FOULRIDGE VERSUS BARLICK, THIRD ROUND!

[Stanley]

FOULRIDGE VERSUS BARLICK, THIRD ROUND!

Persistent readers will know that this is the third section of our look at the 1580 map of Whitemoor, a copy of which is held in the library together with my translation of the notations. If you’ve missed the first two parts, scour the town for back numbers! This week I want to look at the boundary of the earliest improvements starting at Barlick and working along what we now know as Higher Lane, the old road from Barlick to Barrowford via Standing Stone Gate.
Starting in Barlick there are three ‘laynes’ marked on the map. As near as Doreen Crowther and I can make out the first two are called ‘Barnoldswick Layne’ and the third is called Salterforth Lane. I think the nearest one to Barlick is probably what we now know as Manchester Road. On older maps of the town it is called Barnoldswick Lane and originally was a branch off the main route into the town, what we now call Gillians Lane. Bear in mind that the centre of the town at that time was Town Head.
In passing, think about the name ‘Gillians’, there was an old English name ‘Gylla’ and it occurs to me that Bernulf wasn’t the only early inhabitant of the town, there could have been the family of Gylla and it could be the root of Gillians. The key thing to remember is that all the ancient names became corrupted over time and that there was always a good reason for the original form. We don’t question Gillians because it is a forename that we are familiar with but I have seen it spelt ‘Gillions’ and ‘Gillons’ so it is certain that it has been corrupted over time and is a very ancient name. Just think, if he had been more important than Bernulf we could be living in Gillonswick!
The next lane looks to me as though it might be Hodge Lane which strikes off Higher Lane at Upper Hill towards the valley bottom at Park. If you walk this it seems as though it might originally have gone right through into the valley. Salterforth Lane up through the quarries has managed to keep the same name for at least 450 years, this might be some sort of a record!
Higher Lane itself is a very ancient road. I think it is far older than the improvements because of the connections it makes and some of the features we will find as we travel along it. It seems to me that it could have been one of the most important roads in the district long before the 16th century. It is the only direct route from the Barrowford/Bradley area out to the higher Ribble Valley that runs to the East of Whitemoor which would have been a considerable obstacle in older times. It picks up connections from Earby, Salterforth and Foulridge and must have carried quite a lot of traffic. In 1580 it was used as the top boundary for the early improvements and everything above it as far as Standing Stone Gate was the Waste.
This might be a good place to flag up some of the characteristics of these early roads. The ones that are of interest to us at the moment are the mediaeval roads, the ones in use from the end of the Roman Occupation up to the present day. There were of course trade routes from the earliest times. The Bronze Age track across the Weets which was the precursor of Forty Steps, Blue Pot Lane and the far end of Long Ing Lane in Barlick is a good example. Next we have the Romans who built roads like the one from Ilkley through to Ribchester which cuts straight through Barlick, we know it as Greenberfield Lane and Brogden Lane. It’s important to realise that the Roman roads cut across the old routes because they were built for troop movements between military forts not as trade routes. Higher Lane has all the hallmarks of a route that has been in constant use for well over 2,000 years, it keeps to the contours, avoids the high moor and bad weather and the low ground and bogs. It has high banks on both sides in places and if you look carefully at them you will see that some parts are built with large rounded stones sunk in the bank. These are the oldest stone walls you will find in the area and are easily distinguished from walls built with new stone like those around the enclosures on the moor. The rule is that the larger and more rounded the stones are, the older the wall.
Another good marker for the old roads is the number of Holly trees on the banks. I have never been able to understand this but if you were to plot all the Holly trees on the map you would find that the oldest roads are marked by them. (Later on I found the reason for the Holly…)
Higher Lane is obviously mediaeval as far as Wood End Farm just before Whitemoor Reservoir where it opens out and changes character. This is because in 1840 when the Leeds and Liverpool Canal Company built the reservoir they ripped the landscape to bits and re-aligned the road. At Standing Stone gate there is a cross-roads, the road to the left descends to Foulridge, the road in front used to go down to Slipper Hill but now peters out in the fields and the one to the right goes on to Pasture Head and Barrowford. Before we go further along have a look at Standing Stone Gate Farm. I think we can date this exactly because in the reservoir behind the farm there are some ruins that are only visible when the water is very low. It looks as though the canal company demolished the original farm and built the new one in 1840, it certainly looks about that date.
When I was looking at the 1914 6” OS map of the area I saw that all the boundaries coincide along the line marked on the 1580 map as the boundary of Whitemoor so I went poking about in the field behind Staniston Bungalow. The ‘standing stone’ that the farm is named after is still there and there is a small section of abandoned mediaeval road on what looks like the original alignment. There are two stones, one is a big square heavily worn stone and the other is a lighter upright stone. The square stone looks very old indeed. If you’re expecting me to put an age on the boundary marker, forget it, I haven’t the faintest idea. All I can say is that it’s certainly more than 500 years old and probably dates from before the Conquest. I can’t tell you how pleased I was when I found these remains, how many people have passed these way markers over the years, if stones could talk they could certainly tell a story.
At Pasture Head the 1580 boundary deviates from the line mentioned in the charter of 1147. [I later found that I was mistaken but that’s how it goes, you have to modify conclusions as the information comes in.] From the details of the perambulation it would appear that Henry de Lacy crossed directly to Blacko Hill higher up the moor. The 1580 line follows the line of the old Gisburn road and Slipper Hill Clough. [Oh no it didn’t, I later found it followed Henry’s route.] Again, when we look at the 1147 line, we are looking at a boundary which has survived to the present day. Henry’s line is the same as the modern boundary of Barnoldswick and used to be the county boundary as well. The 1580 boundary makes sense because it’s the obvious line down to what would have been a ford at the top of Slipper Hill. There was evidently another boundary marker at this point, it is marked on the map as ‘The stone at Slipper Hill’. I haven’t been able to find it. [John found it later in the ditch at Pasture Head.]
As all of us know who use this road, at this point it takes a series of bends before straightening out again on the run down to what is now the Cross Gaits pub. The question that comes to my mind is why are these bends there? There is no topographical reason for them and even in those days, people tended to take the most direct line between two points and there is nothing on the ground which would have stopped this. There can only be one reason, there must have been an existing boundary here that is at least as old as the road. Since the route is at least a thousand years old, it looks as though there may have been a very ancient settlement here.
Hollin Hall occupies the boundary now but looks as though it is a relatively recent building. There might be a clue just as you go round the third bend, where the road widens out, there is a mound on the right and a piece of mediaeval wall just beyond it. There is a watercourse running down off the waste alongside the mound and this has all the hallmarks of an ancient boundary, water was an obvious marker to use. Even more interesting, if you look at the mediaeval wall it has demolition stone in it, you can identify this because there are worked edges and details, something you will not find in virgin walling stone. This doesn’t look recent and could indicate that at the time the wall was built there was a ruined stone building somewhere very close by. If it was as early as the evidence suggests, it must have been an important building because all common houses until the 16th century were timber construction.
This little puzzle is a good example of how the observant historian has to work. You look at the evidence on the ground and construct a hypothesis that fits the facts as you see them. It’s almost certain that further evidence will modify your original theory but this should never stop you from having a stab at it. Discovery has to start somewhere and just because the answer changes over time due to more knowledge doesn’t mean that the original theory was wrong, it wasn’t, it was the start of a process.
The 1580 map raises another question at this point because this spot is marked as ‘the thorn at Haynslack’. There is another notation half way to the site of Cross Gaits which repeats the name. Haynslack is yet another lost name, ‘slack’ means a watercourse and could refer to the one that runs alongside the bank at Hollins. ‘Hayn’ is slightly more obscure, it usually means ‘hay’ but I’m not too happy with that meaning here. I think I’ll leave this on one side for the time being but at the same time note that if you walk back into the fields you come to a very famous site, Malkin Tower of Lancashire Witch fame. I haven’t walked this site and all I know of it, apart from the Demdyke connection, is that it was the home of a branch of the Towneley family for several generations. We know this because Doreen Crowther picked this out of a transcription of the Halmote Court Rolls for the Honour of Clitheroe which recorded land transactions in the area. (This is a fascinating source of information, go seek them out!) [John and I later found that Haynslack was almost certainly the gully below Green Bank Farm and beyond Pasture Head that Abel Taylor who farmed the land used to call Malkin Hole, there’s even a solitary thorn tree at the head of it!]
The last notation on this part of the map is one I have noted earlier. The site of Cross gaits is marked as Black Dyke Mill. It is certainly on the end of the line of the Black Dyke. According to Maurice Horsfield a lot of water runs down that drain. Although diverted into Beverley Road now it could have all been channelled to a mill and would have been sufficient to drive it. I have done a lot of research into water power in the area and have never come across a reference to Black Dyke but this doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. We have to trust our sources until we find them in error, the 1580 map is, as far as I can tell, remarkably accurate and so we should accept that in 1580 there was a mill on the site. [As noted previously, John and I later put this mill on the site of what is now Blacko Hill Side Farm which is on the line of the perambulation of 1147.] That’s enough puzzles for this week. In our next look at the map I’ll go a bit further into water power.

19th April, 2000