Today is a bit different. This is probably a longer read than usual, and one that I found while I was having a spring clean of my laptop but I hope that you enjoy it.
Marsden, situated at the top of the Colne Valley, nestles into the millstone grit of the Pennine hills. It’s a gateway to open spaces and beautiful moorland scenery, home to curlews and rare twites. It is also the last town in the West Riding before crossing into Lancashire. The Romans passed this way building a road between York and Chester in AD 79. From medieval times onwards, Marsden was the natural crossing point for travellers, merchants and goods as they travelled from east to west. It became the home for mill masters and revolutionaries. Just eight miles from Huddersfield along the A62, Marsden boasts ancient tracks and pathways, turnpike roads, and the Huddersfield Narrow Canal.
I park in the National Trust car park at the top of the town. This vast space used to be the old goods yard. I head towards the National Trust Estate Office and exhibition centre where I discover a small but informative display about Marsden’s past, the richness of its moors and the diversity of its wildlife, its role as a transport hub, textile town and the fact that it has, on average, forty inches of rain each year.
I pause on the brow of the hill opposite the Railway Inn to take in the hills on the far side of the valley, the tall chimneys – relics of Marsden’s industrial heritage, the church and the snug looking folds of houses. Then I turn right onto the tranquil towpath alongside the canal towards Tunnel End. The canal arrived here in 1804 but then the navvies faced the task of crossing the Pennines. The canal tunnel I’m heading for is the highest, longest at 3.2 miles and deepest in the country. Thomas Telford engineered it. Since 2001 the Huddersfield Canal Society have lovingly restored the waterway and turned it into a haven for wildlife, fishermen and for visitors. The first canals hugged the contours of the land whereas the Huddersfield Narrow Canal climbs to Marsden and then cuts straight through the hills to Diggle in Lancashire. No wonder it is an example of a heroic canal- built during the second phase of canal building when nature was seen as an obstacle to be overcome. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing. Anything was possible – so long as it involved picks, shovels and the odd keg of gunpowder.
When it was complete men legged their boats through the long deep dark tunnel because there was no towpath at this point. A towpath would have added enormous construction costs to the tunnel that took seventeen years to complete. The horses that usually towed the barges were led over the top of the hill giving them a well-earned rest from their loads while the crew ‘walked’ their vessel through the tunnel by laying on their backs and walking along the top of the tunnel.
I follow the canal back in the direction of Marsden before taking a wooded path through the picnic area. It brings me down the hill and across Mellor Bridge. There are no packhorses wending their way or clattering over the narrow stone bridge this morning. There’s just me and the sound the River Colne singing as it laps and splashes on its way. Marsden boasts not one but two packhorse bridges built specifically to allow winding caravans of merchandise and supplies across the river. Packhorses and weary folk trudged along centuries old trails that radiated out from Marsden until 1759 or 1760 when Blind Jack Metcalfe of Knaresburgh built a turnpike road that followed a more direct route.
Bundles of heather were laid on the boggy ground to stabilise it for the road builders. The road was built on top of this. The turnpike was the name for a gate lowered across the road to ensure that travellers using it paid their toll. Part of Blind Jack’s road survives today as Old Mount Road. Unsurprisingly, given its strategic location, Marsden had not one but three turnpikes. Each one was designed to improve on the one that came before. The A62 follows the line of the last turnpike road though I’m beginning to be very grateful to the Highways Agency. Travelling across the Pennines in times past sounds rather a hazardous, not to mention gruelling, business.
From the bridge, which looks like it might be the ideal residence for a troll, it is a few short steps to the shadow dappled and very substantial looking church of St Bartholomew built in 1899. It’s sometimes called the ‘Cathedral of the Colne Valley’. I’m looking for something rather smaller today though. I cross the road. Although the original church was demolished, its memory lingers still. Old tombstones form the path into a green space delineating the former site for worship. Here I discover a soot and lichen darkened memorial to Enoch and James Taylor.
The Taylor brothers are closely associated with the Luddites. Skilled workers called croppers worked finished woollen cloth using enormous hand-held shears. During the opening decade of the Eighteenth Century croppers were being put out of work by a new technology- the cropping frame- that did the work more quickly and which did not require the numbers of men. The workers, fearing for their jobs, their homes and the lives of their families petitioned the government of the time for help. Finally, seeing no alternative croppers banded together and smashed the machines that were destroying their livelihoods. They worked under the leadership of the mysterious General Ludd. The term Luddite was born.
And the Taylors? The Taylor brothers were blacksmiths. Their forges made both the machines and the huge iron hammers that the Luddites used to break them in and around the Huddersfield area. A popular joke at the time was ‘Enoch made them, Enoch breaks them’. Strangely, the Luddites never targeted the Taylor brothers- possibly because they were republican sympathisers. Instead, the Luddites focused their anger on the masters who put them out of work. William Horsfall of Marsden owned Ottiwells Mill employing some four hundred men, women and children. He had no sympathy for the Luddites or for the plight of his workers. He was deeply unpopular because of his outspoken desire to put down the Luddite unrest with whatever force necessary. Perhaps it is not surprising that the authorities stationed both infantry and cavalry in Marsden to deal with any trouble. It did not save Horsfall. He was killed on his way home from Huddersfield one market day in April 1812. Today his mill is gone as are the forges where the Taylor brothers made the machines that did the work of five men. Their foundry has been replaced by a primary school. Basking in the sun it is hard to believe that Marsden was once a hotbed of discontent.
I continue across the green encountering an old set of stocks before cutting between a block of new flats and over a footbridge that brings me into the Market Place where I’m delighted by a three dimensional model sculpted by Mick Kirkby-Gedded entitled Marsden’s Canal offering a bird’s eye view of the town and its surroundings. I pause to look at the river as it gushes over the weir. A row of ducks slumber on the edge of the water. Today they have the river to themselves but on sunny weekends the banks ring to the sound of laughing children paddling in the Colne. An elderly gentleman in a flat cap nods and tells me that ‘It’s a grand day for it.” It is too.
Peel Street is a bustling place with the post office, a grocer’s, cafes, restaurants, assorted craft shops and even a pub with its own microbrewery. The red and cream clock tower of the Mechanics Institute is a natural focus. It was opened in 1861 by public description and today houses the local library. The Information Point is across the road. Its helpful and friendly staff advises me on walks and other places of interest that I might like to visit in the afternoon. They also point out where to find some very famous locations indeed. Auntie Wainwright’s shop from Last of the Summer Wine lurks around the corner in Oliver Street.
My visit is all but ended now. There’s just the climb back up Station Hill to the car park with a backwards glance in the direction of the buttery sandstone shell of a mill that once employed hundreds of people. Then I’m surprised to hear the clip-clop of hooves. Am I dreaming? For a moment I wonder if it’s the ghost of a pack horse beginning its journey across the moors towards Manchester. My dreams are interrupted by the chunter of the Trans-Pennine train service drawing to a halt and by the sound of a dog barking. “Grand day for it,” says its owner. And for the second time today I agree.
