and no doubt sacked Keighley occasionally too, as it is known they penetrated further down Airedale than this on more than one occasion.) Here on the Flodden roll may be seen the names of Cloughs, Stells, Butterfield and those of many other local families who inhabit the Keighley area to this day.
the oldest surviving building in key flit was surely be its parish Church, which can be seen below. It was founded in the 12th Century, and the modern temporary open air market which recently bustle beside it perhaps echoed the vocation of its medieval market, which was granted its charter in 13 05 by Edward the first.
Yet the Keighley we see today it was (and still is) almost entirely a product of the Industrial Revolution. Throughout the 19th century the town boomed, and expanded at an alarming rate. There was a proliferation of manufacturing industry along both the Worth and the North Beck, which, before the advent of steam, were both used to provide motive power to turn the machinery. As the town grew, the industrial emphasis gradually turned from cottons to woollens and worsteds, and the ever-expanding industries polluted the water - courses and enveloped the whole valley in a pall of smoke.
Textile mills were not the only industry is to develop in 19th century Keighley, for the town was also destined to become famous for its light engineering. During the late 18th century poverty and local difficulties caused one Richard Hattersley, a Hallamshire whitesmith (Tinsmith) and nail maker, to abandon his native Ecclesfield and to seek his fortune elsewhere. He finally settled here in Keighley, where he took part of Aireworth Mill in 1789. Here he manufactured nails, Screws and bolts,. His business prospered and, inevitably, he soon found himself pandering to the needs of the New infant textile technology. This led him to branch out into the manufacture of spindles, rollers and machine parts, along with goods for agricultural use. At the turn up the 19th century the firm moved to Northbrook Mill, and prospered from then on. (Hattersley at this time he not build a complete machines, he merely supplied the parts for others.)
Richard Hattersley rose rapidly in Keighley society, and both he and his descendants were destined to become part of that elite class of manufacturing entrepreneurs who were the fountainhead of all wealth and power in 19th century Keighley. By 1805 he was Worshipful Master of the local Masons, and in 1824 he was appointed one of Keighley's first improvement commissioners. Thus it was that a humble Sheffield Whitesmith founded the family business which was to become internationally famous as 'George Hattersley and Sons of Keighley - textile machinery manufacturers.'
George Hattersley, Richard's son, was born in 1789, the same year his father set up shop in Keighley. George brought a genius to the new technology which found its expression in the making of the first power loom for the worsted industry in 1835, and the invention of the Dobby, or heald machine, in 1867 the dobby wove patterned cloth, the pattern been established by a system of pegs it, arrayed rather like the punched cards of the machine devised by Joseph Marie Jacquard in France in first decade of the 19th century. George Hattersley won gold medals at the Paris exhibitions of 1862, 1867 and 1879 for his inventions and innovations. Hattersley's were in the business of victorian hi-tech and it made them a fortune. They were pioneers of automation and no doubt they would be quite amazed to see lineal descendant of their Dobbies and Jacquards- the modern micro computer. and
George Hattersley died at the age of 80. During his life he had buried three wives and fathered a large family (the youngest son of which, Janes Midgley Hattersley, was my great, great grandfather).
Keighley is a mucky place! There was (and still is) much that is seedy and run down. It is a town with dirty, calloused hands. Yet the muck (to give credit where it's due) is honest enough, and in true Yorkshire fashion it has, in its time, created copious amounts of brass. Keighley has good pubs, and an abundance of fish and chip restaurants. It must, in fact, be the fish and chip capital of the North, for nowhere else have I encountered such a large number of places offering wholesome, simple fare at cheap prices. Anyone who likes a day's shopping with a meal thrown in will love Keighley; and if you like fish-and-chips you will find it a greasy newspaper gourmet's delight.
Keighley wasn't always seedy - at one time it was positively filthy! Accounts of social conditions in 19th century Keighley read like something out of more horror story. Richard Longden Hattersley (Georges Son) described how his firm dumped their Refuse: " our place is a very awkward place and we have to lead the ashes to the land if we cart them away, therefore it is a great convenience two us to be able to put them into the Beck. "
Such behaviour was not the exception in those days, it was the rule. Keighley's population explosion quickly outstripped what meagre sanitation and water supplies the town possessed, and excrement filled the streets; privies, soil pits, slaughterhouse offal, pigsties and heaps of manure stank and festered in yards and snickets. Privy refuse seeped through basement bedroom walls, and squalid tenements reeked of bad air. Water supplies were quite inadequate and usually polluted, and a single privy could often be shared by as many as 29 houses. Such conditions as this did not make for a healthy or genteel population. Consumption, smallpox, dysentery, typhus and rheumatic fever were rife and the fact that Keighley escaped an onslaught of the dreaded cholera was due more to good luck them to good management. Infant mortality was particularly high, and 41 out of every 100 babies never reached the age of six. Children were exploited in the factories, and it was not for nothing that Bill o't'Hoylus' End, the dialect poet referred to the Keighley folk as 'Crook'd leg 'uns,' as child labour always ensured a plentiful occurrence of rickets.
As one might imagine, such a brutalised population had little respect for law and order. Nineteenth century Keighley was described as "being a den of beggars, vagrants, prostitutes, thieves and tramps, crawling with vermin and lice.". Suicides and murders were common, as was cruelty to animals and vandalism. Many people found temporary release in the brothel or the alehouse, both of which were numerous in Keighley. Others abandoned their families and escaped via the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to Liverpool and the Americas. Such was the desperation of the poor in 19th century Keighley.
The dawn of the 20th century did not see an end to Keighley's seamier side either. Even as a child in the 1950's I recall seeing dark snickets and grimy windows peering sightlessly into refuse filled yards. The old Keighley Market was full of sights, sounds and smells, and after its demolition in the early 1970s, Keighley seemed like a different town. For a while the place seemed to be in some kind of a limbo, a situation not helped by the disastrous fire which destroyed its Mechanics Institute in 1962. Keighley in the 1970's seemed to be one big construction site, yet out of the chrysalis emerged a new Keighley, One which had undergone a noticeable change of character.
Keighley still has its rough side, yet in the heart of the grime there shines a jewel of graet worth (if you'll excuse the pun!). There is an unsophisticated, unspoilt character, a native vitality which those tourism embattled locals who live in Haworth must surely envy. Keighley has had the good fortune to have missed most of the Bronte 'bandwagon', which has vulgarised Haworth in a way the Industrial Revolution never could. I like Keighley; it is a happy, honest little town and the ideal starting and finishing point for such a journey as this, having all mod cons in the way of food, pubs, accommodation and travel facilities. It's a nice place to leave behind, but you will find, by the time you have walked round the watersheds, that it is a much more welcoming place to get back to!
Anyway, now we'll get moving again. Just across some fields and through some stiles we arrive at the charming little hillside community of Hainworth. This little place holds fond memories for me, for here in the 1860's lived Francis Middlebrook. He was a ten year old boy, who, from 1860-61, kept a diary of the day-to-day events in his life. There is nothing special or unusual about the diary, except for one thing - in 1977 it was unearthed by Nick Gray of Yorkshire Television, who decided to bring the diary to life by making a film about it. This film was presented as part of the TV series 'Secret Diaries' and I had the very good fortune to be a member of the cast at the time.
'The Diary of Francis Middlebrook' was an unusual production in that it was not only filmed on location at Hainworth, where the events in the diary actually took place, but it also employed local schoolchildren as extras, many of whom were real-life descendants of characters portrayed in the film. It was a bitter december morning when we arrived. Out went the parked cars and TV aerials, and in came the clogs, shawls and top hats. The script re-created the events leading up to the performance of the Hainworth Pace Egg Play of 9th March 1860. This traditional Easter drama, featuring St George, Slasher and Tosspot, reflects an ancient 'death and resurrection' fertility rite. A modern, revived version, the Midgley Pace Egg Play - is still performed every Good Friday in the Upper Calder Valley.
Francis Middlebrook was the youngest son of Hainworth farmer John Middlebrook of Hainworth Shaw. His father was on the Board of Guardians of the new Union Workhouse at Hillworth Lodge. Young Francis eventually grew up to be not a farmer but a 'tinner and gas and steam fitter' in Cavendish Street, Keighley. He married in 1875 and had a large family. He died on September 30th 1911, receiving a two paragraph obituary in the Keighley News. In 1977 he became a filmstar and his childhood diary was broadcast over the air into the homes of millions of people. Young Francis Middlebrook would have been amazed!
After passing Hainworth Baptist Chapel (built in 1847 and now a private home), The Watersheds Walk follows a farm road which eventually passes beneath the quarries of Hainworth Crag and then continues along the hillside beneath Lee Moor Edge.
Once again, this area holds particular memories for me. Here, on this track, with its pleasant views over the Worth Valley, I spent my first working day as a Countryside Warden. I recall that vandals had been rolling large tractor tyres down the hillside from the quarries above, and that numerous drystone walls had been badly damaged by their passage. Our job was to repair the walls and to dispose of the tyres. It was November, 1979, and the hoar frost sparkled on mossy stones. The sound of a train whistle rose eerily from the cloud filled valley below. It was an enchanted moment; cold, fresh and indescribably peaceful.
Of course we didn't know much about drystone walls in those days. Time, experience and the guidance of experts have taught me much more since. In the first place, building drystone walls is more than just a skill - it is an art. It is also a 'love or loathe' business. For my part, I get bored with it after a few days, but an enthusiast can go on walling indefinitely and find in the craft an endless supply of interest and fascination. While I enjoy a bit of 'wallin'', I enjoy talking about it more, and in the kind of landscape to be found here, on the upland pastures above Haworth, Oxenhope and Keighley, the lore of drystone walls plays an important if not crucial part in our understanding of the nature of the local landscape.
Around the Worth Valley there are three types of general landscape, (if you exclude the built-up), and the Watersheds Walk encounters all of them in varying degrees. In the valleys there were (and in parts still are) extensive areas of largely deciduous woodlands, and, on the tops, are the high moorlands. Man's general progress in the area has throughout the centuries been characterised by two activities: felling trees; and 'intaking' pasture land from the moors. The landscape we see today is the result of the process. In the valleys, woodlands have been destroyed to make way for pastures and (later) industrial development, and the woodlands that remain have been extensively managed.
On the uplands it is a different story, and the ubiquitous drystone wall is central to it. Land has been 'taken in' from the moorland - an arduous process involving enclosure, scrub and boulder clearance, efficient land drainage and the neutralising of the acid soil with copious amounts of lime.. (This was the reason for the importance of the Limer's Gate, the old pack-horse route leading over the hills to the lime kilns of Clitheroe.) The matured end-product of this process is the landscape of upland pastures we see today. (At a higher level on our Watersheds Walk, where there are ruined, derelict hillfarms, we will also see how the process is reversing itself as nature takes back what our ancestors took from it.)
Central to this landscape is the drystone wall. It gives the landscape its character and appears in forms to suit every taste. They were never built to any universal master plan, and as a result each wall tends to be as uniquely individual as the unknown person who first built it. Above all it is functional. It answers the upland farmer's every need. It breaks the winter wind, it provides shelter for stock, and the same shelter provides provides extra grazing, impossible with a fence. It is strong, stockproof, and, if you can spare the time, very inexpensive to maintain. It is also (if built correctly) extremely durable, and is capable of lasting for centuries, as the remarkable drystone walls of the ancient Pictish 'brochs' (circular defensive towers) in Scotland testify. The walls also provide a habitat for birds, various small animals (stoats and shrews for example) and a variety of insects.
So what is a drystone wall? Actually it is two walls, with a central filling of small stones. The Scots call it a 'drystane dyke' and maybe their description is more accurate. Although it may look like a mere pile of stones, especially if in a ruinous condition, our drystone wall is in fact made up of many different components - if we have the eye to spot them. At the base you will notice that the stones are for more massive than higher up the wall, and if you stand at the wall head and look along it you will see that it tapers upwards to a point, each face of the wall having a slope or 'batter'. It is this shape, this batter, that gives the wall its stability and distinguishes it from your ordinary bricks-and-mortar wall which is built plumb. The wall is also knit together with 'through stones' which pass right through the wall at fixed intervals, and the whole thing is weighted down by massive coping stones, or 'toppers'. The small stones that make up the filling or 'hearting' are known as 'packers', while the small, thin wedges of stone used to chock larger stones in place are known as 'pinners' or 'plates'. (The terms used in walling vary from region to region).
Features to be found include stiles, gateways, gatestoops and 'lunkie' or 'creep' holes, which are used to allow sheep to pass from pasture to pasture while the fields remain stockproof to larger animals like cows.. Smaller 'chunkie' holes are used to convey watercourses under the wall, or, in the case of retaining walls as 'weepholes'. Types of stone used vary enormously, and walling in the limestone uplands of Craven is quite different to the styles of walling employed here in the Worth Valley. Usually the style of the wall is dictated by the sort of stone available.
Methods of building also vary. Bryan Hough, who is a well known master craftsman drystone waller, insists that the only way to build a wall which will stand is by using timber wall frames and lines, which ensure that the batter of the wall is perfect. For amateurs like me this is absolutely vital, but it is amazing how many 'professional' wallers turn their noses up in scorn at the idea of using a frame! The fact is that walling is all things to all people, and, if you see it at a show it is competitive, emotive and the subject of fierce northern pride.
Most of the walls were built in the 18th and 19th centuries as a result of the Enclosure Acts, but some of them are older, for the process of enclosure that so drastically altered rural society in the arable farmlands had less effect on Pennine pastures, where animal husbandry had always demanded a degree of enclosure. Contrary to popular belief, these walls were not built by master craftsmen, although some beautiful walls do survive; often they were constructed by the farmer and his family, sometimes with the children lending a hand. Because of this, the skills of walling tended to evolve by trial and error, and this explains why so many walls today are now in ruins - they simply weren't built right in the first place.
Once again the train whistle is heard from the valley below, and we resume our journey, heading towards Barcroft, beneath the quarries of Lees Moor Edge.
Countryside Wardens building walls were not the first people to be enamoured of the peace and quiet of Lees Moor Edge however. In 1842, at the height of the Chartist disturbances, there was much concern that the 'Plug Drawing Riots' which were progressively disabling the cotton mills of Lancashire might spread to Keighley. So worried were the mill masters of the town that they employed over a hundred special constables - many of whom were mill masters themselves. Among these was one James Mitchell, who, while on his way to the Parish Church one Sunday morning, to his intense horror suddenly espied a great multitude of people gathered on Lees Moor. He quickly notified the authorities, and the alarm bells were duly rung. Next the churches were evacuated and the military called out. Everyone was in fear of a Chartist uprising, yet when the authorities finally arrived at Lees Moor the 'mob' proved to be a congregation of Primitive Methodists holding a camp meeting. Poor Mitchell was made the laughing stock of Keighley!
Beyond Lees Moor the tarmac is rejoined and the Watersheds Walk descends to Barcroft and Sugden End. After crossing the busy A629 the route continues up Hard Gate Lane, which joins Brow Top Lane, just beyond the 'Flappit'. Continue onwards, following the wall to the summit of Brow Moor. Down below is Haworth, bu Brow Moor is about as near as the Watersheds Walk gets to it.
The local Haworth people are an elusive species, surrounded on all sides by tourism. My distant relative Ian Ogden is one of them. He is a mill overlooker, a job rare in West Yorkshire these days. He drinks at the Fleece and 't'club', and dwells in one of those back streets tucked out of sight of the art galleries and gift shops. Ian and his ilk are rough and ready - defeated local people. He keeps terriers and likes to go shooting. He points with pride to the wickedly snarling fox whose mounted head graces his mantelpiece. He shot it himself. He keeps goats and grazes them on the moor's edge, much to the chagrin of the Metropolitan Council, who take the view that goats and tourist footpaths don't mix! So Ian gets official letters from the council, and complains, pleads innocence, or simply shrugs off these attempts by the powers-that-be to deprive him of what he regards as his traditional rights.
It's not too difficult to understand why. Ian comes of good Haworth stock and untold generations of Ogdens sleep in the close packed and tumbled graves of Haworth's churchyard, along with their 'kith and kin' the Snowdens and the Heatons. These families lived in the Worth Valley long before the Brontes were ever thought of, they would have regarded the Brontes as 'off comed 'uns'. In 1532 one William 'Hogden' died and left his will; he was the first recorded person of that name in Haworth, but there is no reason to assume that he was anything other than the offspring of even remoter generations of Ogdens stretching back into the Middle Ages.
There is little else I wish to say about Haworth. There is much more I could say, particularly about the Brontes, about Halliwell Sutcliffe and the Reverend Grimshaw, but I would be only beating further an already well beaten literary track. It's all there, you only have to go out and find it. If you visit Haworth, and you haven't been there before, you will love it. The Parsonage (though pricey) is well worth a visit, as is the Keighley & Worth Valley Light Railway, and Haworth's picturesque houses and cobbled main street. AS for the rest, well, there is rather a glut of overpriced antique shops, gift shops and art galleries. Many of the gifts and souvenirs you can buy here are of good quality, but if you are the kind of person who has 'been around' you will find they are often the same gits you saw in Keswick, Pitlochry and Polperro. I used to work in and around Haworth, and I got to see the place through all its seasons. For me, Haworth was always at its best midweek and midwinter. No tourists then, just peace and quiet, a village left to the locals, and quite different from the unbelievable chaos of a sunny August Bank Holiday.
Beyond Brow Moor the Watersheds Walk descends to Black Moor Road, and after a short distance bears left down Cuckoo Park Lane. This leads onto Black Moor. After crossing part of Black Moor the path enters Trough Lane on the bends, and from here we follow the tarmac a short distance to the Dog and Gun and the end of Section 1.
The Dog and Gun is an attractive pub. It is the terminus for the Annual Oxenhope Straw Race. The Straw Race, although not a true local tradition, is rapidly becoming one. The route starts at the Waggon and Horses on the Hebden Bridge Road, and passes through Oxenhope and Leeming. The contestants have to race along this route in fancy dress, carrying a bale of straw. They also have to drink a pint of beer at each pub encountered en route (six altogether, if you include the club). The race is open to anyone, and, although it is invariably won by the athletes, many people simply enter it for fun, the fancy dress being the main attraction.
If you are ending the walk here at the end of Section 1, simply follow the road down the hill to Leeming and Oxenhope, where a train or bus may be caught back to Keighley. If like me though, you seek rather more challenge than this, then get that pint off, finish that game of 'bull ring' you're playing in the back room, and lets get moving. Section 2 awaits.
Jim Jarratt
Mytholmroyd. 1988
Copyright Jim Jarratt.
2006 First Published by Smith Settle 1989
Not even those long-dead Haworthites who dreamt of a railway link to Keighley at the dawn of the Railway Age could have foreseen this: coaches, tourists, Americans, Japanese, clicking cameras, whirring videos... All the paraphernalia of the 20th century craze for Victorian nostalgia. Even if you are not local you will have seen the railway before - in the 'Railway Children', 'Yanks', 'It Shouldn't Happen to Vet' and a host of television productions.
Just beyond the station, the railway (and you) cross the River Worth. It isn't much of a river. In fact here, in the heart of Keighley's industrial sprawl, is a rather grubby little rill, rainbow sparkling with oil pollution, old bike frames and car wheels. It is also nearing the end of its journey. A few hundred yards downstream from here it flows into the River Aire .
On Low Mill Lane is Low Mill. This is where modern Keighley began, for the Industrial Revolution arrived here in 1780 with the opening of this, the first cotton mill in Yorkshire. Its owners, Clayton and Walshman, sent their child workers to Arkwight's famous mill at Cromford to learn the new processes. It is the 'new' mill of 1790 which survives here now, the old mill of 17 80 having been recently demolished.
Beyond Low Mill the Watersheds Walk ascends the old cobbled path towards Thwaites Brow and then bears right, across the top of Park Wood. Park Wood is a remnant of the Keighley Manor Hall Park; in the 19th century poor-quality coal was mined here in workings which employed women and children. Soon the Keighley to Harden road is encountered, and after a short descent to the right, down towards Keighley, a left turn leads on to do Glen Lee Lane, which in turn leads to Hog Holes Brow. Just below Hog Holes Brow, where the road winds uphill to the left, The Watersheds Walk bears right along a farm track, and here a fine prospect of Keighley opens up. Now is the time to stop for a quick breather and to examine Keighley in a little more detail.
the oldest surviving building in key flit was surely be its parish Church, which can be seen below. It was founded in the 12th Century, and the modern temporary open air market which recently bustle beside it perhaps echoed the vocation of its medieval market, which was granted its charter in 13 05 by Edward the first.
Yet the Keighley we see today it was (and still is) almost entirely a product of the Industrial Revolution. Throughout the 19th century the town boomed, and expanded at an alarming rate. There was a proliferation of manufacturing industry along both the Worth and the North Beck, which, before the advent of steam, were both used to provide motive power to turn the machinery. As the town grew, the industrial emphasis gradually turned from cottons to woollens and worsteds, and the ever-expanding industries polluted the water - courses and enveloped the whole valley in a pall of smoke.
Textile mills were not the only industry is to develop in 19th century Keighley, for the town was also destined to become famous for its light engineering. During the late 18th century poverty and local difficulties caused one Richard Hattersley, a Hallamshire whitesmith (Tinsmith) and nail maker, to abandon his native Ecclesfield and to seek his fortune elsewhere. He finally settled here in Keighley, where he took part of Aireworth Mill in 1789. Here he manufactured nails, Screws and bolts,. His business prospered and, inevitably, he soon found himself pandering to the needs of the New infant textile technology. This led him to branch out into the manufacture of spindles, rollers and machine parts, along with goods for agricultural use. At the turn up the 19th century the firm moved to Northbrook Mill, and prospered from then on. (Hattersley at this time he not build a complete machines, he merely supplied the parts for others.)
Richard Hattersley rose rapidly in Keighley society, and both he and his descendants were destined to become part of that elite class of manufacturing entrepreneurs who were the fountainhead of all wealth and power in 19th century Keighley. By 1805 he was Worshipful Master of the local Masons, and in 1824 he was appointed one of Keighley's first improvement commissioners. Thus it was that a humble Sheffield Whitesmith founded the family business which was to become internationally famous as 'George Hattersley and Sons of Keighley - textile machinery manufacturers.'
George Hattersley, Richard's son, was born in 1789, the same year his father set up shop in Keighley. George brought a genius to the new technology which found its expression in the making of the first power loom for the worsted industry in 1835, and the invention of the Dobby, or heald machine, in 1867 the dobby wove patterned cloth, the pattern been established by a system of pegs it, arrayed rather like the punched cards of the machine devised by Joseph Marie Jacquard in France in first decade of the 19th century. George Hattersley won gold medals at the Paris exhibitions of 1862, 1867 and 1879 for his inventions and innovations. Hattersley's were in the business of victorian hi-tech and it made them a fortune. They were pioneers of automation and no doubt they would be quite amazed to see lineal descendant of their Dobbies and Jacquards- the modern micro computer. and
George Hattersley died at the age of 80. During his life he had buried three wives and fathered a large family (the youngest son of which, Janes Midgley Hattersley, was my great, great grandfather).
Keighley is a mucky place! There was (and still is) much that is seedy and run down. It is a town with dirty, calloused hands. Yet the muck (to give credit where it's due) is honest enough, and in true Yorkshire fashion it has, in its time, created copious amounts of brass. Keighley has good pubs, and an abundance of fish and chip restaurants. It must, in fact, be the fish and chip capital of the North, for nowhere else have I encountered such a large number of places offering wholesome, simple fare at cheap prices. Anyone who likes a day's shopping with a meal thrown in will love Keighley; and if you like fish-and-chips you will find it a greasy newspaper gourmet's delight.
Keighley wasn't always seedy - at one time it was positively filthy! Accounts of social conditions in 19th century Keighley read like something out of more horror story. Richard Longden Hattersley (Georges Son) described how his firm dumped their Refuse: " our place is a very awkward place and we have to lead the ashes to the land if we cart them away, therefore it is a great convenience two us to be able to put them into the Beck. "
Such behaviour was not the exception in those days, it was the rule. Keighley's population explosion quickly outstripped what meagre sanitation and water supplies the town possessed, and excrement filled the streets; privies, soil pits, slaughterhouse offal, pigsties and heaps of manure stank and festered in yards and snickets. Privy refuse seeped through basement bedroom walls, and squalid tenements reeked of bad air. Water supplies were quite inadequate and usually polluted, and a single privy could often be shared by as many as 29 houses. Such conditions as this did not make for a healthy or genteel population. Consumption, smallpox, dysentery, typhus and rheumatic fever were rife and the fact that Keighley escaped an onslaught of the dreaded cholera was due more to good luck them to good management. Infant mortality was particularly high, and 41 out of every 100 babies never reached the age of six. Children were exploited in the factories, and it was not for nothing that Bill o't'Hoylus' End, the dialect poet referred to the Keighley folk as 'Crook'd leg 'uns,' as child labour always ensured a plentiful occurrence of rickets.
As one might imagine, such a brutalised population had little respect for law and order. Nineteenth century Keighley was described as "being a den of beggars, vagrants, prostitutes, thieves and tramps, crawling with vermin and lice.". Suicides and murders were common, as was cruelty to animals and vandalism. Many people found temporary release in the brothel or the alehouse, both of which were numerous in Keighley. Others abandoned their families and escaped via the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to Liverpool and the Americas. Such was the desperation of the poor in 19th century Keighley.
The dawn of the 20th century did not see an end to Keighley's seamier side either. Even as a child in the 1950's I recall seeing dark snickets and grimy windows peering sightlessly into refuse filled yards. The old Keighley Market was full of sights, sounds and smells, and after its demolition in the early 1970s, Keighley seemed like a different town. For a while the place seemed to be in some kind of a limbo, a situation not helped by the disastrous fire which destroyed its Mechanics Institute in 1962. Keighley in the 1970's seemed to be one big construction site, yet out of the chrysalis emerged a new Keighley, One which had undergone a noticeable change of character.
Keighley still has its rough side, yet in the heart of the grime there shines a jewel of graet worth (if you'll excuse the pun!). There is an unsophisticated, unspoilt character, a native vitality which those tourism embattled locals who live in Haworth must surely envy. Keighley has had the good fortune to have missed most of the Bronte 'bandwagon', which has vulgarised Haworth in a way the Industrial Revolution never could. I like Keighley; it is a happy, honest little town and the ideal starting and finishing point for such a journey as this, having all mod cons in the way of food, pubs, accommodation and travel facilities. It's a nice place to leave behind, but you will find, by the time you have walked round the watersheds, that it is a much more welcoming place to get back to!
Anyway, now we'll get moving again. Just across some fields and through some stiles we arrive at the charming little hillside community of Hainworth. This little place holds fond memories for me, for here in the 1860's lived Francis Middlebrook. He was a ten year old boy, who, from 1860-61, kept a diary of the day-to-day events in his life. There is nothing special or unusual about the diary, except for one thing - in 1977 it was unearthed by Nick Gray of Yorkshire Television, who decided to bring the diary to life by making a film about it. This film was presented as part of the TV series 'Secret Diaries' and I had the very good fortune to be a member of the cast at the time.
'The Diary of Francis Middlebrook' was an unusual production in that it was not only filmed on location at Hainworth, where the events in the diary actually took place, but it also employed local schoolchildren as extras, many of whom were real-life descendants of characters portrayed in the film. It was a bitter december morning when we arrived. Out went the parked cars and TV aerials, and in came the clogs, shawls and top hats. The script re-created the events leading up to the performance of the Hainworth Pace Egg Play of 9th March 1860. This traditional Easter drama, featuring St George, Slasher and Tosspot, reflects an ancient 'death and resurrection' fertility rite. A modern, revived version, the Midgley Pace Egg Play - is still performed every Good Friday in the Upper Calder Valley.
Francis Middlebrook was the youngest son of Hainworth farmer John Middlebrook of Hainworth Shaw. His father was on the Board of Guardians of the new Union Workhouse at Hillworth Lodge. Young Francis eventually grew up to be not a farmer but a 'tinner and gas and steam fitter' in Cavendish Street, Keighley. He married in 1875 and had a large family. He died on September 30th 1911, receiving a two paragraph obituary in the Keighley News. In 1977 he became a filmstar and his childhood diary was broadcast over the air into the homes of millions of people. Young Francis Middlebrook would have been amazed!
After passing Hainworth Baptist Chapel (built in 1847 and now a private home), The Watersheds Walk follows a farm road which eventually passes beneath the quarries of Hainworth Crag and then continues along the hillside beneath Lee Moor Edge.
Once again, this area holds particular memories for me. Here, on this track, with its pleasant views over the Worth Valley, I spent my first working day as a Countryside Warden. I recall that vandals had been rolling large tractor tyres down the hillside from the quarries above, and that numerous drystone walls had been badly damaged by their passage. Our job was to repair the walls and to dispose of the tyres. It was November, 1979, and the hoar frost sparkled on mossy stones. The sound of a train whistle rose eerily from the cloud filled valley below. It was an enchanted moment; cold, fresh and indescribably peaceful.
Of course we didn't know much about drystone walls in those days. Time, experience and the guidance of experts have taught me much more since. In the first place, building drystone walls is more than just a skill - it is an art. It is also a 'love or loathe' business. For my part, I get bored with it after a few days, but an enthusiast can go on walling indefinitely and find in the craft an endless supply of interest and fascination. While I enjoy a bit of 'wallin'', I enjoy talking about it more, and in the kind of landscape to be found here, on the upland pastures above Haworth, Oxenhope and Keighley, the lore of drystone walls plays an important if not crucial part in our understanding of the nature of the local landscape.
Around the Worth Valley there are three types of general landscape, (if you exclude the built-up), and the Watersheds Walk encounters all of them in varying degrees. In the valleys there were (and in parts still are) extensive areas of largely deciduous woodlands, and, on the tops, are the high moorlands. Man's general progress in the area has throughout the centuries been characterised by two activities: felling trees; and 'intaking' pasture land from the moors. The landscape we see today is the result of the process. In the valleys, woodlands have been destroyed to make way for pastures and (later) industrial development, and the woodlands that remain have been extensively managed.
On the uplands it is a different story, and the ubiquitous drystone wall is central to it. Land has been 'taken in' from the moorland - an arduous process involving enclosure, scrub and boulder clearance, efficient land drainage and the neutralising of the acid soil with copious amounts of lime.. (This was the reason for the importance of the Limer's Gate, the old pack-horse route leading over the hills to the lime kilns of Clitheroe.) The matured end-product of this process is the landscape of upland pastures we see today. (At a higher level on our Watersheds Walk, where there are ruined, derelict hillfarms, we will also see how the process is reversing itself as nature takes back what our ancestors took from it.)
Central to this landscape is the drystone wall. It gives the landscape its character and appears in forms to suit every taste. They were never built to any universal master plan, and as a result each wall tends to be as uniquely individual as the unknown person who first built it. Above all it is functional. It answers the upland farmer's every need. It breaks the winter wind, it provides shelter for stock, and the same shelter provides provides extra grazing, impossible with a fence. It is strong, stockproof, and, if you can spare the time, very inexpensive to maintain. It is also (if built correctly) extremely durable, and is capable of lasting for centuries, as the remarkable drystone walls of the ancient Pictish 'brochs' (circular defensive towers) in Scotland testify. The walls also provide a habitat for birds, various small animals (stoats and shrews for example) and a variety of insects.
So what is a drystone wall? Actually it is two walls, with a central filling of small stones. The Scots call it a 'drystane dyke' and maybe their description is more accurate. Although it may look like a mere pile of stones, especially if in a ruinous condition, our drystone wall is in fact made up of many different components - if we have the eye to spot them. At the base you will notice that the stones are for more massive than higher up the wall, and if you stand at the wall head and look along it you will see that it tapers upwards to a point, each face of the wall having a slope or 'batter'. It is this shape, this batter, that gives the wall its stability and distinguishes it from your ordinary bricks-and-mortar wall which is built plumb. The wall is also knit together with 'through stones' which pass right through the wall at fixed intervals, and the whole thing is weighted down by massive coping stones, or 'toppers'. The small stones that make up the filling or 'hearting' are known as 'packers', while the small, thin wedges of stone used to chock larger stones in place are known as 'pinners' or 'plates'. (The terms used in walling vary from region to region). Features to be found include stiles, gateways, gatestoops and 'lunkie' or 'creep' holes, which are used to allow sheep to pass from pasture to pasture while the fields remain stockproof to larger animals like cows.. Smaller 'chunkie' holes are used to convey watercourses under the wall, or, in the case of retaining walls as 'weepholes'. Types of stone used vary enormously, and walling in the limestone uplands of Craven is quite different to the styles of walling employed here in the Worth Valley. Usually the style of the wall is dictated by the sort of stone available.
Methods of building also vary. Bryan Hough, who is a well known master craftsman drystone waller, insists that the only way to build a wall which will stand is by using timber wall frames and lines, which ensure that the batter of the wall is perfect. For amateurs like me this is absolutely vital, but it is amazing how many 'professional' wallers turn their noses up in scorn at the idea of using a frame! The fact is that walling is all things to all people, and, if you see it at a show it is competitive, emotive and the subject of fierce northern pride.
Most of the walls were built in the 18th and 19th centuries as a result of the Enclosure Acts, but some of them are older, for the process of enclosure that so drastically altered rural society in the arable farmlands had less effect on Pennine pastures, where animal husbandry had always demanded a degree of enclosure. Contrary to popular belief, these walls were not built by master craftsmen, although some beautiful walls do survive; often they were constructed by the farmer and his family, sometimes with the children lending a hand. Because of this, the skills of walling tended to evolve by trial and error, and this explains why so many walls today are now in ruins - they simply weren't built right in the first place.
Once again the train whistle is heard from the valley below, and we resume our journey, heading towards Barcroft, beneath the quarries of Lees Moor Edge.
Countryside Wardens building walls were not the first people to be enamoured of the peace and quiet of Lees Moor Edge however. In 1842, at the height of the Chartist disturbances, there was much concern that the 'Plug Drawing Riots' which were progressively disabling the cotton mills of Lancashire might spread to Keighley. So worried were the mill masters of the town that they employed over a hundred special constables - many of whom were mill masters themselves. Among these was one James Mitchell, who, while on his way to the Parish Church one Sunday morning, to his intense horror suddenly espied a great multitude of people gathered on Lees Moor. He quickly notified the authorities, and the alarm bells were duly rung. Next the churches were evacuated and the military called out. Everyone was in fear of a Chartist uprising, yet when the authorities finally arrived at Lees Moor the 'mob' proved to be a congregation of Primitive Methodists holding a camp meeting. Poor Mitchell was made the laughing stock of Keighley!
Beyond Lees Moor the tarmac is rejoined and the Watersheds Walk descends to Barcroft and Sugden End. After crossing the busy A629 the route continues up Hard Gate Lane, which joins Brow Top Lane, just beyond the 'Flappit'. Continue onwards, following the wall to the summit of Brow Moor. Down below is Haworth, bu Brow Moor is about as near as the Watersheds Walk gets to it.
The local Haworth people are an elusive species, surrounded on all sides by tourism. My distant relative Ian Ogden is one of them. He is a mill overlooker, a job rare in West Yorkshire these days. He drinks at the Fleece and 't'club', and dwells in one of those back streets tucked out of sight of the art galleries and gift shops. Ian and his ilk are rough and ready - defeated local people. He keeps terriers and likes to go shooting. He points with pride to the wickedly snarling fox whose mounted head graces his mantelpiece. He shot it himself. He keeps goats and grazes them on the moor's edge, much to the chagrin of the Metropolitan Council, who take the view that goats and tourist footpaths don't mix! So Ian gets official letters from the council, and complains, pleads innocence, or simply shrugs off these attempts by the powers-that-be to deprive him of what he regards as his traditional rights.
It's not too difficult to understand why. Ian comes of good Haworth stock and untold generations of Ogdens sleep in the close packed and tumbled graves of Haworth's churchyard, along with their 'kith and kin' the Snowdens and the Heatons. These families lived in the Worth Valley long before the Brontes were ever thought of, they would have regarded the Brontes as 'off comed 'uns'. In 1532 one William 'Hogden' died and left his will; he was the first recorded person of that name in Haworth, but there is no reason to assume that he was anything other than the offspring of even remoter generations of Ogdens stretching back into the Middle Ages.
There is little else I wish to say about Haworth. There is much more I could say, particularly about the Brontes, about Halliwell Sutcliffe and the Reverend Grimshaw, but I would be only beating further an already well beaten literary track. It's all there, you only have to go out and find it. If you visit Haworth, and you haven't been there before, you will love it. The Parsonage (though pricey) is well worth a visit, as is the Keighley & Worth Valley Light Railway, and Haworth's picturesque houses and cobbled main street. AS for the rest, well, there is rather a glut of overpriced antique shops, gift shops and art galleries. Many of the gifts and souvenirs you can buy here are of good quality, but if you are the kind of person who has 'been around' you will find they are often the same gits you saw in Keswick, Pitlochry and Polperro. I used to work in and around Haworth, and I got to see the place through all its seasons. For me, Haworth was always at its best midweek and midwinter. No tourists then, just peace and quiet, a village left to the locals, and quite different from the unbelievable chaos of a sunny August Bank Holiday.
Beyond Brow Moor the Watersheds Walk descends to Black Moor Road, and after a short distance bears left down Cuckoo Park Lane. This leads onto Black Moor. After crossing part of Black Moor the path enters Trough Lane on the bends, and from here we follow the tarmac a short distance to the Dog and Gun and the end of Section 1.
The Dog and Gun is an attractive pub. It is the terminus for the Annual Oxenhope Straw Race. The Straw Race, although not a true local tradition, is rapidly becoming one. The route starts at the Waggon and Horses on the Hebden Bridge Road, and passes through Oxenhope and Leeming. The contestants have to race along this route in fancy dress, carrying a bale of straw. They also have to drink a pint of beer at each pub encountered en route (six altogether, if you include the club). The race is open to anyone, and, although it is invariably won by the athletes, many people simply enter it for fun, the fancy dress being the main attraction.
If you are ending the walk here at the end of Section 1, simply follow the road down the hill to Leeming and Oxenhope, where a train or bus may be caught back to Keighley. If like me though, you seek rather more challenge than this, then get that pint off, finish that game of 'bull ring' you're playing in the back room, and lets get moving. Section 2 awaits.
Jim Jarratt
Mytholmroyd. 1988