Tag: Stone

Marking Time
Archaeology · Bench Marks · Mason's Marks · Where / When

Marking Time

Tim Campbell-Green2 Comments

What ho, wonderful, and slightly odd, folk of the blog reading sort. I hope you are all as well as can be expected, and as we move into autumn, you get out an about as much as you can – always keeping an eye open for pottery and other interesting things.

Which sort of leads me to today’s offering. It’s a mixture, to be honest, some updates, some new stuff, but all interesting. I have said before that I always have multiple half-written articles on the go, all moving at different speeds – but for one reason or another, none leapt out at me asking to be finished. So here we are… Marking Time!

I’ve always been obsessed with the idea of humans marking their surroundings, and the notions of permanence, even immortality, that accompany this; from palaeolithic cave art to bronze age cup and ring markings, to 17th century building datestones, to Victorian carved graffiti, to modern tags – and I’m looking here at you, Boof, whose name is everywhere around Glossop at the moment – it all amounts to broadly the same thing: marking time.

Datestones update: As always, I am on the lookout for more datestones of a pre Victorian date (pre-1837). I recently bagged this:

Herod Farm, Whitley Nab

Wonderful – ‘I.M. 1703’ – to the point, although I have no idea who I (or more likely J) M is. I have a whole article about Herod Farm and the surrounding area in progress, but wanted to share the datestone with you.

*UPDATE*

The always knowledgeable Roger Hargreaves emailed me a comment he tried to post on the site – technical issues prevented it, but here it is:

The “JM” on the Herod Farm datestone will be John Morton, who in 1692 succeeded his father, also John, as leaseholder of the adjacent Lees Hall.  It’s likely that he then demolished the mediaeval hall which had been the main farming base of the Talbots and before them Basingwerk Abbey as Lords of the Manor.  At the rear of Herod Farm is an elaborate window which has clearly come from somewhere else and is likely to be surviving fabric from the demolished hall, giving some idea of what it must have been like.

So there we have it – John Morton, and a teaser about the Lees Hall – a fascinating place, with a long history, and possibly a moat! Well worth an article and more. Thanks Roger, your input is always much appreciated.

Update to the Gatepost article: We recently bought a campervan, a mobile home with beds and a stove, and all that. It’s marvellous, and is unmissably yellow, or more truthfully YELLOW! (give a shout and wave if you see it around). Our first adventure camping was to Peak Forest, near Buxton, and coming home we decided to take an odd route for the sake of exploration – a vehicular Wander, if you will. Coming through Wheston, south-east of Chapel-en-le-Frith, we came across lots of gateposts, modern and made of concrete, but each marked with initials and dates:

I have no idea who CTH is – presumably the farmer who is replacing gateposts – but I salute your attention to detail – initials and date – and respect your devotion to tradition; earlier, 19th century, examples of dated gateposts can be found here. It might be concrete, but the idea is exactly the same, and I want to buy you, CTH, a glass of the stuff that cheers. Wonderful.

Next we have things seen on pavements… Glossop seems to have inherited the whole street paving slabs second-hand from somewhere. I seem to remember a whole hoo-ha about these stones, and others, occurring maybe 20 years ago – their origin and how much was paid for them… or something. Whatever, but what is certain is that they have some interesting markings on them, and all of these were seen between Costa Coffee and the Norfolk Arms – almost certainly more await discovery, so look down people:

A simple cross, formed of two chisel strokes.
‘1 – 7’ with the ‘1’ formed apparently by three chisel strokes, the ‘seven ‘7’ by three down and two across. No idea of the meaning.
A cross, and a hole filled with a lead plug. It’s difficult to imagine what this large flat stone would need a hole with a lead fixing for – it’s not like it was used for a gatepost or similar. I genuinely cant imagine what or why!

Finally we have this beauty:

Where to start?

So, we have a name in the bottom left, clumsily written – ‘Joseph’ something or other… D? B? Can anyone make out this? The second letter could be an ‘E’. Possibly. But then we have what might be a landscape – the top right looks like a fat sun, drawn by a child, to me. And in the centre, at the bottom, possibly a house (I think I can see the roof and walls, with perhaps a person in it). This is really an enigma – a name, and a piece of art, undatable, and probably from a place far from Glossop… but imagine if we could put a person to it. And all this, lying under our feet.

Other bits and pieces under our feet include markings on kerbs:

A simple ‘T’, probably referring to Telephone, and marking where the cable came into a property.

This is also sometimes marked by ‘GPO’ on kerbs, standing for General Post Office who were originally (from 1880’s until 1981) responsible for telephone communications. I once found an example on a kerb on Howard Street, but had not been able to find it since, until I came back from a blood test at the clinic there, and this was picked out of the dark by street lights:

Wonderfully carved, this was, I assume, where the telephones for the train station entered the buildings.
Another ‘T’, but this one in Old Glossop seems to have an errant exclamation mark after it!
Another slightly odd kerbside marking – an ‘E’, which is believe marks the place where electricity cables enter a property. It is quite common, although in this case it is accompanied by an ‘S’ and a ‘T’, the meaning of which I have no idea.

I also saw this on Princess Street – another marker showing where electricity enters a property – this is also quite a commonly found one.

A no frills, very clear and functional, EL!

Here’s another mark that is commonly seen: a simple arrow, but not like the Ordnance Survey benchmark arrow, this is normally crudely carved, thin, and without the horizontal line above it… thus:

Literally an arrow, pointing.

This is another of those that points to a service – gas, possibly, or electricity – entering a building, although I truthfully don’t know… any help would be welcome.

However, here is a Benchmark, newly found by me, under the railway bridge on Arundel Street, and which marks 501ft 8″ above sea level:

Worn, and almost camouflaged, there it is.

Also on the bridge are these single holes, often found in the upper part of the stone:

And here…

These small, shallow, holes were made in order to use a pincer, or external, Lewis and frame in order to move the blocks. A genius invention, it’s a simple iron tool that, via a chain, uses the weight of the block itself to hold it fast whilst it is moved, and enables even a single person to shift a huge piece of stone. But it requires a shallow hole in order to provide a point that gives a good grip. I love these, as they allow us to view how the bridge was built.

Another example of us viewing the method by which these wonderful Victorian structures were built is this:

Very characteristic.

Often occurring in pairs, these are drill marks made by quarrymen, into the rock face, which allow them to insert a splitter to pry away the stone from the quarry face. Once seen, they are very recognisable, and are the scars that show how, with a little physics and a lot of brute force, rock can be shifted.

Howard Street, which meets the Arundel Street bridge, has a few, sporadic, mason’s marks along the stretch of railway walling here:

A cross.
A ‘T’.

Low key, and not very common, these nonetheless represent the ‘signatures‘ of the men who shaped these stones. The cross is a common mark carved on stones – it is literally two strokes with a chisel – so it cannot be definitively linked to those masons who built Dinting Arches, but you never know.

Other mason’s marks can be found around…

A ‘B’, upended.

This is found on a lump of masonry from Wood’s Mill, and now stands where Wood’s Mill once stood, now Glossop Brook View, and by the houses there. Post-1842 in date, although possibly early, the mark was hidden until the mill was demolished – the rough dressing of the block indicates that it was never meant to be seen. I wonder who ‘B’ was.

Another, difficult to see.

This last one is on the gatepost of the Crown Inn, Victoria Street (although the gates are on Hollincross Lane); very faint – and difficult to photograph – they are in the angular shape of a fish.

I also spotted this on Howard Street:

February 2022.

A dated piece of cement. This is either dated proof of work done – a modern form of mason’s mark – or possibly a dated repair that allows Network Rail to observe cracks forming and assess integrity. Either way, it’s kind of cool!

Finally, some bits of carved graffiti, a particular favourite of mine.

A single ‘J’ on the wall of Heath Barn, Heath.
‘S’ ‘H’ on the wall of Glossop Church.
Also on the north wall of Glossop churchyard, on Church Street – initials – R C J W P. The arrangement is odd, and I wonder if they were 4 members of a single family, with the surname ‘J’. That could surely be traced if it was the case!
‘W’ ‘A’ (photo from Suze Hill)
‘W’ ‘G’ (photo from Suze Hill)

These last two were from the bridge over the Longdendale Trail on Padfield Main Road. The whole bridge has a lot of graffiti carved on it, including this wonderful example:

Old and the new. I love this photograph, and am very proud of it!

Here we have Victorian carved graffiti – ‘J.H’, possibly, along with some more letters, undecipherable under the frost, over an early incarnation of the now famous (infamous) BOOF graffiti tag made with a spraycan. I find it interesting that we would condemn one, but praise the other as historical and interesting. When does vandalism become history and worthy of study? A bigger discussion, and one I find fascinating (akin to when does something become archaeology?). I know graffiti, as in modern graffiti – put it down to a misspent youth and a love (despite appearances to the contrary) of Hip Hop – and I have followed BOOF’s career with a certain interest.

So here I shall leave it. Making marks, and marking time – it’s all about trying to achieve immortality, to leave your mark long after you are gone, and making people remember you, even if they don’t know who you are. I think that’s all any of us, myself included, can hope for. There are so many examples of this phenomena in the Glossop area, and I have an idea to produce a book looking at precisely this sort of thing – watch this space.

Talking of books, please check out Where/When Number 7 – Forts and Crosses: A Mellor Wander.

This one is a truly awesome Wander around Mellor – just over yonder! It has medieval field systems and farms, Victorian noise, an Iron Age hill fort, medieval crosses, cracking views, a terrifying viaduct, bench marks, a trig point, wonderful gateposts, and it starts and finishes at a pub… what’s not to love? Here’s the cover to tempt you.

Available from the shop, link above, or from Dark Peak Books and Gifts, High Street West, Glossop. Or, you know, just track me down and throw money at me.

Talking of which… if you enjoyed this, and fancy buying me a glass of the stuff that cheers, then please do so via this link to my Ko-Fi page. I do what I do here because I love doing it, and I feel it’s important we explore our shared heritage… but I’ll never say no to a pint in thanks!

So much more news to share, and so many things planned. Watch this space, wonderful people, as big things are coming.

But on a serious level, how are you doing? Genuine question. Personally, I’m a little down at the mo… the devastating loss of my brother (cheers Stephen, I’ll miss you), coupled with a dose of Covid, and the general malaise that accompanies the move from summer into autumn and winter, has meant a lull in the festivities here at CG Towers. Still, the wheel turns, the seasons they change, and life will inevitably continue, and on we go. But as I always say, look after yourselves and each other, you really are important, and too often we say “I’m aright” when we actually mean “I’m not alright, please help” – it’s ok to not be ok.

So then, more coming, but until next time, I remain.

Your humble servant,

TCG

Whitfield Green Wondering
Archaeology · Pottery · Whitfield

Whitfield Green Wondering

Tim Campbell-Green1 Comment

What ho! Fancy meeting you all here…

Happy summer everyone! I hope the season finds you in good form… or at least not in actively terrible form. Having recently celebrated a somewhat significant birthday with a trip to Naples area – Pompeii and Herculaneum included – I returned exhausted, and filled to the gunwales with pizza, wonderful wine, and archaeology, which pretty much sums up my life, to be fair. I can heartily recommend such a trip, although it was a tad expensive, and I can now only just about afford to camp in my own garden!

Whilst I was there, I actually wrote a blog post about a Wander to the beach I made, and that I thought you might enjoy; this was meant to be it. But I haven’t finished it yet, obviously, and so we have to remain close to home today. I mean, it’s not quite as glamorous as Pompeii or the Bay of Naples, but Whitfield is just as interesting. Kind of.

Anyway, I’ve often wondered about this place – Whitfield Green – a farm that is marked on older maps, but which is clearly no longer there.

For the sake of orientation, Whitfield Green is in green, The Beehive is just off the map, but indicated by the top arrow, and Derbyshire Level is indicated by the other arrow.

I mean, the building is clearly old, and is clearly marked Whitfield Green, but I can find absolutely no information out about the place. So I went exploring…

Firstly, the roads. The whole area around Derbyshire Level and Lean Town has been monkeyed with following the Whitfield Enclosure of 1813, so it is sometimes difficult to see exactly what went where before that point. Map work and physical walking helps, and it seems the road originally went along the lines of the red line in the map below – it continuing straight at Lane Ends Farm, instead of kinking left as it does now, and continues to Whitfield Green, thus:

You can see a hollow where the field edge is now, and it is visible on LIDAR.

The site of Whitfield Green is indicated by the red arrow, and the hollow trackway – now a hedge and fence – is indicated by the green arrow.

From here (with numerous branches, and marked in red below), this track would go under Lean Town, and then onto Gnat Hole, and then to Chunal – unbelievably, it was once the main route from Glossop and Whitfield to the south – Buxton, Chapel en le Frith, etc.! However, when the Enclosures happened, one of the stipulations in the act of parliament was the building of wide solid roads – hence we have Derbyshire Level, which, whilst incorporating numerous existing routes, was a totally new road – no wonder when you look at state of the roads at that point. In fact, so bad were the roads that Glossop historian Ralph Bernard Robinson, writing in 1863, noted that

“Glossop, till a comparatively recent period, was a place difficult of approach, and, in some circumstances almost impassable, owing to the nature of the roads. They seem to have no roads but such as the Romans, ages before, had made for them.”

This paints a very different picture of this area of Whitfield, and makes it seem that Whitfield Green was more than simply a farm in the middle of nowhere. I wonder.

So it is at this point, with the radical shake up of the roads that followed the Enclosure Act, that many of the trackways with which I am obsessed become obsolete, and so it is with the red trackway, the access track to Whitfield Green – it simple ceases to be needed as the new road that goes down to Lean Town was made, and a new access track came off it. This is the footpath you now walk down in order to get to where Whitfield Green once stood (marked in green in the map above). Kidd Road was once known as Whitfield Green Road, and actually, I suspect that it once went across the field and that this ‘new’ access path is in fact the old route preserved, once the whole area had been monkeyed with (marked in blue, above).

Indeed, Derbyshire Level, and the spur around Moorfield, combined with the Turnpike Road (Charlestown Road) meant that there were now new solid roads along which to travel, and thus the old muddy route below Lean Town and through Gnat Hole was no longer used, and the whole became footpaths. It also meant that new farms could be built, and it is at this point that I think Whitfield Green Farm was built, just to the north of Whitfield Green (circled in yellow above). It is still there, but is very difficult to see without being arrested for “acting suspiciously near an innocent person’s house”… again. It has a stone roof (so making pre-1850ish), but there is nothing that points to it being older that the first half of the 19th century, and I suspect that once the new Lean Town road was made in 1820, someone took the opportunity to build a new farm there.

We know Whitfield Green was there in the 1920’s, but no longer appears on maps from the 1960’s onwards, so presumably it was demolished between those dates. A pity, but there you go, such is the nature of progress. Thus, the timeline seems to be:

1720 (ish – maybe before, maybe after) – Whitfield Green built on existing track (in red), and also accessed via another track (Kidd Road, in blue)

1806 – Lean Town built on the same (red) trackway

1810-13 – Whitfield Enclosure Act, and thus…

1820 – New roads made, including Lean Town road, and access to Whitfield Green comes from that now (albeit via an existing track).

1825 (ish) – Whitfield Green Farm (the new one) built (in yellow)

1950 (ish) – Whitfield Green demolished

That seems to tally with what we know, but if you think differently, let me know – click the ‘contact’ button at the top, or leave a comment… I’m always happy to hear from you.

So what did I find when I went to look at where Whitfield Green once stood, I hear you ask. Well, I’m glad you asked, because I found:

A stone stile. Lots of the paths around here have these, presumably to prevent anything other than foot traffic from using them. I wonder if they were put in when the newer – and toll paying – roads were created in order to stop packhorse trains using them. There are different types too, and I wonder if they were put in at different times.
Here’s where the Whitfield Green once stood, against this hedge line. Nowt there now.

However, look closer and…

Shaped stones in-situ. These have not been moved into this position, this is where they were, and are the remains of the farmhouse… although what part is unclear.
And here is a stone-flagged floor. I wonder who – apart from the current farmer and their cows – stood on these last? They have to have been internal, so a part of the farmhouse proper, rather than the yard outside. Hmmm…
More stonework; in the world of archaeology, 3 stones in a row make a wall, so…
There’s also a huge pile of stone nearby, and whilst not a large farm’s worth of walling, I assume most of the rubble would have been re-used as drystone walling.
And a lot of it has been shaped, and rather than it being the product of a removed drystone wall… we are looking at the remains of a farmhouse.

It was the flagged floor that really brought it home that this was actually once a house; I love that moment when archaeology meets actual lived life; spooky, yet intimate, an odd feeling. It would be great to have a proper scrape around and uncover more of whatever remains.

And pray what, if anything, did you find there, you strange, pottery obsessed, person, you? Well, I’m glad you asked that, too:

The expected ‘noise’ of Victorian pottery – Blue and White Transfer Printed, mainly (with some black printed), as well as one sherd of ‘Flow Blue’, and a possible sherd of Shell Edged.
Left is a wonderful bird; Victorian, and not at all rare, but the phoenix-like image is lovely. Right is an odd one – moulded, so the decoration in 3d, it is highlighted in both underglaze (blue) and over glaze (green). Again, not rare, but not commonly encountered… and nice.
Clay pipes… the cigarette butt of the Victorian period! I love them, but honestly… Stems and a bit of a bowl, nothing particularly interesting, although…
…the bowl has burn marks on the inside, evidence of the last drag!
Left – 3 sherds of Industrial Slipware (1800-1900) – almost certainly bowls; right is a sherd of a Victorian ‘Brown Betty‘ teapot, still made if you feel the need (I do!).
Top from a Victorian blacking bottle.

So far, so Victorian. However, against this background there were several sherds of older pottery lying around:

Early 18th century Staffordshire Slipware platter – roughly 1700-1740. The underside shows a slight red slip, and a line made in the clay during manufacture, possibly the result of moving the leather hard pot – pre-fired – over a rough surface.

Then there is this lovely thing, and I am aware that ‘lovely’ is an entirely subjective concept.

Lovely… honestly!

It’s the wide strap handle to a large cooking pot – this sort of thing:

Taken from here

The fabric is unusual, though – very hard, with a purple colour, and a black and white mixture of inclusions – it’s a sort of Midland Purpleware, almost Cistercian Ware, and not at all like the normal Black Glazed stuff that you associate with Pancheons. Lovely stuff.

Also, there is the brown stoneware. Some Victorian Derbyshire Stoneware, but also early 18th century Nottingham Stoneware:

The two handle fragments at the top probably come from a tankard, again early-mid 18th century, and the bottom left bit I think comes from a bottle. The sherd in the centre come from a strange shaped lid… I think. It’s odd.

And finally, I found this:

A ‘Tombac’ button; Tombac is an alloy that has a high copper content (80-95%) mixed with zinc.

Shiny (though sadly scratched), it still has the silver looking surface – which it was designed to do – and is a lovely thing to hold… that personal touch, again (you can see a better preserved example here). The back shows signs of it breaking down (the green bloom of copper), but also the reddish iron rust of where the loop that once held it in place was. This button is nothing special as such, it is plain, and of relatively poor quality, but it is dateable as Tombac plain buttons such as these were used from mid-18th century onwards (stopping perhaps late 19th). I love this thing… so intimate. Did it belong to someone who lived on the farm? Perhaps.

So there we have it… the farm. As to what it looked like – well I have found no photographs, but I would suggest it looks like this farmhouse on Hague Street; it’s about the right age, and has a similar layout/shape – although Whitfield Green is larger – and is also divided into two dwellings. Interestingly, they both face south-west. I hadn’t noticed before putting them on the page, but it makes sense as it maximises sunlight, and thus light in general.

Left is the Hague Road farmhouse, right is Whitfield Green, from the 1:500 town map, and stolen shamelessly from the NLS website.

There is no information in any of the usual books, and there are only a few references to it online. According to the ever wonderful and always useful GJH website, a Robert Wood, born in 1713, is described as being of Whitfield Green, as indeed is his son. So we know that by 1740 or so? the farm is there, and it suggests that the name of the farm is simply Whitfield Green, and that the later building took the name Whitfield Green Farm to distinguish it. There are later references, but this seems to be the earliest, and thus we have the name of someone who may have walked on those flags, and who may even have worn the button.

Well, that’s your lot for this month. I’ll try and get round to posting another one if I can – more pottery, obviously (ignoring the groans).

**EDIT**

I went back to the site today, blackberry picking with Family TCG, and I found this lovely little sherd of Manganese Mottled Ware:

It was just lying on the surface of the track… a gift if you will.

Its from a cup or tankard, and dates to the last part of the 17th century or early 18th, so within the range of our building. Or perhaps we should revise the date back a bit? Certainly the late 17th century saw a lot of building work in the Glossop area, as a glance at the Datestone post will show you. Again, a little excavation (or a photograph!) would show us a bit more.

In other news, the new Where/When will be out soon – more info when it happens, but this one is a truly awesome Wander around Mellor – just over yonder! It has medieval field systems and farms, Victorian noise, Iron Age hill fort, medieval crosses, cracking views, a terrifying viaduct, bench marks, a trig point, wonderful gateposts, and it starts and finishes at a pub… what’s not to love? Here’s the cover to tempt you.

Righty ho, I’m off. I have housework to do before I’m allowed a glass of the stuff that cheers – Mrs CG’s rules, which I can’t help feel is unfair… into every life a drop of rain must fall, and all that.

More soon, I promise, but until then, look after yourselves and each other. I remain,

Your humble servant,

TCG

Gateposts
Archaeology · Bench Marks · Graffiti · Standing Stones

Gateposts

Tim Campbell-GreenLeave a comment

What ho, lovely people of the blog world. I hope you are all well as we hurtle headlong into summer, each of us fearing what terrible weather will mar an otherwise splendid season. Nevermind, this too shall pass and all that, and indeed we must grasp the nettle by the horns, or something, and make H whilst the S shines…

Today’s post is one of those brought about by happy coincidence, where a series of events conspire, almost waving at you, until you finally notice and say, loudly, “what ho… a blog post!” Or, in this case, a Gate Post. The first event was posting a few photographs on Twitter and Instagram (@roberthamnett on Twitter, and @timcampbellgreen on Instagram, for those of you who might fancy checking it out). Turns out I’m not the only one who likes a good gatepost or two. And then the next event was my seeing a tiny piece of metal in the soil whilst doing a recce for a Where/When (No.7, to be precise… Of Forts and Crosses: A Mellor Wander). All will become clear, honestly.

For years now I have been obsessed with gateposts. Mundane, utilitarian, and always overlooked, a good gatepost can be as interesting as a prehistoric standing stone to me, and truthfully, there is often very little difference: both made of stone, both standing upright, both important in the past, and also in the present. And if anything, gateposts have more interesting features! I mean, obviously prehistoric is fascinating, but they don’t really give us much to go on, whereas the later gateposts… well, read on.

They can be decorated – often just roughly dressed.

A simple rough dressing, to shape it in a uniform manner.

But sometimes some thought has gone into them, to create a pleasant design – which for a utilitarian functional object seemingly goes beyond what is needed.

A simple cross, surrounded by a border. I say simple… it takes some doing.

I mean, the only time you see the gateposts is when you are opening a gate to let sheep or cattle in and out, and it’s probably not something you’d see everyday. And even if you did, it’s only for a moment or two, it frankly doesn’t matter if it looks good, and I doubt farmers are wandering around making snarky comments about the plain decoration of another farmer’s gateposts. So why? What is the purpose behind them? I don’t mean they had some sort of secret meaning behind the decoration, rather they simply represent someone’s choices, but why those choices I wonder? Possibly it’s probably more to do with pride in the work taken by the stonemason who shaped it, perhaps a form of identifier: we know it’s person X who shaped it, as he always decorated it with a cross. But then there are those that go beyond simple decoration, and instead turn it into a work of art.

This is wonderful! The way it shifts from the upper band with a circular motif, to the lower aspect with the herringbone pattern is amazing. A lot of effort went into this.
This too, is truly wonderful. The circular motif, with a border, is just amazing. This post seems to be in the reddish Cheshire sandstone, which makes sense given that it, and the last gatepost was found in the Mellor area, rather than Glossop.

Other times, we find words and dates on gateposts. Often these are faded and barely legible, the weather and environment are not kind to these solid sentinels, and they have no shelter.

‘1856’, on the track from Fieldhead Farm to Whitfield Cross.
I went all arty with this shot… I’m quite proud of it! ‘1874’ in a very similar hand to that of the above gatepost – I wonder if it was the same person? This is on Kidd Road, just before its junction with Derbyshire Level.
Multiple ‘B’, ‘D’, and ‘O’ – from a post just by Fieldhead Farm.

The Ordnance Survey often use them to carry benchmarks – after all they’re not likely to be moved, and so are a safe and permanent marker for heights above sea level.

The line above the arrow is 682 ft above sea level, precisely.
This one is 716ft 2″ above sea level.
I love this photo… the grass almost mirrors the benchmark. Oddly, I don’t have a height for this mark – for some reason, no OS map I have come across shows its existence. Strange.

The fixtures and fittings of gateposts always fascinate me, too. Cast iron hoops and hooks, held in place by the tell tale grey/blue of lead. Sometimes you can only see the lead, the actual latch or pintle missing, it’s function no longer having purpose – it is just now a standing stone.

A now missing something or other, the metals eroding, staining the stone. It can get so bad that it actually kills the moss and lichen.
More something or other, now missing, but once important. The lead fixing is a tell-tale sign that the iron whatjamacallit is missing. I honestly love this, it really does show my theory of objects having a biography.
This is lovely… beautiful cast iron eyelet, twisted and shaped whilst red hot, and then held in place with lead. Although no longer needed to make the gatepost function – the modern steel gate does that (leaving it’s own scars on the stone) – it remains a part of its history.
Multiple phases of use, each leaving a mark.
Again, scars, but once meaning, purpose.
Hand made, and truly wonderful.

It was actually one of the lead fixings that I found that partly inspired this post. I saw what was obviously lead sticking out of the ground, and bending to remove it as I always do – it’s really not good for the environment – I realised it was bigger than I expected. I studied it for a moment trying to work out what it was, when suddenly: “aha” I thought “that’s a fixing“.

You can see rust on the inside, where the iron whatsit was held in place.

Looking at this lump, and using a small diagram, you can see what it is and how it worked. The long hollow through the middle once held the iron fixture – a pintle or latch, perhaps.

The iron whatsit was circular in section.

The shape of the lead piece is also a clue to how it actually held this in place. A hole is made into the side of the gatepost that needs the ironwork on it, with the lower part of the hole made deeper. The ironwork is placed in the hole, and the molten lead poured in using a funnel to hold it within the stone and around the iron whilst it cools.

If this makes sense.

When hardened, it forms a plug that is very difficult to move, keeping the iron work in place; clever, and elegantly simple. It’s also nice to see the ‘inside’ of the gatepost, or rather a cast of the inside, and one wonders why the lead has come away so intact from its original home – one can only imagine that the post itself was broken, freeing this fixing, which then found itself at my feet in the wilds of Derbyshire years later.

In terms of dates for these gateposts – well, it’s not clear. I think the more uniform stones, with a rounded head, are Georgian and Victorian – later 18th and 19th century. However, there are some that I think are significantly older – 17th, 16th, even 15th century, possibly. These are generally less formally worked, are shorter, and importantly are characterised by having a single straight hole through the stone a few feet above the ground.

Another arty shot, this one of the ancient gatepost on Hague Street.
Carrhouse Lane, Whitfield. And no, I didn’t stick my hand in the hole…

I was, until fairly recently, convinced that these were marker stones for trackways, the square hole perhaps taking a wooden pointer. However, I started to notice that this didn’t always fit the pattern, and despite multiple blog articles, twitter posts, and it even published in Where/When, I began to doubt this explanation. I then received an email that pretty much confirmed it for me (thank you PB, you amazing man!). In it, the author quoted a John Farey, whose 1815 book – General View of the Agriculture and Minerals of Derbyshire: With Observations on the Means of Their Improvement. Drawn Up for the Consideration of the Board of Agrigulture [sic] and Internal Improvement – gave the following quote:

Anciently, the Gates in the Peak Hundreds were formed and hung without any iron-work, even nails, as I have been told; and some yet remain in Birchover and other places, where no iron-work is used in the hanging: a large mortise-hole is made thro’ the hanging-post, perpendicular to the plane of the Gate, at about four feet and a half high, into which a stout piece of wood is firmly wedged, and projects about twelve inches before the Post; and in this piece of wood, two augur holes are made, to receive the two ends of a tough piece of green Ash or Sallow, which loosely embraces the top of the head of the Gate (formed to a round), in the bow so formed : the bottom of the head of the Gate is formed to a blunt point, which works in a hole made in a stone, set fast in the ground, close to the face of the Post. It is easy to see, by the mortise-holes in all old Gate-Stoops, that this mode of hanging Gates was once general.

Of course, it made sense, despite me banging on about them being marker stones. So, please accept my apologies for this; I am not always correct, and my knowledge is always growing. And thank you PB, who brought this to my attention – this is your discovery, not mine (you can read the book here – P.92 is the quote. There are about 20 of these gatepost types I know of, with many more awaiting discovery. And I actually think these are quite significant, as if we plot their location on a map, we might get a better grip on land use in the pre-industrial period. Marvellous.

I am obsessed with gateposts, and I want you to be, too. Everytime I pass one, I check it out, and often I am rewarded with some nugget of information, graffiti, decoration, or just a blast of the past. Let me know what you find via the contact page, and let’s keep an eye out for those holed ancient stones.

Right, I think that’s all for this month, and lucky you the next post will, I suspect, be a pottery post! Woohoo! I have found lots of cool stuff recently, and it all needs writing about. As always, I have about 30 projects ongoing, not all of which is coming to fruition anytime soon, but some will emerge relatively rapidly – watch this space. In the meantime, do please check out the Etsy store, or the Ko-Fi page – and feel free to buy me a beer coffee, or yourself a copy of Where/When, or even a t-shirt!

But until next time, please do look after yourselves and each other. I know I always say that, but you all matter, and we all need to take better care of each other… the world can be scary place at times, so lets band together and help each other.

And as always, I remain.

Your humble servant,

TCG

Torside Sherds & Walls
Archaeology · Longdendale · Pottery · Where / When

Torside Sherds & Walls

Tim Campbell-GreenLeave a comment

What ho, what ho, what ho!

Well, this last month or so has been splendid in terms of weather, what? And indeed much has been done outside – archaeology and Where/When stuff.

Anyway… pottery as promised!

So… Master CG has taken up Windsurfing, which is to be applauded. Like a fish to water you might say, and he’s quite good, apparently (the instructors seem to be very pleased). This means that for a few hours at a weekend, myself and Mrs CG get to relax at the wonderful Glossop Sailing Club (who I cannot recommend highly enough – they are simply amazing), and in the neighbourhood of the wonderful Torside Reservoir in the Longdendale Valley, surrounded by the glacial formed hills; it’s truly a wonderful landscape.

Torside Reservoir is the fourth, and largest, in the Longdendale Chain of reservoirs which flooded this part of the valley in 1864. It is named after Torside Farm, first mentioned in the baptism of Alycia Hadfield in All Saint’s, Glossop, on 16th July 1621. Now whilst this may be the first mention, for two reasons I had a feeling the farm would be older: firstly, Alycia clearly had parents who didn’t just pop into existence in 1621. And secondly, if a place is good for farming in the 17th century, it would have been good in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries.

Torside Farm on 1882 OS map, borrowed from the National Library of Scotland website

Interestingly, this first mention in the parish register was actually written as “Thorsett” which, like many others in those pages, is a remarkable fixed record of the local dialect and pronunciation of the 17th century; the clerk asks “where do you live” and the answer from the parent is “Thorsett”, which is then written precisely as said, in clipped northern tones. Even as late as the 19th century, spellings of names and places is not fixed, and confusingly there is often quite a range of spellings for a single farm. Alas, the farm seems to have been demolished by the 1960’s, probably by the water board, and where it stood is now the carpark and public toilets.

Now, knowing this, and whilst young CG was floundering in the somewhat chilly waters, I went for a wander with the hope of finding something interesting and ceramic with which to entertain you wonderful people. Along the edge of the water, and up to the road I walked; I didn’t know what I was looking for as such, more a vague sense that something would be there, this close to an early 17th century farmhouse. And lo! What wonders did appear…

Firstly, I noticed two long walls amidst the general stony foreshore. Made from large boulders that would have, at one time, been plentiful in the fields; they were a convenient source of stone, as well as clearing the fields allowing them to be ploughed effectively.

A 30cm ruler in the foreground as a scale: I am professional… just on a budget!
Torside Reservoir, Longdendale: valley, pylons, windsurfing Master CG (and others) in full view… along with a mysterious wall running into the distance.

They would originally have stood higher, with this being the foundation course, and the size of the stones, combined with the lack of any map evidence, suggests an early, possibly medieval, date. There is a rough guide to dating walls in this area and hereabouts:

Taken from John Barnatt and Ken Smith’s highly recommended The Peak District: Landscapes Through Time. It’s based on data from Roystone Grange, and whilst it might be over simplistic, it does illustrate how walls changed over time.

It is a rough guide, and isn’t probably applicable everywhere, but it does serve to show differences in how walls were built. I honestly don’t know what these are, but I’m presuming field boundaries for a long lost field system. There are medieval field walls in Tintwistle, and they do look like this, but equally I have seen field clearance walls that date to the Bronze Age that look similar. The following is a rough map and rough measurements – maybe I should go back and really survey the walls properly… anyone fancy helping me?

But enough about the walls, “show us the good stuff… the pottery!” you shout (all except Mr Shouty-Outy, who shouted that he would apparently rather see my bottom…). Well here it is. The pottery that is, not my bottom.

All this was found on the surface, and it tells a very interesting story, but there are some genuinely important bits here. First up, we have a sherd of Manganese Glazed pottery.

Early 18th century in date – it stops being made around 1750 – this stuff is fairly commonly found on sites of this date, and probably come from a jug or mug. I explored this stuff here.

Other bits of Manganese Glazed include these 4 rim sherds from cups and mugs.

Clockwise from top left: an open bowl measuring 16cm, a cup of 10cm, another cup of 10cm, and another measuring 12cm. Lovely stuff.

Next up, some slipware.

On the left, a chunky sherd probably from a large jug or similar. On the right we have the rim from a large platter (it has a rim diameter of 30cm); the piecrust edge is hugely characteristic and immediately recognisable (again, I explore it in this article):

The glazed interior didn’t quite make it to the rim, and would have created a striking image: this would have been an impressive vessel when it was whole.

The middle sherd is Staffordshire Slipware, with a Dark on Light decoration. The reddish slip laid over the light background turns much darker when covered in the lead-based glaze. In this case it seems to be giving some form of geometric design – you can see the grooves where the slip was laid, but which has fallen away – the pottery is not particularly hardwearing, and the slip is often found to have delaminated from the body.

Wonderful stuff… you can just make out the linear design in the clay in this awful photo.

This is from the base of the vessel – probably a large platter used for presenting food on the table, and from which all the family would have taken their own share. Turning it over, you can see lots of interesting marks made during the manufacturing process.

When made, the pots are pressed into a mould until they are ‘leather’ hard – that is, hard enough to retain their shape, but not quite fully dry. What we can see on the base are the scars of manufacturing. There are numerous lines scraped into the clay, suggestive of tools used to remove the pot from the mould, or even string. There is also a small ball of clay lodged within the base – this would have been dry and sitting in the mould when the wet clay was placed in it, and when removed it became part of the base. The small holes around it suggest that there were others that didn’t become attached. I love this… it’s almost the secret side of pottery – whilst most people look at the decoration and say “oooh”, let’s instead flip it over and see what else it can tell us.

Next up, we have some Nottingham Stoneware:

I explored this wonderful stuff back in the first instalment of the Rough Guide to Pottery so I won’t discuss it here, but it dates to the 18th century, which is a good date for us. You can see the ‘orange peel’ surface made by using a salt glaze in this sherd:

And on this sherd interior, you can see the horizontal smoothing lines.

I think 2 of the sherds come from jugs or bowls, whilst the base sherd on the left has a diameter of 7cm, so it might have come from a squat round-bellied tankard.

Slightly later than all this is a beautiful sherd of Industrial Slipware:

It’s a lovely fragment of a sugar bowl type thing, with a wide mouth and straight sides. I like how the decoration gently mirrors the environment it was found in – very suggestive of water and sky.

For me, though, the absolute gem of a find was this fragment of a large Cistercian Ware jug.

Dating to the earlier 16th century (1550, perhaps), this is quite special in that it not only pushes back the date of Torside Farm, it is also not something that is commonly encountered. The surface is wonderful in a deep black glaze, and the fabric is textbook purple and hard, with the classic ‘salt and pepper’ inclusions.

The purple colour is on the bottom, the darker grey colour in the fabric is on the inside of the jug, and is caused by the pot being fired in a reduced oxygen environment – essentially, a lack of oxygen during the firing as air couldn’t get into the jug interior properly.

It would have originaly looked something like this:

Image is lovingly stolen from the University of Leicester Archaeological Service’s Facebook page – here

Genuinely, this sherd is, I think, something significant and had me all of a quiver when I found it. I had to have a bracer or two, and thankfully I was soon back to my normal stiff upper lipped-ness.

I also found some clay pipe stems here and there amongst the stones; all fairly standard and Victorian with the remarkable exception of this wonderful fragment.

The longer I look at it, the more it looks like it has two eyes, a nose… is singing to me!

It is chunky, being some 10mm thick, but crucially it is a large bore – the hole through the middle is 4mm – which is unusually large, and twice (or more) the width of a Victorian bore (sigh… yes thankyou Mr Shouty-Outy, calling me an ‘unusually large bore‘ says more about you than it does me). All of this means that the stem is early; early 17th century early… probably the same date as the earliest reference to the farm in 1621. It’s wonderful to imagine Alycia’s father sitting and smoking a nervous pipe in front of the fire, listening to the cries of his newborn daughter upstairs, and who knows… this could be the pipe. I love this, genuinely… it makes it real.

I also found a fragment of stone roof tile with the peg hole intact…

A nice shot, that! This must have come from the house or outbuilding, possibly as part of its demolition or perhaps during the course of its natural life.

Slightly older… glacial erratics – bits of stone that are not part of the local geology, which in out case is Millstone Grit and coarse sandstone:

Another awful photo – I will get a proper camera soon, honestly.

I talked a little about glacial erratics here, but essentially they are bits of stone that have been picked up from all points north of here by glaciers moving south during the last ice age (granite, and large bits of quartzite, for example). The movement of these huge structures made of ice, mud, and stone, actually carved out the Longdendale Valley, and when they began to melt roughly 25,000 years ago, they dropped all this odd material. Glacial sand and clay can be found all over the Glossop area (my own house sits on glacial clay), but it is very prevalent in Longdendale. The types of stone, and indeed origin of these, I haven’t gone into; I am not a geologist, but perhaps I should write an article on them?

In addition to all that, I found a rather nice segment of hand forged, very worn, iron chain.

I have no idea of the age of it, but it’s certainly at least Victorian… and is very cool!

As I say, the first mention we have of the farmhouse at Torside is 1621, but I am fairly confident that the Cistercian Ware jug is earlier, and perhaps by as much as 150 years – which is very interesting and may point to an earlier incarnation of the farm in the area… which makes sense. The past is indeed all around us, and often at our feet… and it is always well worth having a look.

So then, in other news (and also having a look at), the new edition of Where/When has just come from the printers: No.6 – Old Lanes to Old Glossop.

This one is a Wander along the medieval main route between Simmondley and (Old) Glossop, now fossilised into footpaths and odd tracks between buildings. Filled with all manner of archaeological goodness and the usual nerdiness, with a pinch of psychedelia and a heavy hit of psychogeography. Put simply it’s a bloody good walk that goes between The Hare and Hounds and The Wheatsheaf, so what’s not to love?

Contact me here, buy it in the website store, buy it from my Etsy store, the Ko-Fi store, stop me in the street and say “what ho!”, or pop into Dark Peak Books on High Street West, Glossop and grab a copy. It is selling fast… worryingly fast, to be honest!

Right, I think that’s all for the archaeology this month… more soon, obviously. Perhaps more pottery; I’d like to finally wrap up the Rough Guide to Pottery – its unfinished status is frankly bothering my diverse and somewhat spicy mind, and I’d like to be able to wake up not screaming once in a while! Watch this space.

In the meantime, as always – and I do honestly mean it – look after yourselves and each other. This world is not always kind, so let’s – even you Mr Shouty-Outy – try and be kind instead. Until then, I remain, your humble servant.

TCG

Brrrrr… Glossop’s Ice Age History
Oddities · Stones of Glossop · Waterways of Glossop

Brrrrr… Glossop’s Ice Age History

Tim Campbell-Green2 Comments

What ho, wonderful denizens of the blog reading world! How are we all? Well this is something of a to-do… what? Two posts in February? Truly I am spoiling you. Well, it’s about time I picked up the pace a little! I actually had a choice of about 4 half finished articles that I was going to go with, and I actually started working on all of them at some point in the last few weeks before I plumped for this one. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

So, I recently discovered the glacial erratic on Pyegrove Park. Now, I should clarify… I didn’t actually ‘discover’ it – lots of people already knew it was there, and in fact I already knew it was there, it’s just that I’d never been able to find it. But the discovery got me thinking: this blog is about archaeology, that is the study of humans and their history through the physical remains they left behind. And yet where we are, and how we live, and indeed how we have lived, has been dictated to us through the landscape, and our place within this. In short, there would be no Glossop without Longdendale, and there would be no Longdendale without the glaciers. So wrap up well, people… we’re off the the ice age.

Ok, so some background, and not being a geologist I really had to put in the homework here, so you’d best appreciate it! Honestly, my brain only has so much space in it: I once learned to ice skate and forgot how to use a knife and fork. What follows then is the ‘back of a fag packet’ version of the last period of glaciation (and before we move on, I must give a massive shout out to a superb website which really helped iron out some of the trickier bits – AntarcticGlacier.org – fascinating, well written, and aimed at non-specialists… well worth checking out if any of this interests you even in the slightest).

So then, there are three distinct periods of glaciation (that is, the process of glaciers forming and moving) within Britain – the Anglian (roughly 478,000 to 424,000 years before present [BP]), the Wolstonian (300,000 to 130,000 BP), and the Devensian (roughly 27,000 to 11,000 BP). Leaving aside the first two, lets focus on the last – the Devensian (also known as the Last Glacial Maximum), as this one was the only one that would have had anatomically modern humans living through it.

At this point, roughly 2/3 of Britain and Ireland, including all of Scotland and Ireland, most of Wales, and the north of England was covered by what is known as the British Irish Ice Sheet. Starting in the Arctic, as the land cooled this glacier moved further south until it reached a limit at about 27,000 BP, at which point the cllimate began to warm, and it slowly began to retreat, and was gone by 11,000 BP. The effect that this moving back and forth had on the land was catastrophic – carving out valleys (think the glens of Scotland, the Lake District, and even our own Peaks), and forever altering the land.

An awesome image of the extent of the Devensian Glaciation at its maximum. I make no claim to this image – it is all the work of Andy Emery at AntarcticGlaciers.org – I merely pinched it… this time with a little shame!

Now, here’s where it gets more interesting… and complicated. There are no definitive models, but it seems that Longdendale was at the southern/south-western edge of the Devensian ice sheet – the literal edge of the glacier in the last ice age. This might explain why the Peak District is, well… ‘peaky’, but the land to the west and south-west isn’t; Longdendale is the last valley before the land smooths out towards Manchester and Cheshire. Indeed, if you look at the above map and think about the landscape to the south and east beyond the edge of the ice sheet, whilst it can certainly be hilly, there are no peaks and steep valleys.

Of course, that’s not to say that the glaciers didn’t affect the land beyond that edge – already frozen solid and all but inhabitable, once the glaciers began to melt, the water had to go somewhere. There is some evidence for what are termed ‘glacial lakes’, huge bodies of meltwater, beneath or adjacent to the glacial edges. There seems to have been one covering the whole of Glossop as it is now – the landscape here being suitably bowl shaped – and which was perhaps dammed at the Mottram end with ice and clay. Not going to lie to you, folks, that honestly makes me feel… weird and terrified. Indeed, originally the Etherow ran to the west of here, toward Manchester, but was forced to change it’s course due to sand, gravel, and ice blocking the original route. And to give an idea of the power that such a lake bursting, one such steam blasted out the gorge (actually, a natural geological fault line) at Broadbottom which the viaduct now has to cross.

But the glaciers also gave another gift. As they moved up and down (and indeed round – there is evidence that it wasn’t a straight-forward linear motion), they picked up bits of geology – random stones and chipped-off bits of mountain. These they occasionally dropped as they went along in the form of what we know as ‘glacial erratics’ – defined by AntarcticGlaciers as “a far-travelled stone of a different lithology (stone type) to the local bedrock“. Now, the Glossop area has four of these that are known about (but there are a lot of odd looking stones dotted about that to my eyes look like they are erratics, but as I say, not being a geologist, I don’t know). If anyone has a geological speciality, or has any thought about the types of stone these are, and thus perhaps their origin, then please get in contact. The first of these is the one I have already mentioned at Pyegrove, here:

Roughly where the big red arrow is.
Turns out the big red arrow is visible on the ground, too!

Lurking in the bushes, it hides its history well.

Using What3Words, it is located at easygoing.harmonica.ramming. Now, I’m not sure what to make of that!

Now, other than it being non-local, and shaped rather like a large pebble (due to the grinding and rolling movement via glacier), I know nothing about it, geologically speaking. It’s coarse, with a sandstone-like structure, but not quite like any local stone I know of.

Close-up of the ‘fabric’ of the stone. It seems to be a type of rough sandstone – almost, but not quite like Millstone Grit.

I assume that it comes from geology further north than here, but where? Lake District? Scotland? Norway? Was this where it was dropped? Or has it been found in a field and moved? Possibly the latter, as it is on the field edge, and marks the track between Pyegrove House (and Hurst, etc.) and Glossop, now simply an overgrown hollow path at the edge of the field, but once an important route from Jumble, Hurst and Pyegrove to Glossop.

The sunken trackway – or holloway – worn by years of use.

Of course, it may be that the field boundary used the erratic as a reference point, and thus the track, but I still think it’s likely that it has been moved.

The next erratic is to be found in Howard Park, here to be precise:

Here, right in front of what was Wood’s Hospital, now Reuben’s Retreat. What3Words is overpaid.courier.recover.
Lovely stuff. Also, looks like it has a moustache!

So, it’s a very similar stone to the Pyegrove example, possibly even from the same source. Here, in the close-up:

Not a million miles from the Pyegrove example.

The rock also shows very clearly the marks of being crushed and scraped along other rocks by the glacier.

Linear striations show how it was scraped along a surface… imagine the forces involved in this.
Also much banged around – again, massive forces involved in this.

This one has certainly been moved, but from where?

Our last two erratics are to be found in the grounds of the old Grammar School and library building, here, to be precise:

Against the wall of Fitzalan Street, and at earlobes.tutorial.daytime using What3Words… you couldn’t make these addresses up!
Here they are in context.
Smoother than the others, but again not local in origin.

Here it is is close-up:

Very much smoother.
Very different from all the others, this one has quartzite in it, producing a much more jagged rock.

Here it is in close-up:

Very odd geology – a rough rock with striations of quartzite… probably quite unremarkable to a geologist! Possibly related somehow to Shap Granite which has similarities. I think.

They even have a plaque helpfully explaining where they were found, and potentially where they originated.

Shelf Brook… well worth checking out, apparently!

As the climate began to warm up, the land began to come back to life – this was the start of the Holocene period, the modern human world. Trees, shrubs, and plants started to grow, and these are soon followed by the animals that eat them. And following them, hunting and gathering, people. By probably 8000BC, at certainly by 7000BC, people were passing through the Glossop area following game in small bands, and moving between seasonal hunting camps. Their movement through the area may have been part of a cycle of many years, and many hundreds of miles from place to place, stopping for a period of months – summer in the higher ground, winter in the warmer valleys – meeting other groups in specific locations, trading resources and marriage partners, and moving on again, through a landscape that was marked only by natural monuments. The Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age, c. 8000 – 4000 BC) is a fascinating period, but we know so little of their daily lives. Indeed our only clues to their existence hereabouts are the flint tools they made and used, and which are quite commonly found in the hills around Glossop.

Some lovely Mesolithic flint bits. Left, a small scraper; middle, a core from which tiny blades (microliths) were chipped or knapped; and right a notched blade which are common in the Mesolithic, but which no one seems to know what they were used for. My guess would be to scrape down arrow shafts. To be honest, flint tools are like Swiss Army Knives – multiple uses in multiple ways.

I’m also going to use this article to put to bed a story I’ve heard from several sources over the years – that Coombes Edge is a caldera – the blown out remains of a long dead Volcano. Essentially, a smallish volcano erupted, and blew out the north-western side, spewing it’s contents over towards Hyde. This is not the case, and the unusual land formation is the result of a huge landslip caused by under soil water movement, and which occurred sometime between 10,000 and 7,000 BP – so somewhere in the Mesolithich period. One wonders if the landslip was noticed by anyone, either as they were nearby, or after they came back into the area and found the huge landslide. And I wonder what they thought of it.

Also, I wonder if we have a look in Shelf Brook, but other streams around here, we might find some more glacial erratics, large and small. Who’s with me?

Right, I’m off to light the fire… and pour a glass of the stuff that warms.

In other news.

There will definitely be a guided archaeological & historical (hysterical?) walk in the next month or so, so watch this and other spaces for news. This will probably be just before the new edition of the Where/When zine – No.2 – comes out. I have decided to aim for 3 zines a year – December, April, and August, but I want to be flexible on this… my life is hectic enough as it is! I’ve also got some ideas for some special editions, but that’s far in the future. In the meantime, who wouldn’t want a Where/When t-shirt with the slogan “What ho, Wanderer!” on it? Just a thought!

As usual, keep in touch, even if it’s just to tell me I’m talking out of my hat. So until next time, look after yourselves and each other, and I remain.

Your humble servant,

TCG

A House, A Hive, and a Trueman
History · Nothing in particular! · Stones of Glossop

A House, A Hive, and a Trueman

Tim Campbell-Green2 Comments

(Will I make it before January 31st?.. that is the question)

What ho, wonderful people, what ho!

And my how I have missed you all. Well, most of you at least. Not you Mr Shouty-Outy, nope. But surprisingly today’s offering is pottery free, so you have no need to say anything at all.

So then, Christmas is over, and the New Year’s hoohah is done with… alas. Invariably at this time of year, a certain sombreness overtakes old TCG. Gone is the ‘devil may care’ attitude of yore, and instead a certain ‘not even the devil cares’ feeling overtakes one’s bean. There is a noticeable drooping of one’s shoulders, a subtle sadness of the ‘O the pain of life‘ variety, and a distinct lack in the old J de V. A funk, if you will, the like of which even the stuff that cheers – if taken in the correct dose – fails to cheer. Not that it stops one from trying, obviously.

And so, trying to raise my spirits, I found myself idly flicking through the wonderful History In a Pint Pot by David Field, which is a detailed history of all of Glossop’s pubs, past and present. Highly recommended, but sadly long out of print, athough the library has a copy if you want a read… and you should. I was looking at my local, The Beehive, when at the back of that particular entry was an old advert dated to sometime in the Victorian period that looked vaguely familiar.

Beers, wines, spirits, cigars, horses, stone… there’s not a lot that can’t be bought at the Beehive.

*Ping* went a synapse… a second passed… then *thunk* went a receptor (I may have slightly overdone the festivities this year, and the old noodle is functioning at approximately half normal speed). Where had I seen it before? And why was the advert significant? What? Where? When? And then it hit me… St Mary’s Road. Oh yes… something I should have blogged about before now.

Sooooo… a few years ago someone messaged me via, I think, Twitter, and asked if I had seen the name carved into the the gutter of some houses at the top of St Mary’s Road, and did I have any information.

Before we go any further, confession time. I am, as you might have realised, quite good at some things (*cough* pottery *cough*) and terrible at others (*cough* communication *cough*). I am also fairly disorganised in some areas (*cou… YES, alright, we get the picture… here, have a throat sweet). So it should come as no surprise to anyone that I cannot for the life of me recall who it was, nor can I seem to track down any record of the conversation. So if it was you, then please accept my humble apologies, and step forward to make yourself known and famous to all 7 of the people who read these posts (including Juan in Venezuela).

So then, had I seen them? No. And had I any information? Also no. And so it was I found myself walking down St Mary’s Road, muttering to myself as I am wont to do.

No’s 116 to 122 make a small terrace of four stone-built houses, typically mid-late Victorian in shape, and are much like all the others around them.

The corner of Duke Street and St Mary’s Road.

They don’t appear on the 1880 1:500 OS Town Plan

The lack of houses is circled in red, with St Mary’s running broadly NW-SE. Map stolen, as usual, without shame, from the enormously useful and always fascinating National Library of Scotland OS map database. Check it out here.

But they do appear on the 1898 25 inches to the mile OS map:

You can really see the map filling up, and a real sense that Glossop is still filling out to its Victorian and early 20th century maximum. Map stolen as per above!

Which gives us a date of between 1880 and 1898 for their construction.

So about the name, then. It took me a moment or two to see them, but at the end of each of the corbels that hold up the guttering, you can see a letter or character.

Apologies for the darkness of these photographs… I didn’t realise quite how murky they were until they

Wow! I love this, and I cursed myself for not noticing them before – serves me right for always having both eyes on the floor! It is difficult to photograph these without a telephoto lens, but also without attracting the ire of householders, who oddly don’t like it when you stand around taking photos of their houses, usually muttering threats of ‘setting the dogs on you’; people are strange. Anyway, the best I could do is the following stream of photographs; apologies in advance!

J O H N
+ T R U
E M A N .

So then, what do we have?

J O H N + T R U E M A N 0

Nice! A mystery. There is very little relevant online, but there was a reference to a John Trueman as the publican of the Beehive Inn in Whitfield, which was worth following up, and hence the History in a Pint Pot advert. The connection is not immediately obvious, but the fact that Trueman was mentioned as both wine and spirit merchant, and a stone dealer in the advert suggests that he built the houses, and probably using his own stone. It seems that the position of publican of The Beehive (or ‘Bee Hive’, as it was then) came with the rights to the quarries at the end of the track beside the pub, next to Fieldhead Farm there.

The Beehive is arrowed in red, but you can see the track leading to the quarries at the end.

William Miller, the landlord in 1857, is also described as a stone dealer. Our man John Trueman was landlord here between 1871 and 1894, which is also spot on for the date of the houses. I like the idea of him wheeling and dealing, serving pints and stone in equal measure. And if you build houses, then why not go ahead and sign them, particularly in a rather cool way. There seemed to be a lot of that around at the time, and as I was walking away from St Mary’s, I remembered another named building that I’d like to take a look at – Norfolk Buildings on Victoria Street:

Norfolk Buildings and The Surrey Arms

According to Robert Hamnett, The Surrey Arms and the three adjacent houses in the terrace were built in 1846 by James Robinson, who owned a large number of houses (and presumably having built them, too). You can see the uniform design and decoration of these three, especially in comparison with those buildings to the left, which are smaller and built to a different design. You can also see the ‘join’ between the two groups. It seems that these houses were constructed later that Norfolk Buildings, and presumably by a different person – again evidence of the piecemeal process that characterised Glossop’s Victorian building boom. The name/datestone is above the centre of the three houses:

I wonder if ‘archaeologist‘ would hold up in court as a defence against being accused of being a ‘peeping tom’. An academic question, obviously… purely theoretical.

‘J.R. NORFOLK BUILDINGS 1847’

The ‘J.R.’ is presumably James Robinson, and the buildings named after the Duke of Norfolk, whose investment in the town was arguably at it’s greatest in the mid-19th century. The date speaks for itself, though Hamnett notes that the lease for the pub dates from 28th March 1846, so this might be a lease connected with the land itself, or perhaps the proposed pub.

So there it is, this month’s offering… and I made it in January! There are so many Victorian datestones in the Glossop area, many recording details beyond just a date, and we find house names, builder’s names, area names, and the like. I’d like to do another survey of datestones or name plaques for the Victorian period, to accompany the one I did (and is still ongoing) for the pre-Victorian period. Or, you know, convince one of you to do it and publish it on the website (if you fancy the challenge, give me a message). Anyway, more again very soon.

In other news, the first issue of Where/When is back in stock. So, if you fancy a guided Wander from the Friendship Inn to The Oakwood, via Ashes, Dinting, Adderley Place, Pikes Lane and Harehills, and through the prehistoric, Roman, and medieval periods, then this is the publication for you… especially if you like what you read here!

You can download a free copy here, but there’s nowt like a physical paper copy: £5 from Dark Peak Books, on High Street West on Glossop (and I might be the one to serve you!), or you could just ask me, and I’ll bung one to you. For those that have been asking, Issue 2 is on the way… and honestly a fantastic one it’s going to be.

I’ve also got a few actual different Wanders planned, real actual physical walks led by yours truly, up hill and down dale, and through our amazing shared historical landscape. You can even throw stones at me when I start to bore you about pottery… and no, that doesn’t mean you can sign up for it just to lob rocks at me, Mr Shouty-Outy. Anyway, watch this space as I’ll advertise it her, and elsewhere.

So that’s about it for now. Hopefully I’ll get a couple written for February – I have so many half-finished articles it’s ridiculous, and I just need to get on with it (lots of pottery goodness!). But until then, look after yourselves and each other, and I remain.

Your humble servant,

TCG

Naked Ladies… and a Quarry
Archaeology · Graffiti · Stones of Glossop

Naked Ladies… and a Quarry

Tim Campbell-Green1 Comment

Well that got your attention! What ho, wonderful people! What ho!

Up by Coombes Edge lies Cown Edge quarry. This quarry, long disused, contains a number of interesting, and oddly well executed, carvings on the walls. I have heard about this particular place – and its carvings – many times, and from many different people, but had never managed to get up there. No reason, simply that there are so many places to see, and so little RH. A few months ago, a friend (my thanks to Andy T) suggested a walk up that way and, well, I thought, let’s have a look.

What I like about this place is not just the ‘historical’ history, which is visible and tangible, but the ‘personal’ history which is similarly visible, but often better felt than seen. The quarry seems to be one of ‘those places‘; a destination, a space in the landscape that attracts; a shelter, an asylum, a place of freedom, and perhaps decadence. In particular, it’s place where ‘youths‘ go and be ‘youthful‘, frolicking, feeling, fumbling, and… well, you get the picture. I didn’t grow up in Glossop – I’m a ‘comer-inner‘, so to speak – but if I could take you to Cheadle Hulme where I did grow up, I could show you a few such places from my youth. Every town & village has them – and the similar stories they could tell of the first time drunk, illicit substances consumed, virginities lost, love discovered, best friendships forged, fights fought, and the always difficult transition from child to adult negotiated – often on the same evening. But perhaps most importantly, memories are made. To quote Wordsworth “Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven“. I have recently turned 47 (young for some of you, old for others… it’s all relative), and have been marvelling at the swift passage of time, so forgive the nostalgia. Now on with the show.

Cown Edge Quarry seems to have been started sometime in the early 19th Century, probably as a source of roofing stone. Geologically, the stone is Rough Rock – a type of sandstone of the Peak District and southern Pennines, and the most commonly occurring of the Millstone Grit group.

Incidentally, and as a rule of thumb, you can roughly date the buildings of Glossop by what the roof is made from. Prior to c.1850 roofs were made from stone taken from local quarries such as these. However, once the railway arrived (c.1850) Welsh slate could be imported on trains. Not only was slate cheaper, but it also weighed less so the roof could be constructed using less timber, and so roofs after 1850 tend to be made of this. A rule of thumb not an absolute guide, but useful nonetheless.

Anyway, the quarry is located here:

Thank you Google for the image.

And here it is in 1898:

And thanks to the National Libraries of Scotland for this image.

If you use the What Three Words app, the reference for the quarry entrance is: tribal.workers.crossword

Now, as subjects go, it isn’t perhaps the most interesting, but then as we know on this site more than most, ‘interesting’ is a veeery subjective word. However, it was deemed important enough to have its own Historic Environment Record – MDR10021. Largely overgrown now, and with none of the urgency and noise that would have marked it out as a place of work when it was operating, it is peaceful and still.

The view looking north from the quarry mouth
Looking west. Interesting, and a little odd, to think that the roof of my house, where I type these words, was almost certainly quarried from this place.

However, the walls are full of interesting graffiti, carved over the years since the place was abandoned. Some is more worthy than others, but all is a record of people, humans being, well… human. I have said elsewhere that there is something universal about the need to leave a mark on the environment, almost a way of achieving immortality, your name living on past you, perhaps. And hats off to those who did it before the invention of spray paint… if you wanted to put your name up in the past, you had to mean it – with a hammer and chisel. Here follows a sample of the carvings – mundane, as well as the more creative.

AKW 1942 – presumably there is no reason to lie about the date, so this is interesting… and asks further questions.
“Tim. Joey. Glossop”?
“.D” – quite modern, I suspect, and a worn hole.
“BEAN”? and some pock marks. These overlay – and are later than – the painted anarchy sign.
“DUF, LEZ, ANT, GUS” 1994. “KEV” at the bottom is even probably even more modern.
“DAN”, “SID”, “LES”, “LYNN”, and some symbols. These seem to have been carved and re-carved.

Talking of symbols, there are what seems to me an unusual number of Christian crosses carved here:

“BUZZB” and “JB 23.9.69” I love this one – the date is so specific. The cross is also very prominent.
An ancient Egyptian Ankh symbol – quite old (filled with slow-growing lichen), and odd to find on the rock face.
Another lichen-filled cross.

Perhaps it’s the crosses that give the quarry its reputation for Satanism and witchcraft? Anyway, the ‘religious’ iconography culminates in this, what the HER calls “a potential Calvary figure” – that is, Christ on the crucifix:

Well executed, and subsequently highlighted in paint.

This is a weird one – is it one figure, or two – a smaller, more feminine and naked, between the Christ-like figure’s legs? Or is it three? The more I look, the less I know. Is that the point? Is there a point? Even down to the almost-altar like outcrop of stone in front of the figure, this is very good.

It seems that this is a modern(ish) rendering, done by a known person – I have heard several different reasons and accounts – and people – but the story is not mine to tell, nor is it for me to name names. That I will save for the comments section, should anyone wish to do so.

However, it looks like it was the same hand that carved this naked lady, as well, so I’m not sure about any religious motivation as such:

It’s carved with skill, too.

There’s also this lower half of a person on their hands and knees.

Not sure what I can say about this… so I’ll say nothing!

Moving away from carvings, and back onto the safer territory of history and archaeology, there are traces of the original purpose to which the quarry was put here and there amongst the more modern intrusions.

The rough dressing is visible in the dark area of the quarry face.

Here we can see the rough dressing of the stone, done prior to it being broken out of the rock face. This provides it with a flat-ish surface before it is smoothed properly elsewhere. This was probably the last thing that was done in this quarry before it was shut down, as it is part of the quarrying process, but was never finished. I like that.

The quarry road, with spoil piles on the left.

The quarry road is very nicely preserved, but if you look closely at the stone at the bottom of the above photograph, you can see a groove worn into the rock there, running top to bottom. This is the track of a sledge repeatedly being drawn over the stone, day in, day out, for decades. A horse-drawn sledge is easier to use, more stable, and less likely to cause accidents, than a cart, and were often used in these remote quarries.

I also found also a concretion in the rock face of the quarry. Essentially, a concretion is a small boulder of one type of rock which is formed naturally, and which becomes trapped within the matrix of a surrounding rock when it was laid down as sediment millions of years ago.

I love that the concretion looks like an eye, the ‘eyelid’ accentuated by the red paint.

The concretion erodes at a different rate from the surrounding material, and so they stick out quite clearly. They’re fairly common in this type of Rough Rock, as indeed are plant fossils, apparently, but I didn’t see any of those… I need to go back.

Right, there you have it. More soon – including more pottery, you lucky, lucky, people. I’ve got so many ideas – walks, books, tours, blogs posts, pottery workshops, YouTube shenanigans, surveys, excavations, art, creativity, etc. – and so much I’d like to do. For now though, stay in touch and follow me here, or on Twitter (@roberthamnett), or even on Instagram (timcampbellgreen). Or just come up to me and say “What ho, Robert Hamnett!”.

But until next time, please look after yourselves and each other.

And I remain, your humble servant,

RH.

Archaeology · History · Whitfield

Datestones

Tim Campbell-Green4 Comments

(And apologies to those of you who have ended up on this website expecting to find an informative article on the seed of the Phoenix dactylifera.)

What ho, magnificent readers! I trust you are all rude health as we stumble toward the season of goodwill and whatnot. I love this time of year, when the cold wind blows, and the… What’s that? What do you mean “get on with it!”. Honestly, the nerve of some people.

Righty ho. Datestones. Who doesn’t love a good datestone? I mean, what’s not to love? A little snapshot of the history of a building, a birth certificate if you will, recording both the date of birth, and, if we’re lucky, the parents too.

Normally, though not exclusively, located above the door, these carved stones preserve the date of construction and the initials of the person or family who paid for its construction. The are by and large the reserve of the aspirational ‘middle classes’ of society; the poor man doesn’t build his house, the rich man has a house that speaks for itself. Indeed, it is a statement to others: I have wealth enough to build this house. They seem to become popular in the 17th century, as the ‘yeoman farmer’ becomes a class of person, that is, a person who owns the land they farm. Indeed, it may be a result of that phenomena, a way of setting themselves apart from the simple tenant farmer, who doesn’t own the land he works. Glossop has several 17th century examples remaining, though many more will have been lost, sadly. They do show up, occasionally, as the one found by Glossop Brook at Harehills Park did, and which was saved and cemented into the brook wall. Interestingly, this example also shows that whilst datestones can be a boon to historians, they can also present problems if we are not careful. They can move easily, and be attached to other buildings giving a misleading date, as is the case there, and at Hall Fold Farm. Also, stones can be put in place to commemorate a rebuilding or alteration to an existing building, causing similar, if opposite, problems.

By the Victorian period it was common to put a date and/or name on a house you built, and a careful look at many rows of Victorian terraces around Glossop will reveal names and dates. With that in mind, I have restricted my research to those datestones that carry a date prior to Victoria’s reign, pre-1837. The following is a table of the ones I know about:

There are 28 datestones in the Glossop area (broadly defined), but there will be more lurking that I don’t know about, either attached to the building still, or lying in a garden. This blog post will concentrate on the examples from Whitfield, as it is turning into a much larger post than I had thought. Plus, in the interests of honesty and transparency… I haven’t got photographs of all of them yet!

Whitfield has some of the oldest buildings in the Glossop area, and although not really much of a ‘place’ now – essentially just a ‘suburb’ of Glossop – it was once hugely important, being built along the Chapel en le Frith to Glossop road. It gradually lost it’s importance with the rise of the mills based down in the valley, the economy here being agricultural. Whitfield’s one-time importance means that we find many old buildings and a number of datestones here. Indeed, Whitfield has more old buildings that Old Glossop, which with its Church and market, was the focus of the farmsteads and settlements of Glossodale. However, important places tend to be subject to more intense rebuilding over time, whereas more minor areas maintain their old buildings. I was going to do a distribution map of the old buildings, but changed my mind for that reason. Still, it’s worth noting that Whitfield underwent a bit of a building boom in the mid to late 18th century.

35 Whitfield Cross.

35 Whitfield Cross was built in 1773 as a farmhouse, and is a Grade II listed building – see here for more details. The narrow coursed stonework and stone mullioned windows are typical of the period.

61 Hague Street.

61 Hague Street was also built in 1773, but as a pair of weaver’s cottages, and is also a Grade II listed building. 1773 must have been busy year, and Whitfield was clearly a happening place in the late 18th century. The datestone records the initials R. J. and D. Now, presumably the ‘R’ is the surname (possibly Robinson – the family being quite prominent in Whitfield) with ‘J’ and ‘D’ being the husband and wife who are responsible for the building. I have no information regarding the people, sadly, and any information would be appreciated.

Hob Hill Cottage

Hob Hill Cottage is a remarkable building dating to 1638, making it the second oldest building with a datestone in the Glossop area (after the Bulls Head in Old Glossop, dated 1607). Also built as a farmhouse, and also a Grade II listed building (there’s a theme developing here!), I suspect it might be the source of the lead came and glass, as well as some of the 18th century pottery, I found nearby, although truthfully any one of a number of buildings – existing or long gone – might be the source.

Old School House, Hague Street.

Another Grade II listed building now – the Old School House. Joseph Hague was something of an important man – indeed, the road on which the school (now private residences) sits is named after him. Born in Chunal in 1695, he rose from poverty to amass a fortune selling yarn to weavers and buying back the cloth they produced, to sell on. However, here is not the place for a discussion of his life, or of the school (the Glossop Heritage Trust does that very well here). Let us instead look at the wonderful inscription

“This school was erected and endowed by JOSEPH HAGUE Esquire,
of Park Hall in this Parish as a testimony of Gratitude to
ALMIGHTY GOD for his favour and Blessings through a life of
years whereby he was enabled to accumulate an ample fortune
and make a plentiful Provision for his numerous Relations and
Dependents. Anno Domini 1779.”

I enjoy the slightly boastful “ample fortune“… well, if you have it, why not? The beautiful carved relief plaque of the beehive over the main door – symbol of productivity and hard work – gave inspiration for the name of the pub over the road. The Beehive pub itself is an 18th century building, with a 19th century front added, and another example of the building boom of the 18th century in Whitfield.

Old School House, Hague Street. The beehive carved in relief, surrounded by Sunflowers, and crawling with characterful bees. I love this.
62 Hague Street

Another Grade II listed building, one of several together, and originally built as a ‘laithhouse’, that is a building made up of a house, barn and byre/shippon in one. It is a late example of the type if the date is to be taken at face value, but there you go… this corner of Derbyshire wasn’t exactly at the forefront of architectural fashion. There is also a bit of confusion regarding 62 Hague Street. As it stands now, there is a simple date of ‘1751′ above the door. However, the listing for the Grade II building notes that “No.62 originally had datestone inscribed RMS 1757” (read the full listing here). The present datestone is fairly modern, carved perhaps to replace the missing stone, but it doesn’t explain the difference in date. I thought it worth mentioning for the sake of documentation and completion.

41 – 51 Cliffe Road

So who was Joel Bennett? Born 11 April 1791 to son of George Bennett and Martha Cooper, he came from a large and important local family. He may have been the same Joel Bennet who was excommunicated from Littlemoor Independent Chapel in 1828 for “disorderly walking and impenitency” (source is here). I’m unsure of what is meant here by “disorderly walking”, but given the hotbed of radical religion that was Littlemoor, one assumes it wasn’t the Georgian equivalent of Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks. He may also have bought Kinder Lee Mill in Chisworth with his brother James in 1823.

House at the bottom of Cliffe Road (4 Cross Cliff?)

This house, set back from Cross Cliffe almost at the bottom, has a wonderful datestone: stars, wheatsheaves, and a Masonic compass, with the letters ‘R’ ‘R’ ‘O’ and ‘S’. Actually, is that an ‘O’? Or perhaps a flower? I have no information about the place, nor the letters (Robinson again?), and one cannot simply knock on a door and say “What-ho… tell me about your house”. One tends to get stared at, with vague mutterings about “setting the dogs on you”, and “lunatics disturbing the peace”. Alas. If anyone has any information about this house, or indeed any of the houses, drop me a line.

Also, and seriously, if anyone knows of any more datestones that aren’t in the above list, and which date from before 1837, then please let me know. I’ll credit you, too, so you can be famous… to all 11 of you who read the blog (including Juan in Venezuela).

Oh, and some news. I’ve been working on the Glossop Cabinet YouTube account recently, and hopefully will be producing videos of me finding bits and pieces, mudlarking, talking archaeology, exploring, playing with pottery, and much more (can anyone else hear that groaning noise every time I mention pottery?). So if you like the blog, then you’ll love this. I’ll post a link asap.

Also, I’ve recently set up a Ko-Fi account which allows you lucky folk to ‘virtually’ buy me a drink if you wish. There is no pressure to do so, obviously; I do the blog because I enjoy doing it, and am constantly amazed that other people enjoy reading it (which is reward enough, it really is). However, if you do fancy buying me a pint to say cheers, I’ll never say no – please click this link, and mine’s a red.

That’s all for now I think. I’ll post something else before Christmas, possibly pottery related, you lucky lucky people (there’s that noise again). But until then, I remain,

Your humble servant,

RH

Archaeology · Oddities · Whitfield

What If…? Of Stone Heads and Stories.

Tim Campbell-GreenLeave a comment

What ho, you wonderful people, you.

So, despite having half a dozen half-written posts, piles of interesting objects and sherds to talk about, and a few adventures to recount, I want to try something a little different today. “Oh no!” I hear you cry. But fret ye not, gentle reader, for it is still archaeology, it is still Glossop based, and it is still interesting. But it is a little… quirky. You’ll see what I mean.

I have a friend who is a writer, and quite a good one at that. He has often mentioned that stories usually start with what he terms a “What If?” moment, where something – often an object – presents itself, and the question is posed “what if…?” From there the story grows, based on and around that one question. The answer that comes doesn’t have to be ‘real’, it is fiction after all, but it has to be possible. What if a house was haunted? And what if the house fell down? And what if a brick from the house was haunted too? And what if a dashing archaeologist took the brick home to write about it on his extremely popular and incredibly interesting blog? What if…?

Archaeology, I think, uses a similar technique. An object is excavated, and the interpretation – the story – begins. However, where we differ from writers is that we base our ‘what ifs…?’ on evidence and supposition grounded in data. The interpretation, in this sense, has to be ‘real‘, although it is only ‘real’ for as long as the data supports it. Sometimes though, It’s fun to play “what if…?” – and here we join today’s post.

A stone head displaying all the characteristic features, including almond eyes. This one was allegedly found on Mouselow, and now lives on a wall in Buxton Museum

Stone heads. A lot has been written about them. They are cursed and evil. Or they are warm and friendly. They are ‘Celtic’ (i.e. Iron Age or Romano-British) in date. Or they are medieval or early modern in date. Or a combination of both. They represent an unbroken pre-Christian tradition, and an aspect of the whispered ‘Old Ways‘. Or they are simply folk art, and just decorative. Or they are magically protective (that wonderful word, apotropaic, again). Or both. Or neither. A brief trawl of the internet gives a lot of different sites and opinions, ranging from the scholarly and the more open minded, to what can only be termed outright nonsense.

Whatever they are, carved stone heads are a feature of this part of the Pennines – from Longdendale, over the hills to West Yorkshire, and up to the Calder Valley. I actually have a serious project that is looking at them; cataloguing known examples from Glossop and Longdendale, and trying to place them geographically, as well as giving some sort of date to them. There are at least 23 examples from the Glossop area, with more doubtless waiting to be uncovered. But it’s an ongoing project, and not really ready to publish – here, or anywhere else for that matter – and I just keep chipping away at it. It was during the course of trying to map where they were found, that I noticed something very interesting.

Stone head in Old Glossop. Image stolen shamelessly from the Old Glossop website (follow this link – the website is very good)

Before we go any further, I should state that my personal belief is that most of the stone heads are medieval or post-medieval in date (indeed, there is a record of them being carved in the 19th Century). That’s not to say that Iron Age ‘Celtic’ examples don’t exist (one was found at Binchester Roman Fort, in County Durham in 2013), it’s just that it is very difficult to date them as they usually don’t come from any secure archaeological context, and basing a date on ‘style’ or method of carving, as has happened in the past, is notoriously dodgy. That stated, there is the possibility that I might be wrong. And this led to my ‘what if…?‘ moment.

Back to the find location, sadly the majority of the heads are simply “found in Glossop area“, and thus have no exact place. But from various sources, I was able to identify where some of the heads were found. The distribution map is below:

1:10,000 map of Glossop. The Find spots – where the heads were found – are marked in red.

They seem to be dotted all around the area: Mouselow, Manor Park Road, several in Old Glossop, etc. However, looking at the above map, I noticed there was a distinct grouping in Whitfield – four of them centred around Slatelands Road and Hollin Cross Lane. Hmmmmm… let’s have a closer look, then.

Here is the Whitfield group on the 1:2500 map.

Duke Street, Pikes Lane, St Mary’s Road, and Slatelands Road. Geographically, they are in the same tangle of roads in that area. But the heads more than likely pre-date the Victorian roads, so we need to strip them back. What was there then? Well fields, mainly, though the medieval track from Simmondley to Glossop ran through here (that blog post is coming, I promise!). And before that, the Roman road also ran through here, along Pikes Lane, before kinking over Long Clough Brook and onto the fort and settlement at Melandra.

And then, the “what if…?” hit me.

For the sake of a good story, what if these heads actually were Iron Age or Roman in date? What could this cluster mean?

Looking again at the area stripped of the Victorian houses, it’s very clearly a promontory, a high plateau that runs between two brooks – Glossop Brook to the north, and Long Clough Brook to the south. In the Iron Age, they liked their elevated places – Mouselow, which dominates the area, is a classic Iron Age hillfort, and others exist nearby, at Mellor and Mam Tor. One only has to look at St Mary’s Road from Harehills Park to see how steep those slopes are (try doing it pushing Master Hamnett in a pram with a load of shopping from Aldi). And on the other side, who hasn’t cursed Slatelands Road halfway up, gasping for breath. This is a very real landscape feature, completely masked by later development, but one which would have been very visible back then. This would have been particularly true where the peninsular narrows at the west, leading down to the junction of the two brooks. This too, is significant.

Throughout prehistory water was a sacred thing, and was considered ritually important. A spit of land, elevated, defined by water and ending in the confluence of two bodies of water, would have been hugely significant. Actually, a perfect place for an Iron Age temple or shrine, perhaps one devoted to the ‘Celtic head cult’ as suggested by scholars such as Dr Ann Ross (in her Pagan Celtic Britain)? Indeed, the North Derbyshire Archaeological Survey notes that the number of heads in the Glossop area “might suggest a cult centre” based in the town in the Romano-British period (Hart 1984:105). It has been suggested that the heads are sometimes associated with liminality and boundaries, and were protective. What if they were they placed facing down the peninsular, to mark out the sacred space, and to defend it?

The Roman road moves through this promontory, sticking to the high ground away from the valley floors and marshy terrain, as the Romans preferred (see map below). But what if the location of the possible shrine or temple influenced the choice of road location, ploughing through the sacred enclosure, perhaps to make a point about Roman dominance?

The location of the heads in relation to the landscape. The blue is the waters of Glossop Brook (north) and Long Clough Brook (south), forming the spit of land. The yellow line is the medieval trackway, and the green line is the course of the Roman road.

What if…?

Now, I’m not suggesting for a moment that that the above is absolutely true; this is a wild flight of fantasy, and pure fiction – a story. Indeed, doubts are being raised about the reality of the ‘Celtic head cult’ theory in general. But it is a possibility, at least: an archaeological what if…? However, if that isn’t the answer, there still remains the issue of why four stone heads were found in a cluster in this area. What is going on?

If we return to my original thought, that the heads are medieval or post-medieval in date, might they be related to the Simmondley – (Old) Glossop trackway in someway? If we look at the map above, we can see this track (marked in yellow) runs broadly along the line of Princess Street. And just to the east of the three of the heads run along the same alignment. Is this significant? What if people somehow, and for some reason, deposited these heads to the east of the track? But why? Well, I came across a possible reference to just such a practice in this area – Clarke states that “Oral tradition in the High Peak of Derbyshire suggests heads were buried as charms beneath newly-built roads, presumably to keep permanent watch over them” (1999:286). He cites no sources for this “oral tradition”, but this type of apotropaic function – preventing witchcraft and promoting good fortune – is associated with carved heads all over the United Kingdom (Billingsley 2016). Perhaps, then, we are seeing the ritual deposition of carved heads as part of the road building tradition.

What if…?

Heads
A pair of Whitfield Heads. These are at the end of Kershaw Street… and that is all I know about them. It’s on my ‘to do’ list, don’t worry.

No, it is a mystery, and ultimately we are left with questions for which there are no obvious answers. Three of the heads are in Manchester Museum, and the fourth presumably in the hands of the owner/finder. I will have to go and see them, as that might help in dating. As I say the project is ongoing, and any comments or help in the area would be greatly appreciated. Do you know of any stone heads? Do you have photographs of any? Or stories – they seem to attract folklore and superstition like nothing else! Please contact me in the usual way – email me, or through twitter ( @roberthamnett ). Or just come and find me in the street, as people are increasingly doing… so much for pseudonyms and anonymity!

I do hope you enjoyed the little flight of fantasy, but we’ll be back to business as usual next time – the sherds are mounting up! Until then, look after yourselves and each other.

And I remain, your humble servant

RH

References:

John Billingsley – Instances and Contexts of the Head Motif in Britain

David Clarke – The Head Cult: Tradition and Folklore Surrounding the Symbol of the Severed Human Head in the British Isles. (Unpublished PhD Thesis, accessed here)

Anne Ross – Pagan Celtic Britain: Studies in Iconography and Tradition

Bench Marks · Stones of Glossop · Towns of Glossop

A Bevy of Boundary Stones

Tim Campbell-Green2 Comments

Ho! Ho! And if I might dare, What Ho! A shortish one today, and actually one that is something of a relief, if I’m honest. Like the last post, this one has been years in the making, but this time for all the wrong reasons… all will become clear in a moment, but for now let’s crack on.

As the title suggests boundaries are today’s topic, apt as we hurtle to the Winter Solstice and the shortest day – that anciently observed boundary between the old year and the new. Boundaries such as these are often held to be dangerous places as they are a liminal space – neither one thing nor another, but somewhere in between. However, boundary stones in particular I find fascinating and strangely appealing objects; there is something very grounding about them in that they mark in a clear, permanent, and fixed way, an imaginary line. On one side ‘X’ and on the other ‘Y’, and there is no argument – the somewhat liminal boundary is made visible and real, and so it is the case with our stones today – three stones placed on bridges over various waterways delineating the townships that make up Glossop

All three, it seems, were carved and installed at the same time, and all are quite old – early Victorian. The first of the stones is the easiest found – Victoria Bridge in the centre of Glossop.

Bount
Station at the top, above the High Street crossroads. The bridge over Glossop Brook, and the stone, is circled in orange. Glossop is north of the Brook, Whitfield is south. 

And here it is in real life.

Boundary St
Victoria Bridge. Wetherspoons is in the background, and Glossop Brook runs beneath.

The bridge, and the stone, stand over Glossop Brook, which disappears under the market place and carpark, and the line carved between the words Glossop and Whitfield is the centre line of the brook below. Victoria Bridge was built in 1837, the year Queen Victoria ascended the throne, hence the name. This new bridge replaced an old and narrow hump-backed pack-saddle one. Indeed, the original line of the road that led over the bridge, down Smithy Fold, and along Ellison Street is traceable, and is preserved particularly in the buildings of the Brook Tavern, Cafeteria, Glossop Pizza, Balti Palace (all built in 1832). I have a blog post almost finished that looks at this area in more detail, so I won’t go into it here.

Looking closely, the inscription “Victoria Bridge” and the date “1837” are in a different font and slightly larger than the other lettering on the stone, and are more cramped, and it seems they were added at a later date. Indeed, compare this stone to the one below, and you can see they both once looked the same. 

And of course, it wouldn’t be the Glossop Cabinet of Curiosities without a bench mark, this one on the bridge and just to the left of the boundary stone. 

Victoria Bridge
This is what 495.7 ft above sea level looks like.

The next stone is to be found on Charlestown Road, on a bridge over Long Clough Brook – it’s very much a blink and you’ll miss it kind of affair, even if you are walking. 

Bounty
Turnlee and Charlestown Roads join at the top, with the boundary stone circled in orange.
bound3
Here is the bridge over Long Clough Brook on Charlestown Road. The stone is visible.
bound1
Here it is in close-up. Can you spot a mistake?

This stone follows the same formula as the Victoria Bridge stone, but is slightly rougher in execution. It seems to have been reset into a rebuilt stone wall at some stage, as it doesn’t really match the coarse  surface of the stone around it, and this resetting might explain the cracking. It also has an inexcusable mistake… there’s a bloody apostrophe after ‘township’! It should read ‘TOWNSHIPS’, the plural of township, but instead it reads that ‘Township’ owns something called an ‘of Simmondley and Whitfield’! Also, although it states that this is the boundary between Simmondley and Whitfield, it technically isn’t. This is the border between Chunal and Simmondley, but it seems that for administrative purposes, Chunal and Whitfield were often lumped together. The confluence of Bray Clough (from Gnat Hole) and Long Clough Brook (just east of the boundary bridge) is actually the meeting of the three townships of Chunal, Simmondley, and Whitfield, here:  

bounty2
The three townships illustrated at the junction of Bray Clough Brook and Long Clough Brook. Chunal in green, Simmondley in red, and Whitfield in yellow.

So far, so good.

Now, the third and final stone was a bit more of a mystery. According to Neville Sharp (Glossop Remembered p.184 – a great book, by the way, well worth seeking out – here for example, but order it from Bay Tree Books on the High Street, of course), a stone similar to the one on Victoria Bridge stood on the bridge over Hurst Brook which forms the north eastern boundary between Glossop and Whitfield. That is until it was washed away in a flash flood.

Bound4
High Street East at the top, with Derbyshire Level running from the Royal Oak off the map at the bottom. The word stone on the bridge over Hurst Brook is circled.

Then, whilst doing some research, I came across a reference to the stone and made a note in my notebook that until at least 1977 the stone stood next to the entrance to Golf Course. Annoyingly, I didn’t take down the reference and it’s taken me 3 years to track down the source of the information. Three years! Such is the level of detail and dedication I devote to this blog in order that you, gentle reader, can revel in such a fascinating subject as “bits of old plate” as it was once described by the person who runs the ‘Official Glossop‘ twitter account. Honestly, the nerve of some people…

So I re-found the source – this website – and blow me if it didn’t have a link to photographs of the stone taken in 1977:

Boundary Stone 1 (1977)
Entrance to the golf course on Derbyshire Level, the boundary stone bottom centre, in the glorious sunshine of the summer of 1977

 

Boundary Stone 2 (1977)
Close up of the boundary stone with part of the word ‘Glossop’ visible. Please note that I don’t have the copyright to these photographs, and make no claim to such, they are merely ‘borrowed’ from the above site.

The stone was presumably recovered, in its broken state, and set up on the side of the Golf Club entrance, and whilst it doesn’t look like there is a lot left I went to have a look.

Boundary St1
The same view as the first photograph above, missing the important piece.

Alas… the stone is no longer there. I had a good look around at all the stones that might be a possibility, but to no avail. I suspect that someone has taken it – it was a nice piece of stone after all, but it is a shame. All is not negative, though, and from the 1977 photograph we might suggest where it originally stood; the fact that the fragmentary word ‘Glossop’ is visible at the left hand end of the stone means that it could only have stood at the eastern side of the bridge, closest the golf course, for it to make geographic sense – Glossop is north, Whitfield is south at this point. Here, in fact:

bound2
Here. You can see the modern(ish) bridge that must have replaced the one that was washed away. Here, Hurst Brook separates Whitfield (right) from Glossop (left).

Its fragmentary nature also suggests that more of it lies in the stream bed – I had a look, but couldn’t see any likely stones, but perhaps next summer I’ll have a poke around. 

Right ho, that’s all for this time. Hope you enjoyed a ramble around the boundaries, and in fact I am writing a blog post that actually covers the boundaries of medieval Glossopdale based on a 13th century perambulation. I’d also like to do another that looks at the boundaries of all 10 townships of Glossop as they are in the Domesday Book, which could be a bit of fun. ‘Could‘ being the operative word here. And ‘fun‘ being an entirely subjective concept, I realise. But you, kind and gentle people, know what I mean… after all, you’re reading this. Please drop me any thoughts or hints, even to point out my mistakes, or the fact that I need a haircut. Take care of yourselves and each other, have a very merry Christmas, and until next time, I remain.

Your humble servant, 

RH