Last week I finished with the question of what our old Barlickers were going to do about the cultural change that had crept up on them. I write these articles as the research progresses and every now and again I have to give myself a reality check to make sure my ducks are still in a row. A couple of things have occurred to me which may have a bearing on our answer.
Do you remember me saying that I believed we were of the Setantii tribe under the overall control of the Brigantes? I've dug a bit further and would like to modify that slightly. I've always been fascinated by the Black Dyke that runs parallel to the Old Gisburn Track and believe it is a major boundary ditch. I've also been looking again at what we know of the timetable of the expansion of Northumbria which by about 500 extended right across to the Isles of Anglesey and Man. It occurs to me that in the early part of the period the Black Dyke could have been the boundary between the Brigantes and the Lancashire tribes which included the Setantii. If this is the case the area we now call Barnoldswick could have been a frontier region and as such would have greater status and have been of interest to the greater entity of the Brigantes and eventually the king of Northumbria. The possibility I want to raise is that we were not necessarily a backwater.
We have to range widely if we are to get a good idea of the mindset of the inhabitants and one thing I have raised frequently is that we shouldn't underestimate their intelligence and capacity for quite sophisticated logic and assessment of the possibilities. I remembered the Antytikythera Mechanism last night. If you haven't come across it before, look it up. It's an incredibly complicated artefact using sophisticated mathematics and metal working skills including gear trains that is believed to have been constructed in Syracuse around 200BC. It has been described as the first computer and allowed the user to forecast astronomical events. There is no reason to think that the brain capacity of the makers of the mechanism and our old Barlickers was very different. It was knowledge and method that varied. We should bear this in mind when we are assessing the ability of our forbears to decide what to do about Christianity.
There was of course another factor, in our search for the Druids we identified the leader of the tribe as the fount of justice and religious belief. It is almost certain that any change in Barlick was triggered by what happened in the royal court and we are reasonably certain that Edwin, King of Northumbria converted in 627 as part of the Augustine Conversion which started in 597 in Kent. Next week I want to look more closely at how this happened and what conclusions we can reasonably draw about Barlick.
My friend Michael Wright with the Antikythera replica he made. He was formerly Keeper of Steam at the Science Museum, South Kensington.
