Aftermath

With the jet stream stubbornly stuck to the south, low pressure systems continue blustering the birch, sprinkling the brown sugar of their seeds on the paths, and whirling the downy willowherb seeds across the green. The neighbourhood children are clad in waterproofs and wellies against the near-incessant drizzle, making the best of the wet woods, from where a yaffling green woodpecker, absent all spring and summer so far, has made a late but welcome appearance. Blackberries on the railway embankments, bilberries in the Wainsgate quarries and mulberries on the tree outside the former Neptune Hotel beside the canal all make efficient use of the sparse sun, ripening quickly in this strangely accelerated summer.

Ann’s sheep have arrived at High Hirst from Old Chamber, 12 ewes to graze the green re-growth, known as the aftermath, in the areas of the meadow that were scythed over the previous week, as well as the uncut areas, known as foggage. Sadly, because of a small number of incidents involving dogs being off lead, the gates are temporarily locked until the sheep return to their farm, diverting some regular walkers along the nearby sunken Law Lane. Volunteers begin a Sheep Watch rota, arriving before 10.00am each morning to count the flock, check all are healthy and report any signs of illness to Ann, and to herd them into the upper part of the meadow, making sure its coarser, less palatable grasses are grazed over the next six weeks. This was once a distinct field separated from the meadow by a derelict wall, which Dave is now gradually rebuilding, evidently managed in a different way, accounting for its contrasting ecology. 

On the opposite side of Ibbot Royd Clough, small copper butterflies feed on common knapweed, and a billowing ash dips its roots in the rush of water emerging from Old Town Reservoir’s overflow pipe. This was an alternative route to the main nine-inch pipe that funnelled water to the power house beside the clough stream, generating electricity for the mill’s lighting. It takes a different route under the fields, discharging into a channel now choked with balsam, the water – gathered from Brigg Well Head and the Keelam Gutter and mile-and-a-half distant Cousin’s Spring high on the moor – whisking their seeds, exploding in the strong morning sun, down into the clough. Yellow spires of goldenrod line the lane to Clubhouses, a terrace of six cottages built as an investment by a local burial club to pay for the interment of its members, the top floor of the whole terrace once connected for collective handloom weaving.

Above the next clough north, Kitling Clough, a grasshopper chafes from beside the squat cap of a shaft for the Widdop–Halifax conduit, rounding the hill on its 860-foot contour after its 300-foot ascent out of Crimsworth Dean and preparing for its near-mile-and-a-half burrow under Wadsworth Moor. Two farms once tended the fields it passes under from Lower Crimsworth. During the Second World War, the 15 acres of the western farm were a mixture of pasture, meadow, potatoes, roots and oats, while the eight acres of the eastern were under the stewardship of Ellis Crabtree from Wilcroft Farm and all put to pasture, supporting eight cattle, five pigs, 156 fowls, 36 ducks and 20 turkeys. Today, a fine young woodland is thriving on these latter acres. 

A juvenile buzzard mews over the Smeekin Hill War Memorial and a roe deer stops to listen and watch it settle in a birch atop the escarpment of The Eaves. Shadow and sun moves over the moors, and water thunders within the clough between old cobbled lanes sinking ever further under each autumn’s leaves.