FOULRIDGE VERSUS BARLICK (CONTINUED)

[Stanley]

FOULRIDGE VERSUS BARLICK (CONTINUED)

Those of you who read the first part of the story of the 1580 Whitemoor map should have had time to recover from the gallop over the moor in search of the old boundaries. Those who missed it, get hold of a back number and read it because you missed a goodie. Remember, the original of the map and my paper on it is in the library.
Once I’d got my teeth into the map I found it was difficult to let go. Everywhere I looked I was learning new things about the moor and finding evidence on the ground I had overlooked for years. I was also getting plenty of exercise because the only way to get to the bottom of it was to walk!
One of the first things I did was to walk across Occupation Road or, as it is marked on the map, Lister Well Lane. A word here about the name commonly used in Barlick, ‘Occy’ or Occupation Road. I have seen the suggestion recently that this has something to do with the Roman Occupation of Britain. I have to say there is absolutely no evidence for this, on the contrary, the evidence points to a completely different derivation. You’ll find ‘Occupation’ roads and lanes all over the country and the name derives from the legal use of the word occupation as a modifier for any function or object that is for the use of a property owner. In other words, anything that enables the tenant or owner of a property to ‘occupy’ it. Lister Well Lane in its present form didn’t exist until the last enclosures were made on the moor in the early 19th century. It is an access road provided for the occupiers of the various enclosures on the moor. If all the land had been in one ownership there would be no need for a road as access could be gained by passing over land already owned. As soon as there is multiple tenancy, which was the case on the moor after enclosure, a means has to be provided for access without trespass. So, what we now call Lister Well Lane was laid out as an occupation road and eventually received a name, nothing to do with the Romans.
When you start up the lane the first thing you’ll see if you keep your eyes open is some ruins on the north side behind the house built by the Sagars who were big quarry owners. These are the remains of Upper Hall and up to now I know nothing about it. Incidentally, take a good look at the quality of the lintels and cills used in the Sagar house. They are the best stone available and almost certainly came from what the workers used to call the 'bottom end' at the quarry on the north side of Salterforth Lane. Jack Platt, who used to work in the quarry as a lad, told me that the stone from the bottom end was almost twice as hard as that up in the top quarry. When put on the saws, which were large steel saw blades running in a mixture of water and lead shot, you could saw a foot an hour when working the top stone but this dropped to less than six inches on the bottom stone. Incidentally, anyone who knew Jack would perhaps have noticed that he had the tops missing some of the fingers on his left hand. He told me that when he was at school they used to play in the quarry and one day he found a small piece of copper tube which was just the right size for slipping over a pencil stub so you could use it right down to the bitter end. He was walking down Salterforth Lane and as he went he picked out the ‘dirt’ in the bottom of the tube with a piece of wire when it exploded and blew off part of his fingers! You’ve guessed it, what he had found was a detonator which was used to initiate the black powder charges used in the quarry for blasting. The ‘dirt’ he was picking out was Fulminate, a very sensitive explosive! He said that the funny thing was that whenever he went for his PSV test when he worked for Wild Brothers on the buses the examiners never noticed that he had part of his hand missing.
I’ve done it again haven’t I, please excuse me for sliding off to the side when we are supposed to be doing serious work on the moor but I can’t resist these stories, if history isn’t about people it’s not worth bothering with.
Back to the moor. Lister Well Lane runs almost dead straight across the moor heading for Peel House on Gisburn Old Track. Take notice of the walls. They are roughly built because casual labour was used and are all freshly quarried stone. I suppose that most of you would be taught the same story at school as I was, that the walls were built using the stone that was lay about in the fields when they were first cultivated. This was probably true of the earliest enclosures on bottom land by the Celts and the Anglo Saxons but by the time the 19th century enclosures were being made there was no time for this, indeed the fields were intended for grazing in order to improve them and there was not enough loose stone to do the job. The land on the moor is very close to the rock and you don’t have to dig down far anywhere before you get to the top fragmented layers of rock which is ideal for wall-building. In addition, stone was never carried any further than necessary and always down hill. If you look along the course of the walls you’ll find small depressions every now and again. These are delphs or excavations that have healed over with time (derived from ‘delve’ meaning to dig). The workers simply dug down far enough to get into stone and used it to build the walls until it became obvious that it would be easier to dig another hole. The lane itself is at a lower level than the fields in many places and I often wonder whether they took stone for the walls out of the road bed as they levelled it, I haven’t any evidence for this but it would make sense. Even allowing for water damage over the years the level of the road bed seems to be well below the adjoining fields in places.
Every now and again as you pass over the moor you’ll come across small walled plantings of scrubby trees. The only reason I can think of for these is that they were created deliberately to give shelter for sheep and wildlife so as to encourage sporting use of the moor. The walls give plenty of shelter for the sheep and I can think of no other explanation.
About two thirds of the way across the moor, just before you come to a small planting on the low side of the lane, you reach Lister Well, to be more accurate you reach the course of the feeder from the spring further up the hill which is the source of the water running down Whinberry Clough into Whitemoor reservoir. Before the reservoir was built in 1840, this was the highest feeder for Black or County Brook and is marked on the 1580 map as ‘Ellshaye’. Until about six years ago there was a stone trough in the field on the low side of the road and this was what was always known in recent memory as Lister Well. A few years ago someone tried to steal the trough and I have been told that the farmer at Lower Sandiford moved it down to the farm for safety. I suppose this is a pity but I can see the sense in it, I don’t think we need go into too much of a decline because if you look at the 6” OS map surveyed around 1849 the well is marked as being on the top side of the road. There is still an old brick trough in that spot but the water has been diverted through a plastic pipe from the spring further up the slope and flows into an old cast iron bath. Not quite as picturesque as the ‘old’ well but exactly the same water, have a drink, it won’t do you any harm! Console yourself with the fact that if the maps are correct, the trough that was moved wasn’t the original well anyway.
When Lister Well Lane gets to the last field before Gisburn Old Track it hits a bog. Just before it gets there a gate on the top side leads onto an old track which goes off diagonally through a couple of old delphs and eventually hits Gisburn Track higher up the hill. I think this must have been the usual route even though the map says that the lane went straight forward towards Peel House. Someone has tipped a lot of ballast on the direct line recently and in time this will settle down into an adequate road and I suppose historians in 100 years will be convinced it is the original road bed.
Peel House on Gisburn Old Track has always interested me. When I first knew it fifty years ago Tommy Carter and his wife Sally lived there with their two daughters. Tommy seemed to make his living as a casual labourer and Sally, his wife, used to work for old Mother Hanson when she kept the Moorcock pub on the Gisburn road just over the hill. More about the Hansons later! The house was tiny with a pitifully small land-holding and I have often thought that it had all the hallmarks of a squatters house. In other words, a small dwelling built illegally by someone who had simply appropriated some land on the moor without going through any of the legalities. I don’t know what the ancient law was in this part of the country but in many other places squatting was a recognised way of acquiring a place to live. All you had to do was erect a chimney, build a rudimentary shelter around it and have a fire burning within a certain period of time and you acquired ‘squatter’s rights’. The local lord might fine you a small amount each year but would usually leave you alone because it was a handy way of allowing people to become responsible for their own shelter instead of becoming a liability on the local poor-rate payers who had to provide for the destitute by law.
If you walk down the Gisburn Track from Lister Well Lane, just below Peel House you’ll see a short lane setting off into the field to the right. It’s very wet even in a dry time but if you walk down to the end you come to the boundary wall between Whitemoor and Admergill. This is the ancient boundary that I described before which was fought over for 400 years by the Crown and the Church. Look uphill and you will see that it is marked by a deep ditch as far as the eye can see. Going downhill the ditch isn’t so obvious but it is still there all the way to Blacko Tower. Maurice Horsfield, whose family have farmed on the moor for over 100 years, tells me that from Peel House down, the Black Dyke takes all the water off the west side of the moor. He thinks it is diverted now at Blacko Hill Side and runs down into Beverley Road but I have an idea that at one time all the water went straight down to what we now know as the Cross Gaits pub. The pub has the date 1717 over the door which looks about right to me from the style of build. However, on the 1580 map it is marked as Black Dyke Mill. [When John Clayton and I revised the interpretation of the map it became obvious that the ‘mill’ marked on the map was almost certainly at the farm now known as Blacko Hill Side.] This is interesting enough but I’ll tell you what I think is even more fascinating.
Go up to Higher Sandiford and look back along the line of the Black Dyke. Ask yourself how water ever managed to cut out such an even dyke across the hillside, it couldn’t. I think that what we are looking at is an ancient and very well constructed boundary defence. It has gradually filled in over the years and become a gentle declivity and it wouldn’t have had a wall at the top but a wooden palisade if I’m right. This boundary is far older than the Norman Conquest and it makes sense as a defence against marauders from the west and north. Again, more work needed but a nice romantic theory to start with. Nowt wrong with a bit of romance!