(A) CHIMNEY LANE
In the field beyond the wall on the left hand side of the road small piles of bricks are all that is left of the old tramway which brought coal over the brow of the hill from Lodge Mill Colliery to the Spa Green Brickworks. We came across the beginning of this tramway in walk No. 4 and we shall meet it again later in this walk. The tramway seems to have run in parts on, over and under the ground. In this field a line branching from the main tramway carried the coal tubs to a subway which took them under both Chimney Lane and Wakefield Road into the brickworks. The entrance to the subway in the field has been obliterated but it used to be possible to see the exit point of the tunnel before the roundabout was created.
THE CHIMNEY (see photo)
Little is known about the chimney which gives the lane its name except that it is a ventilation shaft. Some local opinion says that it ventilated the tramway but this seems unlikely as an automated system would need no such ventilation. Further, the bricks of the chimney which are possibly hand made are certainly older than the tramway which was constructed during the 20th century. It is known, however, that in this area a drift mine called Cowmes Colliery was operating early in the 19th century and so it seems likely that the chimney was a ventilation shaft for this. All traces of the mine and spoil heaps have disappeared as much of the hillside where it was located has been removed by the quarrying operations of the brickworks.
(B) BLOCK ROW (see photo)
Just beyond the roundabout on the right of Wakefield Road you will see at a row of cottages. This is Block Row and the largest of the houses was once a beer house or inn called the Black Bull, tenanted in the 1850s by one of the Clayton families. The cottages were, like so many others in the area, the homes of fancy hand loom weavers but there was here, perhaps, an example of neighbourly enterprise for well over half the weavers had abandoned the more traditional fancy cloth in favour of imitation seal skin thus exploiting a growing fashion among gentlemen for seal skin waistcoats. There are other examples of single looms in the area producing this material but nowhere else is there such a concentration and it is pleasant to imagine the members of this small, community passing on the necessary skills of the trade one to another.
Wakefield Road is part of the 'new turnpike' of 1820. In that year the Trustees decided to cut a shorter and more direct route from Moldgreen to Lepton. The new road left the old one at the foot of Almondbury Bank and was routed via Moldgreen, Greenside, Waterloo Bridge (built at this time), Cowmes Common and through Lepton's open fields to join the old road at the top of Rowley Lane.
(C) THE BRICKWORKS (see photos)
On the opposite side of the road is now the Fenay Bridge Park housing estate, built in what used to be the clay pit of Benjamin Elliott and Sons’ Fenay Bridge Brick and Terracotta Company which quarried brick clay from a small clay pit near the bottom of the valley from the early part of the 19th century. In the intervening years the quarrying had been extended to such an extent that most of the massive hillside above the original claypit had been removed. Elliotts also owned Lodge Mill Colliery thus providing them¬selves with the fuel necessary for firing the kilns, the coal being brought over the hill on the long tramway already mentioned.
(D) VIEWPOINT OVER THE FENAY VALLEY AND WOODSOME ESTATE (see photos)
Note: if you choose to look more closely at some of these buildings by taking the first alternative route, they are marked on the map as Information Point I.
The modern housing development called The Clough is built in part of a once sizeable sandstone quarry. There are a number of entries in the Lepton Rentals describing fields where there were quarries, some of which provided stone for the Commissioners of the road and occasionally there is the terse comment that such stone ought to be paid for.
The Fenay Beck which rises above Thunderbridge meanders its way down this section of its valley in a series of quite spectacular loops and curves. It is usually a fast flowing stream and at times of high water it is liable to flood the meadows through which it flows. In the past the Beck powered a number of water mills belonging to the Dartmouth Estate including Dogley, Woodsome and Fenay Mills. There is an interesting comment in the Dartmouth Estate Book of 1805 on the industrial conditions then prevailing which were being brought about by the advent of the steam engine. The Dartmouth agent writing about the property around Woodsome remarked that the countryside would be beautiful '... if the number of mills and steam engines about it did not continually contaminate those pleasing features of picturesque beauty, water and air.'. However, sound Yorkshire common sense and business acumen prevailed for the agent later comments that '... it is in these mills that engines combined with the Spirit of Trade in the Inhabitants stamps an increased value on the Estate and therefore it would ill become us to find fault with them'.
From Clough Park it is possible to pick out two buildings at the edge of the estate near to where Woodsome Line leaves Penistone Road. The largest of these, now a nicely converted private house, was once an Inn called The Three Crowns where, in the 1770s, the Turnpike Trustees held their meetings. The Inn was said in a survey of the Dartmouth Estate to require great repairs and the rent at this time was £2.10s.0d. a year. For a time the landlord was Jonas Pashley and on his death the tenancy was continued by his widow, Mary. From that time the Three Crowns became much more familiarly known as Mally Pashley's, a name it kept until well into the 20th century.
The other building which stands a little distance behind Mally Pashley's was Woodsome Mill which was, with the farm opposite, for some 300 years in the tenancy of the Redfearn family. The earliest known evidence of the existence of a mill at Woodsome is an agreement dated 1297 between Sir Francis Teutonicus (Tyas) and Nicholas, son of Richard de Farnley, Sir Francis granting certain lands in Farnley on a lease of twenty years at a rent of 7s.6d. and one penny of silver for mill dam service, the said Nicholas to grind his corn at the mill of Wodehouse.
Although 13th Century documents reveal that in its earliest days Woodsome Mill had fulling stocks its main action was to grind corn which it continued to do for all the Dartmouth tenants for some 700 years, its estate operations only ceasing during the First World War. After that time it continued to grind corn for the immediate use of the farm and also to pump water up to the farm-house. Woodsome Mill has been renovated and extended to make a pleasant dwelling house.
WOODSOME MILL AT WORK
On the Fenay Beck some 200 yards above the mill a weir was constructed to provide the head of water necessary for feeding the wheel which was 20 feet in diameter. Between the head of the weir and the mill-race double sluice gates were built one of which controlled the flow of water into the goit whilst the other was used at times of high water to divert excess water back into the stream.
Another sluice gate at the mill end of the race was used to control the working of the wheel which could only be stopped by cutting off the flow of water. The mill race which was channeled diagonally under the road had, for efficient working, to be kept completely clear of obstructions so the miller employed men to crawl through the mill race and clear it. From the mill race the water entered a trough which fed the wheel buckets at breast height. The used water was then thrown off into the tail race which flowed underground to rejoin the stream at a lower level. In the mill the top floor was used for rolling oats, and the first floor for grinding corn; hoisting equipment reached from top to bottom of the building. Near to the mill was a kiln which was used to dry the corn to prevent it 'clagging' before it was milled. The mill machinery including all the coggings and hoisting equipment was removed in 1966 and since then the building has been used as a barn. There is a story of an old stone inside the mill which was dated 1832 and which bore the shrewd inscription:-
"What man can tell, what man can trust,
Since man to man is so unjust,
I've trusted many to my sorrow
Pay today, I'll trust tomorrow.
WOODSOME HALL
From the position at Clough Park it is possible in the winter months to see between the trees that surround it what is perhaps the most interesting house in the district, Woodsome Hall. The manor of Woodsome was one of more than two hundred granted by William I to Ilbert de Laci, one of his companions. The first recorded owners of Woodsome were the Nottons then in 1236 the Estate passed to the Tyas family, remaining in their possession until 1370 when it was transferred to Sir William Fynchenden. After his death his widow granted to her son-in-law, John Cay, Freeholder, her manor at Woodsome with Farnley Tyas and the manor remained in the hands of the Kaye family for the next 350 years.
Much of the fabric of the present building is the work of Arthur Kay who, in 1517, married Beatrix Wentworth of Bretton Hall. Their names are carved over the massive fireplace in the Great Hall. Arthur's grandson, Robert, refronted and greatly enlarged the Hall adding the north-west wing. When in 1726 the estate passed through the marriage of a Kaye heiress to the Legge family the latter, following the custom of the time, set about improving the general layout of Woodsome and to do the work engaged the services of that most famous of English landscape gardeners Lancelot (Capability) Brown. Brown remodelled the frontage of the Hall by building a terrace which was copied from Haddon Hall and he was also responsible for laying out the parkland. The Dartmouth family used Woodsome Hall as a country seat or dower house until 1911 when it was let to Woodsome Golf Club, which Club subsequently purchased the property.
PENISTONE ROAD
This road which runs along the valley bottom from Waterloo to Fenay Lane was one of the last Turnpike roads to be built in the area, being the result of an Act of 1824. The road built four years after the 'new' Wakefield Turnpike left that road at Waterloo and crossed Fenay Beck by means of a new bridge to join the existing routes to Huddersfield and Penistone at Fenay Bridge. Prior to the construction of this stretch of road the outlet for all traffic from Huddersfield to the south and east was through Almondbury.
We have perhaps lingered rather a long time at this point to look at places of interest from a distance and places which moreover are not strictly speaking in our defined area. However, much of this part of Lepton was part of the Dartmouth Estate and the lives of the people who lived here would be influenced by the Lords of the Manor of Woodsome, so we feel we have not deviated too much from our purpose. All the buildings mentioned are moreover worthy of closer inspection should the reader like to extend his/her walk.
(E) ROWLEY LANE
Just after you pass the school on Rowley Lane you reach a site where in 1915 at the edge of the field on the left hand side of the bend a number of wooden sheds were erected to accommodate Belgian miners brought in to sink shafts for the Swift and Netherwood Colliery in Lepton Great Wood. These huts eventually attracted squatters.
The Sun Inn (see photo), which was once called the Rising Sun, was a beerhouse in the mid-nineteenth century. Hannah Kilner was the beer retailer for many years, living there with her son, Joseph, who was a butcher.
Opposite the Sun Inn you can enter High Green (see photo) a small hamlet of the early Lepton township, which deserves a visit.
Notice also, on the right of Rowley Lane and a little higher up, a small single decker cottage with curved windows at each corner (see photo). This was another of Lepton's Barhouses, the fourth from Huddersfield and the ninth from Wakefield, on the old Turnpike. We are very lucky in Lepton to have this building as such survivals are very rare in the Huddersfield area and it is perhaps appropriate to imagine the bustle here as the Royal Mail Coach trundled its majestic way along the Turnpike with post horn blaring to warn the gatekeeper of its coming.
(F) THORNES FOLD (see photo)
The first reference to Thornes is found in a document of 1557: 'a farmhold called Thornes' and the name means literally by the thorn tree. Thornes is perhaps the only 'fold' left in Lepton which retains something of the character and atmosphere of its earlier days. The houses and farm buildings show a variety of architectural styles, the oldest building being a barn which possibly dates back to the 16th century. It seems likely that this is a remnant of the original 'farmhold' whilst in the intervening centuries more houses were built, demolished, rebuilt and renovated. The largest house in the settlement, Thorne House, is an elegant nicely balanced Victorian building which, because it is very different in style from the usual farmers' or weavers' cottages of the period, was probably built by a man of some means.
In the mid 19th century there were thirteen families living in the fold, their occupations including the usual Lepton mixture of textiles, agriculture, mining and manufacturing. There was also a landed proprietor. Like the nearby Oakes Fold, Thornes must have been, in those days, a scene of much busy activity but, unlike Oakes Fold it has retained much of its vernacular architecture and we must hope that it continues to do so for such survivals are rare indeed in our area.
(G) THURGORY LANE OR TH'OGGERIES (SEE PHOTO)
The width of this path and the fact that it is edged both sides give some indication of its past importance. Th'Oggeries was, in the past, called Field Lane or Thurgory Lane and it was the path which gave access to the Town Fields which spread over much of the gently sloping near to Great Lepton. In mediaeval times the word field meant arable land and such fields were not enclosed. The community shared in ploughing the fields with a ploughing team of, usually, eight oxen and communal sowing and reaping was carried out on strips of land which were ploughed at different angles in clumps of furlongs. These angles can still affect the shape of the fields today - for instance a sudden bend in a field wall might indicate a change of direction made by the plough hundreds of years ago. Field name evidence plays a most important part in the understanding of an area's past development but its study is frought with difficulties as names changed or survived under aliases. It is sufficient, therefore, to say that such difficult detective work has been undertaken and has proved that Lepton did once have the three field system so well known to generations of school children. Although the names have changed or survive only as remnants today Lepton did once have North, South and West Fields to all of which Field Lane gave access.
It is possible to see over the fields to the left (see photo) the original Lepton Primitive Methodist Chapel, built in 1837, and at the time its location was called Lepton Field.
The development of the modern dialect name of Field Lane is interesting. Some of our local fields and lanes were originally named many centuries ago and as, with the passage of time, the meaning of the names was forgotten so they changed although they often retained some similarity to the original names. Furthermore, if a name which made no sense to the people who spoke it or heard it approximated to something which they could understand then a transferrance from apparent nonsense to apparent sense was made. Such an example of an analogically developed name is th' Oggeries which is what dialect speakers made of Thurgory, presumably believing it to be a place where pigs were kept. The lane on which you are now walking is called Thurgory Lane on the earliest O.S. map of the area but even this is not the beginning of the story. On the 1780 township map, which gives a glimpse of Lepton before the Industrial Revolution can have altered its age old pattern, a number of closes near the bottom of Thurgory Lane are called Thorgrow and Little Thorgrow. These names developed from the original Thorgalhaue which is first mentioned in the 13th century, and which means Thorgal's hill or Burial Mound. As the Thorgrow Closes are nearer to Gawthorpe than Lepton and as the former was a Scandinavian settlement and Thorgalhaue is a Scandinavian name it seems likely that at least the lower end of the lane was an enterprise of the men of Gawthorpe, may¬be an access lane to their Town Fields, later extended to join up with the access lane to Lepton Fields.
One field which borders onto the north (right hand) side of Thurgory Lane is Hollin Field. Hollin is the old name for the Holly tree and the observant walker will be able to locate this field by noticing the one section of holly bushes which divide the field from the lane. It is within Hollin Field that Lepton's oldest field name is found. On the 1806 map an area there is designated as Level Carr which is nonsense as a place name and which, in fact, is another analogically developed name. For many years this part of Hollin Field was known as Levicer - it is easy to see that Level Carr sounds more sensible than Levicer - but, in fact, the name has been traced back to the 13th century when it appeared as Leffacre that is the acre of Leof, Leof being an Anglo Saxon personal name used at least 1,000 years ago. This remnant of the distant past may well indicate that land round Thurgory Lane was under the plough before the Norman Conquest.
Throughout the Middle Ages most Lepton farmers continued to plough the land and pasture was rare. What animals there were grazed mostly on the unenclosed common land. However a big change apparently took place in the 16th century and in 1562 the Manor of Lepton was said to consist of 2,000 acres of meadow, 100 of arable, 40 of pasture and 16 of woodland. In addition there were 40 acres of peat moorland and 60 of heath. This could well have been the time when the original old field names were changed or amended.
The hedgerow in Thurgory Lane has eight species of trees or shrubs and thirteen species in the undergrowth, such numbers probably indicating a hedgerow of some antiquity. It consists mainly of hawthorn with some holly, hazel, elder and blackthorn bushes and a few oak trees. It is interesting that both harebell and bluebell grow in the lane as bluebells are typical woodland plants and harebells mainly heath flowers.
It might be appropriate here to comment on the isolated clump of trees growing to the south of Thurgory Lane and which are a landmark from many areas to the south of Lepton (see photo). There are many stories told about this windswept group of trees which consist of about thirty poplars. Some believe that they are descendants of Lombardy poplars brought back and planted here by the Crusaders. There are stories that the clump is haunted and some dogs show great reluctance to enter the trees – presumably sensing something we humans cannot. It is thought also that traces of gunpowder found in the clump suggest that it was some sort of arsenal for the firework industry. However, on a more prosaic level a farmer suggested that the trees were planted to screen farm buildings since demolished.
(H) LEPTON GREAT WOOD
In the earliest days of settlement it seems likely that much of the natural forest was cleared to make way for the expansion of farming but from mediaeval times it is clear that woodland was a large, carefully managed and valuable resource. Had this not been the case the large demand for hardwood timber for building purposes alone could never have been maintained. Lepton Wood, like most of the woodland in our area, cannot be described as natural forest since it has for much of its history experienced expert husbandry with some species and patterns of growth being encouraged and others removed. Lepton Wood belonged to the Beaumonts of Whitley and was one of several woods they owned all of which contributed to the finances of the estate.
The walls now surrounding Lepton Wood date back to the decade 1730 - 1740 though doubtless since then repairs and rebuilding have taken place. Prior to 1730 the wood seems to have been bounded by hedgerows as a note in the Estate Book records a payment to Joseph Jessop 'for cutting up a hedge in Lepton Wood where the wall was to be made'. In May 1733 the work began in earnest when the brothers John and Joseph Lee were paid £9.12s.0d. for 72 roods stone getting and walling in the Great Wood'. In all the Lee brothers in the two years following erected some 250 roods of wall for which they were paid approximately £30. The records show that as well as being quarried locally stones were also brought from the quarries at Crosland and, as the following entries from the Estate Book show, the carting of the stone seems to have been a much more expensive operation than the quarrying:
To Cash of John Haigh for getting stones in Crosland 10s.6d.
To Ditto of Abram Mallinson for getting stones in Lepton 2s.6d.
To John Sykes and others for leading stones to Lepton Wood walls £16.15s.4d.
To Richard Brook for leading stone to Lepton Wood walls £10. 6s.0d.
When the walling was finished, in 1840, a lock was purchased for Lepton Wood gate for 1s.4d.
A somewhat enigmatic payment which is recorded in the Estate Books on several occasions deserves mention here. It reads: "To the Pillers of Lepton Wood for wavering well according to the custom". This is likely to have to do with coppicing, that is the periodic cutting of groups of mature trees to allow new growth to take place. Coppicing, of course, was also of financial benefit to the owners of the wood from the sale of the timber. The Beaumonts or their agent would enter into an agreement with a timber merchant for valuing and setting out a fall of wood. A price having been agreed (in 1832 for instance the price was £32.2s.6d.), the merchant would then employ a group of woodmen to carry out the work. The Pillers mentioned above would be the first on the scene. They were the men who stripped the bark from the chosen trees before they were felled. The bark would then be stacked at the foot of the trees prior to being carted off to be used for charcoal burning. What is not quite clear is why the pillers were paid to 'waver well according to custom'. However, it is known that a certain form of coppicing was common where the saplings within the fall of trees would be spared. As the word waver was the local name for a young oak tree it seems likely that what the pillers were expected to do was to mark the young trees in some way in order to preserve them from the saw. After the other trees were felled the timber would be cut and carted away by the woodmen and that area of the wood would be left to regenerate itself for the next 18 - 20 years whilst coppicing went on in other parts of the wood. Much of the wood cut in Lepton in the 18th century was converted into charcoal for use at the forge then in operation at Colne Bridge.
VICTORIA COLLIERY
Towards the end of the 19th century the commercial possibilities of exploiting the minerals under Lepton Wood came to be recognised and two collieries called Victoria and Woodsome were opened. The spoil heaps which remain in the wood are those from the Victoria Colliery which was a drift mine with passages running underground for about I.5 miles. The coal was brought out in small metal trucks on a double track system pulled by an endless rope. The track was routed down through the wood emerging from the latter by the old cricket field. It crossed Rowley Lane at the bend by means of an overhead wooden gantry, the trucks descending to ground level in the Clough Park area. Here there was a large screening plant and also railway sidings which were built on a sloping site to allow the railway wagons to be pulled by a stationary donkey engine working a rope system. The blacksmith's and joiner's shops for the colliery, some of the foundations or remains of which can still be seen, were built at the side of the Wood Gate path into the wood. Here also a mine shaft and ventilation shaft were sunk both of which have been filled in and covered although the filling of the shaft has subsided slightly to expose the circular masonry round the top. Lower down in the wood (where Woodsome House now stands) the proprietors of the Victoria Colliery, Smith and Netherwood, sank two further pit shafts. When Smith and Netherwood closed Victoria Coll¬iery in July 1943 the miners and other employees were sent to Lepton Edge, Shuttle Eye and Park Mill Collieries.
The clays beneath Lepton Wood were also exploited by Smith and Netherwood for their works near the bottom of the wood where they made sanitary pipes. A drift mine was opened up in Rowley Lane and the passages extended underneath the wood, the clay being sent away down the same track as the coal trucks to the screening plant and taken from there across to the pipeworks. After the coal mine closed the clay was taken away by road.
When you leave the wood, the field to the left is Bugden Top. The area called Bugden stretches from here down the hill to Bugden Foot which is where Rowley Lane bends to the right. The name Bugden is little used today having been superseded by Rowley Lane and High Green. It is however a name of some antiquity, the first reference to it being found in MS as Buckden, that is a valley with deer. By 1623 Buckden had become Bugden and in 1675 John Ogilby the road surveyor and map maker describing a journey from Barnsley to Huddersfield noted when he arrived at Woodsome Mill 'the branch road to Wakefield by way of Rowley Lane or Bogden'.
Whilst walking further up the field notice to the left in the wood the spoil heaps (see photo) and debris which are all that remain of the top of the colliery tramway where the winding gear was located.
(I) WOODSOME MILL and nearby buildings
Please Information Point D for details.