Chatter filters down through the trees from the terrace of Lumb Bank. This grand house was built at the beginning of the 19th century by Gamaliel Sutcliffe to look proudly down on his creations, the Lower and Upper Lumb mills. Their two chimneys periscope up through the swell of the winter tree canopy, but little … Continue reading Remains
The snow vanishes not a great deal less abruptly than it arrived. The emerging grass on the green has a sickly, light-starved pallor, and the line of the sledge run is matted and threadbare. Two molehills appear just beside its fastest stretch. What did those poor creatures make of the rumble and roar going on … Continue reading Heeding
A sudden, unexpected hour of downy flakes transfigures the landscape. The Horsehold beeches and Callis birches glimmer in the sun that swiftly follows, sun that lasts, almost unbroken, for a week, colouring the south-facing slopes green during the day, only to have its work undone nightly by fresh falls. The village green, with its two … Continue reading Intake
The rain is incessant, washing over the Pennines in band after band. At Mytholm, the black-tea Colden meets the milky-coffee Calder in a headlong, frothing rush, both far above their standard levels, putting the newly-repaired river wall just downstream through its first proper test. Old field drains in the high pastures are overwhelmed, spilling a … Continue reading Palimpsest
The Hebden Water whirls into the River Calder at the Black Pit, having dropped 1400 feet from the moor after an eight-mile journey through reservoir, ravine, wood and town. At the second dawn of the year, bright and clear after endless rain, a song thrush strikes up its first verses since last summer, and the … Continue reading Beginnings
The woods that mantle the northern side of the valley – Rawtonstall, Knott, Marsh, Naze, Cowbridge, Spring, Common Bank – are browning and bronzing. Distinct woodlands 150 years ago, the abandonment of the steep valley-side fields that separated them has created a continuous band of tree cover, and is probably the most significant landscape-scale change … Continue reading Echoes
Malham | We have been to a number of agricultural shows – Todmorden, Halifax, Bingley, Kilnsey, Otley – since our son was born, making as they do an ideal family day out. But of them all, Malham is our firm favourite and a fixture in the calendar. It has everything you want from a traditional … Continue reading Field Studies #12
The thirty-strong goldfinch charm launches from the snowy pom-poms of the creeping thistle seedheads, casting yet more glistening down into a breeze already thick with it. The charm chatters as it circles and silences as it settles back onto the bending plants. It is good to see such abundance. And it is good to stop … Continue reading Bride Stones
Haven | My Upper Calder Valley Farm Map is an ongoing project to track the loss of small farms in my patch of the Pennines. It maps the farms that have vanished or been abandoned to the elements (85 of the 552 total); those that have become dwellings only (409); and those relatively few (58) that … Continue reading Field Studies #11
We brought along a best friend of my son's on one of our walks over the summer. It made for a very different experience for the both of us. For him, the walk was essentially turned into a mobile version of the hours of play that they usually spend on our local green. For myself, … Continue reading Nest
