Magpie Mine, Peter’s Rock and Litton Mill

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So much for posting every week – once again it’s been something of a summer! However, I’ve submitted the Dark History of Colchester to Amberley Press; discovered that collecting postcards is called deltiology; and nearly completed a Dark History of the Peak District. I’m collating images at the moment. And this is what led to today’s topic – a short round trip to gather photographs. And for those of you of a delicate disposition you may wish to turn away now.

The Magpie Mine near Sheldon first began mining for lead in 1740. Today it defines itself as the best preserved 19th century lead mine in the country. However, what its really famous for is the deaths of 1833. Rival groups of miners followed the Great Redsoil Vein of lead ore and rather unfortunately came to blows over who held the rights to it. Each group lit fires underground to force their rivals out. Three miners from the Maypitt Mine suffocated underground.

In all twenty-four Magpie Miners were arrested but when the case came before the judge at Derby it was decided that the Maypitt Miners should not have gone below ground in the circumstances nor did any one miner admit to having lit the fatal fire. Locally the legend of the ‘widows’ curse’ suggests that justice was served by other means.

The Magpie Mine’s Cornish engine house dates to 1869 – it was built at a time when the main shaft was deepened to 208 metres.

From there it was a hop and a skip to Ashford in the Water where you would have thought I’d have photographed the sheep wash bridge in the sunshine. I didn’t – I had a very lovely breakfast at the Ashford Arms before journeying via Monsal Head to the northern end of Cressbrook Dale and Peter’s Stone – or Gibbet Rock. In 1815 the toll house keeper at nearby Wardlow Mires was killed for her red leather shoes. Her murderer, Anthony Lingard from Tideswell was found guilty of the crime and executed at Derby. His body was transported back to the Peak District and suspended in the gibbet at Peter’s Stone as a warning to others – apparently it was the last gibbeting in Derbyshire. The view is rather cheerier these days.

From there it was a short journey to Tideswell, a quick look at the church and a hunt for the house of correction on Commercial Street – sadly it wasn’t very photographic because of the number of cars parked out front but I did have a look in the wool shop! Inevitably as we began the leg of the journey back to Buxton we paused at Litton Mill where poor apprentices died in their droves. Robert Blincoe, who was sent there from the St Pancras Workhouse, recounted his experiences and became the inspiration for Charles Dickens when he wrote Oliver Twist. Blincoe was initially apprenticed to a cotton mill in Nottinghamshire – without any payment until he reached adulthood – when the mill closed in 1802, Blincoe was sent to Litton. He detailed the horrors of a fourteen hour working day, savage beatings, starvation and abuse. Children who died at the mill were buried at Tideswell and Taddington.

From there it was on to Buxton and a nice cup of coffee in the Poole’s Cavern cafe. I had hoped to find some old postcards of the Peak District in town but there was no luck. It’s perhaps not surprising as deltiology is the third most popular hobby in the country after stamp and coin collecting.

Now I’m conscious that if I was currently receiving a mark for the frequency of my posts I’d receive something like ‘could do better.’ Fingers crossed!

Dicky’s Skull – when folk lore and tourism collide to make history.

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https://www.nationalchurchestrust.org/church/taxal-st-james

It was said that the coming of the London and North Western Railway in 1863 from Stockport to Buxton was impacted by a supernatural skull, known as Dicky, when during the building work a railway embankment near Tunstead Farm when the line crossed the Coombs valley to Chapel-en-le-Frith slipped and the foundations of a bridge sank on several occasions.  Eventually the company had to relocate the bridge.  Local writers blamed Dicky for the expense and embellished the story with details of buried tools rather than consider that geology might have had its part to play.

The skull and the beleaguered inhabitants of Tunstead Farm was one of the most famous of the Peak District’s folk tales. In 1809, when John Hutchinson’s tour through the High Peak of Derbyshire was first published. Hutchinson met the owner of the farmhouse, Adam Fox, who claimed that the skull had been a feature of the property for the previous 200 years. There are several stories about the skull that used to be found at Tunstead Farm, near Chapel-en-le-Frith before its removal during the twentieth century to St James’ Church, Taxal, including the version that Ned Dixon was murdered by his cousin when he returned home after lengthy service as a soldier in Europe during the sixteenth century.  Dixon’s murderous cousin was troubled by the appearance of the skull which remained at the farm despite attempts to remove it.  By 1895, another story had sprouted: the skull belonged to a woman who was killed by her own sister during a quarrel over a man they both loved.  

In reality, how the farm came to be home to the skull is a matter for conjecture.  William Bunting, a historian writing in 1940, claimed that it was an archaeological find dating from the Iron Age.

Railway owners who developed lines and opened stations inside the Peak District discovered that passenger traffic was larger than they anticipated.  By the 1840s it accounted for two thirds of their revenue.  The Midland Railway opened at station at Buxton on 1 June 1863 from Derby while the London and North Western Railway opened its own, identical, station a fortnight later.  Affordable travel drew day trippers from the middle and working classes who lived in the industrial towns that surrounded the Peak District. The new arrivals wanted more than hills and dry-stone walls.  Dicky’s skull became part of the Peak District’s lore offering entertainment that appealed to the visitors and a method of boosting the local economy.  It was even possible to buy postcards featuring the farm and the skull.

Inevitably, Dicky is not the UK’s only haunted skull. There are several purportedly screaming skulls. At Burton Agnes, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Anne Griffiths was attacked and died soon afterwards having extracted a promise that her head would remain in the hall. Unsurprisingly her family did not comply with the request but soon wished that they had. To avoid continued disturbance Anne’s head was buried somewhere in the walls of the newly built house.

While history relies on recorded evidence – folk lore fills the gaps and there’s nothing like a spot of embellishment to improve a story in its telling!

Burton Agnes, East Yorkshire

Guide Stoops and turnpikes – a couple of random facts.

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Ashover – Stone Guide Stoop by Neil Theasby, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I’ve settled down to read The Guide Stoops of Derbyshire by Howard Smith. Essentially prior to the establishment of Turnpike Roads travellers and pack ponies travelled by a network of roads and tracks without much in the way of sign posts – making longer journeys something of a dangerous activity – consider Celia Fiennes local guide who became lost in the Peak District at the end of the seventeenth century.

Derbyshire’s administrators – the local JPs- set about improving matters with the extension in the number of guide stones between 1717 and 1734, although the Hope Cross on the Roman road dates from 1737 and is probably a replacement of a medieval way marker. They were responding – somewhat late in the day to an act of Parliament dating from 1709 which required all parishes to set up way markers. The Peak District’s stoop stones catered for the more isolated routes. North Yorkshire’s justices had issued the same demands in 1711 while the West Riding’s guide stoops were expanded in 1700 in response to an earlier act of Parliament dating to 1697. In Yorkshire stoop stones are also known as hand stones – presumably because of the pointing hands that are sometimes carved on them.

However the arrival of turnpike roads changed matters quite considerably in terms of travelling by road and the marking of roads. In 1773 a Turnpike Act made fingerposts obligatory.

And finally, here is my favourite fact of the day – on page 14 of Howard’s work. A 3-ton waggon needed 8 horses to pull it. The same amount carried on the backs of the animals required 30 horses making the waggon a much more economical way of carrying heavy goods.

Medieval Angels

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Ripon Cathedral Angels

I’m starting to gather my resources for a 2027 Zoom class about angels – lets face it if you go into a church or cathedral there they are – in stone, glass or metal – from medieval to modern. Inevitably I shall be exploring both the theologies and the philosophies attached to angels from the early Middle Ages onwards (actually I may well be going back even earlier – the Romans had their own version of angels.

So I’ve gone back to my photos – still can’t access that external hard drive- and right at the start of the photo library was Ripon Cathedral (St Peter and St Winifred). I seem to remember that the quire contains angels wherever you look, they appear on the walls, tops of columns and the misericords. Then there are the carvings on the fifteenth century quire screen depicting angels playing musical instruments. I think the examples at the start of this post are from the north wall but since I don’t have a notebook identifying the location of each photo I take, I am relying on memory.

Medieval masons – and these particular examples have been restored by the Victorians- sought to carve angels in quires as it was a way of merging the earthly choir with the heavenly host and it was also a reminder of God’s presence. I suppose you might also argue that angels were guardians of the space and if you think about the structure of a church a step closer to the most holy of spaces inside the cathedral – there’s the nave for ordinary people, the choir and then the high altar. The quire or chancel is an area that transitions from the everyday world to the most holy location in a church or cathedral. The screen and the angels are a reminder of the hierarchy.

The coat of arms with the gules (red) field with crossed keys and pascal lamb are the historic arms of the Diocese of Ripon.

The arms with the or (gold) field and the gules knot or fret is more problematic and I’ll admit to being stumped. It’s not a Harrington knot so I don’t think it’s a Markenfield device not least because their main heraldic arms are (argent) silver with a diagonal black (sable) band known as a ‘bend’ containing three bezants (gold coins). The Markenfields were an influential family in the area and several generations of them are buried in the cathedral.

The gules coat of arms with the crossed keys and crown belongs to the Diocese of York reflecting the close relationship of the two, although I think now Ripon is part of the Diocese of Leeds.

And finally there’s the coat of arms with the azure field and three mullets (stars) or which belongs to St Wilfred. The saint founded the cathedral in AD672. The crypt at Ripon is, of course, the oldest surviving in any English cathedral.

Before I forget – Ripon’s association with angels includes the ten thousand origami angels created during Covid and installed in the cathedral entitled ‘A Wing and a Prayer’. Money raised went to the restoration of the cathedral and the Yorkshire Air Ambulence service. Unfortunately I don’t have any images as unsurprisingly we didn’t do much in the way of travelling in 2020.

Friar, Stephen (ed). A new Dictionary of Heraldry (London: A & C Black, 1987)

Monday Book: The Valley of Ravens, Barbara Erskine

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Time-slip fiction combining history, the supernatural and romance at its best that also includes a character from the iconic Lady of Hay. Atmospheric story telling and richly observed characterisation meeting with obsessions from the past and the present. Like her other novels it’s immersive and the pace builds. Set in the Welsh marches readers encounter Llywelyn the Last Prince of Wales and the fraught politics and wars of the thirteenth century. Meticulous research about his daughter Gwenllian who was born a few months before his death and her fate when Edward I captured Llywelyn’s brother David and his family draw attention to women without power its consequences for their lives – a factor at play in the story of Alys, a healer, whose story is at the heart of Erskine’s novel. The history of the period casts its shadow across the novel and the life of Erskine’s modern character, Eve – who faces a different kind of persecution while at the same time living in a place where the weight of the past pushes through into the present. Couldn’t put it down!

And as it happens I have recently revisited the fate of Gwenllian of Wales while exploring the life of Eleanor of Castile. An infant at the time of her father’s death, Gwenllian was his only legitimate heir. She was captured, when she was 18-months-old, along with her uncle, Dafydd, and his family on 21 June 1283 at Nanhysglain in Snowdonia. For Dafydid, a brutal execution at Shrewsbury followed. He had, after all, shifted his allegiance one too many times so far as Edward I was concerned.

Gwenllian was separated from her cousins. Daffyd’s legitimate daughter and Gwenllian, with a claim to the crown of Wales, were sent to nunneries to prevent them from marrying and their families contesting Edward’s claim to Wales. Also sent to England for a lifetime of contemplation were Daffyd’s other six, or possibly seven, daughters. Gwenllian, who was twice over a cousin of Edward I due to her descent from King John’s daughter, Joan and the fact that her mother Eleanor was Edward’s cousin, was sent to Sempringham, a Gilbertine priory in Lincolnshire. Dafydd’s own daughter, Gwladys, was sent to Sixhills, another Gilbertine priory in Lincolnshire. Their fate was kinder than the one which befell Dafydd’s sons who were incarcerated in Bristol Castle for the rest of their lives.

Edward I wrote to the prioress that as an ‘innocent’ Gwenllian should be treated with pity given her age and sex. It seemed that while he wanted her removed from the Welsh line of succession he did not want her badly treated or harmed. Four years later, Edward sent an administrator to Lincolnshire to report on the way that Gwenllian and her cousins were being treated and cared for. He also arranged for a pension of £20 a year to be paid to the priory for her care.

The monastery accommodated around 120 nuns and 60 monks – the Gilbertines running double, segregated, houses. Gwenllian, veiled as an infant, spent the rest of her 54 years in Lincolnshire – dying 1337. The Gilbertines took vows of chastity, poverty and obedience but in 1327 when Gwenllian petitioned Edward II she described herself as Prince of Wales – reminding the king ( who would be dead by September) that his father had promised land and rent for the house at Sempringham to fund the pension. It was Edward III who granted her a pension of £20 a year for life.

In April 1328 Edward III visited Sempringham and granted the priory a charter that April.

If you want to know more about Gwenllian and her mother – Sharon Bennett Connolly’s book Ladies of the Magna Carta: Women and Influence in Thirteenth Century England is an excellent starting point.

A plaque commemorating the princess, who was abducted from her homeland, was raised in 1993 at Sempringham at St Andrew’s Church – which contains all that remains of the priory Her grave was lost during the dissolution of the monasteries.

‘Houses of the Gilbertine order: The priory of Sempringham’, in A History of the County of Lincoln: Volume 2, ed. William Page (London, 1906), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lincs/vol2/pp179-187 [accessed 8 June 2026].

Alexander of Abingdon

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Side views of Eleanor of Castile, medieval statues from Waltham Cross, held by the V & A (photo J. Brod) accessed from https://www.abingdon.gov.uk/abingdon_people/alexander-of-abingdon)

Logically Alexander came from Abingdon – which during the thirteenth century gained a reputation for masonry. Alexander became a court sculptor associated with a group of masons that worked at Westminster. He’s even identified in Eleanor of Castile’s accounts (well the executors of her estates) as an image maker. Inevitably little is known about Alexander other than his role at court as an image maker and that it is likely that he received his training during the building of Abingdon Abbey.

It was Alexander who was given the task of carving the stone chest upon which Eleanor’s effigy rests in Westminster Abbey, at Lincoln Cathedral, and the wax models for the metal images of Eleanor at Blackfriars where her heart was buried – lost at the Reformation.

He also created the images of Eleanor that appear on the Eleanor Crosses (the V and A holds the medieval images of Eleanor from the cross at Waltham). We know that Alexander charged 5 marks each for the seven deportations of Eleanor on the cross at Charing.

A statue of the Virgin and Child, held by the Metropolitan Museum in New York is attributed to Alexander because of its style – he was good at folds and draperies – and of course, its worth mentioning that the images he created of Eleanor took their form from the saints and statues of the Virgin Mary that he carved – religious iconography was part and parcel of medieval life. During my reading I also discovered that his work marks the move from the Gothic to the Decorated style.

Virgin and Child, attributed to Alexander of Abingdon. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchase, Edward J. Gallagher Jr. Bequest, in memory of his father, Edward Joseph Gallagher, his mother, Ann Hay Gallagher, and his son, Edward Joseph Gallagher III; and Caroline Howard Hyman Gift, 2003

He was still at work in 1316 (in a document that associates him with Michael of Canterbury) and while it is difficult to be certain it is thought that he sculpted the figures on the tombs of Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster at Westminster Abbey and Bishop de Luda at Ely. It’s also thought that a shrine (to St Edburg) at Stanton Harcourt that was originally in Bicester Abbey (we’re back to the Dissolution of the Abbeys) and an effigy at Aldworth near Abingdon (Joan, Lady De la Beche) were also created by Alexander but it is difficult to be certain. Evidentially it is only the sculptures associated with Eleanor that historians can be certain about.

Joan, Lady de La Beche, Aldworth, St Mary’s Church attributed to Alexander of Abingdon.

Hourihane, Colum. The Grove Encyclopaedia of Medieval Art and Architecture. (2012)

Alexander of Abingdon
Alexander of Abingdon

Monday Book: The Queen’s Painter by Wendy Holden

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A sympathetic reimagining of Hans Holbein’s life and relationships in England, the story places Holbein at the centre of a web of intrigue at the Tudor court. Wendy Holden undertook extensive research for this book, and it shows on every page. The historical detail is richly woven into the narrative without ever overwhelming the story, bringing Tudor England vividly to life. Holden has a particular talent for humanising historical figures, and her portrayal of Holbein, Wyatt, Cromwell and Henry VIII is both convincing and deeply engaging. The court’s rivalries, shifting loyalties, and political tensions provide a compelling backdrop, while the personal relationships at the heart of the novel add warmth and emotional depth. As with many of Holden’s books, the writing is accessible, immersive, and meticulously researched, striking an excellent balance between historical authenticity and storytelling. It proved to be one of the best works of historical fiction I have read this year and is highly recommended for readers who enjoy well-crafted historical novels populated by believable characters.

Wendy Holden’s other works of historical fiction often focus on more recent history and women linked to the royal family including Wallis Simpson. All her works of historical fiction are meticulously researched and maintain a balance between storytelling and history. Inevitably I loved the historical notes at the back of The Queen’s Painter. And you wouldn’t have thought there could have been much more written about Anne Boleyn – or Thomas Cromwell for that matter!

St Luke’s Church, Sheen and its gargoyles

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Sheen is on the boundary between Staffordshire and Derbyshire within the Peak District. In 1327, when Edward II had been deposed and Isabella of France and her lover – Roger Mortimer- were acting as regents for Edward III, 8 people were assessed for tax in the village which continued to expand across the centuries.

In 1666, 33 people paid hearth tax. This was a tax granted by Parliament to Charles II in 1662 to fund his household. Householders were required to pay 1 shilling per year for each hearth, stove or fireplace in their property – so basically it was a wealth tax. The more fireplaces you had, the bigger your home was and thus the more you were required to pay.

The population reached 458 by 1871 but began to decline after that. It was during the 1850s that the church was rebuilt and a new house provided for the vicar as well as a school and a reading room.

The manor of Sheen originally belonged to Wulfric Spot, an Anglo Saxon noble who lived during the reign of Æthelred the Unready. He was a patron of Burton Abbey dedicated to St Modwen. In about 1003 he granted land at Sheen to the abbey but by 1086 the manor lay in the hands of William the Conqueror. However, the conqueror and the papacy confirmed Burton Abbey’s ownership of the chapel at Sheen and granted them the tithes accruing from it. At that time the chapel was described as being dependent upon the church at Ilam.

In 1529, with the Reformation Parliament settling in to make the break with Rome so that Henry VIII could divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, the abbey leased the chapel along with its glebe (the plot of land belonging to the church), the tithes and offerings to the curate of Sheen -Henry Longworth and his brother Thomas for their lives. In 1536, Henry was granted a 30 year lease on the church and the responsibility for providing a priest. Evidently the monks at Burton were anxious to ensure that their property remained, if possible, out of the hands of the Crown. it seems that Henry left money for the building of the church tower when he died in 1541.

However, the Crown was not to be thwarted. In 1546 Henry VIII granted Burton Abbey’s possessions – together with the chapel at Sheen to Sir William Paget who began his political career as the MP for Lichfield in 1529. By the time of the grant he was one of Henry’s privy councillors. In his turn Paget leased the chapel to Ralph Crane of Middleton – and the chapel ceased to be part of Ilam’s parish. Crane’s family inherited the right to appoint the curate but in 1743, as part of Queen Anne’s Bounty, the curacy became a perpetual curacy.

Queen Anne’s Bounty was a fund established in 1704 to improve the incomes of poor clerics in the Church of England – it effectively returned church taxes to Sheen so that the curate’s salary could be improved. The idea was that the Bounty would make donations made by local landowners

The current church at Sheen dates from 1852 when it was rebuilt by A.J.B. Hope in the style of the original 14th century church. The tower was buttressed and raised. Instead of a spire it was covered with a copper cap. Locally it is believed that the four gargoyles at the bottom of the tower (who appear to retain their interest in water if the watering cans and buckets are anything to go by!) were destined to sit atop another storey but that the architect feared the foundations weren’t strong enough – it’s certainly the reason why the projected spire was abandoned. Porteous’ book, entitled Peakland, written in 1954 and the Historic England website state that they belong to the earlier medieval church that stood upon the same site.

A P Baggs, M F Cleverdon, D A Johnson, N J Tringham, ‘Sheen’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 7, Leek and the Moorlands, ed. C R J Currie, M W Greenslade (London, 1996), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol7/pp239-250 [accessed 23 May 2026].

Deserted villages

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There’re a variety of reasons why villages and settlements might have been deserted in the past. The obvious reason relates to the Black Death of 1348. Other reasons include landlords deciding to use an area for a new purpose. For instance, at Nether Haddon in the Peak District, the settlement was moved so that a new deer park could be created, Other settlements were relocated or abandoned due to an increase in wool production, enclosure and even the end of the monasteries which saw former monastic land end up in the hands of private landowners.

Climate change has its own story to tell – and at places like Hungry Bentley – also in Derbyshire which can’t have been particularly prosperous in the first place given its name – a couple of bad years would be enough to see a village deserted. Of course, living close to the coast could bring its own problems. Dunwich was once a thriving port but now its a ruin thanks to storms and coastal erosion.

In all there are about 3,000 deserted or vanished settlements in England – from across the centuries. The number of deserted medieval settlements in 1968 stood at 2,263 which was updated in 1977. Derbyshire had gained five lost settlements by that time rising from 33 to 37; the West Riding held steady at 75 settlements while Nottinghamshire had actually lost a settlement dropping from 67 to 66. The county with the biggest number of lost settlements is the North Riding of Yorkshire with 176 missing settlements. The University of Hull maintains a database of more than 2,200 sites.

Once upon a time Conksbury, which is on private property and not accessible, was part of the royal manor of Bakewell which William the Conqueror granted to William Peverel. He in turn granted land near Conksbury to Lenton Priory which he founded in Nottinghamshire while Conksbury was later given to St Mary de Pratis Abbey, Leicester by William Avenal – where it remained until the dissolution of the monasteries.

Henry VI hung on to it for a while as did the later Tudors but by 1610 it was part of the Cavendish family land holdings and as such remains part of the Devonshire estate. Magna Britannia states that Meadow Place Grange was given to Sir William Cavendish in 1552. The packhorse bridge at Conksbury was rebuilt in the 18th century to carry traffic and there were tolls for its upkeep from 1758 onwards.

John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey – the problem of his wife.

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Sandal Castle

Last week I posted that Surrey was married twice. Except Surrey only had one wife – Alice de Lusigan. May thanks goes to Sharon Bennett Connolly who kindly explained that the theory of a second wife comes from the suggestion that Isabella, Surrey’s daughter, was only a girl when she married John Balliol but that was a mistake made by a chronicler who wrote the account. The same chronicler also said Balliol was a mere boy at the time of the marriage, which he wasn’t – all of which scuppers the evidence of a second wife. There no mention of another anywhere in the primary sources – which is inconvenient to put it mildly. Once upon a time I might well have panicked but now I think it just goes to demonstrate what a tricky business it can be identifying wives and daughters!

The chronicle in question was written by Thomas Wykes who thought that Balliol was Edward I’s ward and then he described Isabella de Warenne as a young girl – though as a daughter of Alice de Lusigan she would have been considerably older. And voila – the mystery of the two wives is solved – it all rests on the age of Isabella when she married.

Happily while I was digging around I came across the fact that the de Warennes owned Wakefield Manor from about 1100 onwards and there was an enquiry in 1280/1281 about Surrey’s ownership of lands in and around Halifax. Surrey claimed hunting rights and free warren among his possessions there – a charter dating from Henry III confirmed his rights.

Surrey’s grandson, also named John, inherited the title but had no lawful issue, thanks to a life time of trying to get out of his marriage to Joan of Bar. His mistress, Maud of Nerford, did have children and John later married to Isabel Holland (Joan was still inconveniently very much alive if I’ve got my dates right.) The 7th earl surrendered his estates to Edward III in 1316 in return for a land settlement made to his sons by Maud.

When Isabel Holland died Wakefield Manor reverted to the crown – and Edward III gave it to his son the Earl of Cambridge. For those of you, who like me enjoy making connections, Cambridge’s son, Edward, Earl of Rutland was killed at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. He was, in turn, succeeded by his nephew – Richard Duke of York – who of course ‘gave battle in vain’ and was killed at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460. When his son, Edward, ascended the throne as Edward IV, the manor was once again Crown land.

If you wish to know more about the de Warenne Earls of Surrey I recommend Sharon’s blog History – the interesting bits – they are and it is! Her new book is just out as well – Princesses of the Early Middle Ages: Royal Daughters of the Conquest.

Turner, Joseph Horsfall, The History of Brighouse, Rastrick, and Hpperholm: With Manorial Notes on Coley, Lightcliffe, Northowram, Shelf, Fixby, Clifton and Kirklees. (1893) – which is freely available via Google books.