The Antiquarian Magazine & Bibliographer; Vol. 4, July-Dec 1884Various
History
The Antiquarian Magazine & Bibliographer; Vol. 4, July-Dec 1884
Various
Archaeology -- Periodicals; Great Britain -- Antiquities -- Periodicals
The Calder, which is a very sinuous stream, runs a most irregular but
charmingly diversified course as it winds under scout and scar, now
gliding smoothly past belts of woodland or by long stretches of fair
pastoral field, or again in narrower channel foaming more rapidly
through wild ravine or over rocky weir, only again to slip into more
tranquil waters, pleasantly gladdening as with quiet familiarity village
and thorpe. Leaving Todmorden the tourist passes on the right the
precipitous woods of Erringden, the dene or valley of the Irringas,
where of yore probably dwelt a branch of the family of the Aruns; and on
the other hand, towering far away on the heights to the north may be
seen the bleak, solitary, altar-like mass of rock known as Llads-Law,
conjectured by some to be a Druidical ruin. The Celt lived here beyond
all doubt, though but few are the traces he has left behind in cromlech
or cairn, in speech or blood. The Roman, we know, cut his way through
the primeval forests, and on these very mountains laid down his military
roads, the long lines of which we can map out, and oft-times does the
plough turn up fragments of rusted sword and broken spear which tell how
the pierced hand had to drop them for ever. On and near these roads,
after the iron legions had ceased to tramp them, sprung up many a Saxon
“ton” or town and Danish “by.” There, on the one hand, upon the heights
still difficult to scale except to born mountaineers, is perched Saxon
Heptonstall, with its grand old tower of Saint Thomas à Becket and
antique homesteads clustering around; and yonder, on the far opposite
slope to the south-east, is Danish Sowerby, taking us back in thought to
the times when the Vikings settled down and fortified their “by” in the
forest fastnesses of the hill. Here, too, to this Sowerby came later the
Earl of Warren and built himself a castle, and took to his own
possession vast tracts of mountain slope and wooded glen, which long
retained the name of the Forest of Hardwick, and therein he hunted in
right baronial style the boar and the wild deer. Sowerby with its Danish
and Norman memories has a not uninteresting story in later ages, and is
not a little proud in having given birth to John Tillotson, one of
England’s most illustrious primates. Haugh-End, the quaint old house
where he was born, is on the southern slope of the hill, and many the
pilgrims who turn aside to have a look at the grey old roof sheltered
behind the trees and the ivied high wall. Not a bow-shot from the
riverside, and nearly opposite Sowerby, is Eawood Hall, the birthplace
of Bishop Ferrar, the martyr. Eawood, snugly and picturesquely nestled
under the greenwood scars of Midgley, has a conspicuous place in the
ecclesiastical history of the county. Here John Wesley preached on
several occasions, on one of which he remarked, “I preached to near an
hour after sunset. The calmness of the evening agreed well with the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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