The Ruination of Wycoller

by Annie Whitehead

In a hidden valley, about three miles from Colne in Lancashire, lies the village of Wycoller. It was abandoned in the late 20th century, but the story of its decline began many centuries earlier.

In order to visit the village, you have to leave your car in the car park and walk down a steep path. Even before you arrive in the village, there are clues to its history and the reason for its former prosperity.

These vaccary stones can be found in fields all around the village and are reminders of when the village of Wycoller was one of five local vaccaries, specialising in cattle rearing. In the early 14th century most of the village was involved in some capacity, including the building of cattle folds and felling timber for alterations to shippons, and there are records to show that the payment for building a house for heifers was 2s 6d.

The Tudor Aisled Barn

The Tudor age saw the village grow richer still from the textile trade, as sheep began to replace cattle. The inhabitants combined farming with the preparation of wool, spinning, weaving, and the manufacture of clothing. A field above the village still bears the name Tenter Field, a reference to the practice of stretching cloth out on tenterhooks while it dried.

The population increased, because of the weaving work. At one point in the late 18th century, 78% of the heads of households were weavers. Such was the success of the village that there were three hatters resident in Wycoller.

Above: the medieval pack-horse bridge with, below, the signs of centuries of traffic.

But the boom could not last; handloom weavers were no match for the mills in nearby Trawden, Winewall, and Colne. Between 1820 and 1871 the population fell from around 350 to 107, and those who remained were mostly farmers.

Then, in 1890, the Colne Water Corporation announced plans to flood the village to make a reservoir. The buildings were not under threat, but nearly 200 acres of prime farmland were bought up by the Corporation. Underground water reserves were discovered and the work never went ahead, but it was too late. Wycoller became but a ghostly shadow in the valley, with buildings becoming derelict.

The main attraction in the village is the ruin of Wycoller Hall. This building seems to serve as a symbol of the history of the village. Where once it was a splendid 16th century manor house, with a magnificent fireplace, it is now a ruin, open to the elements since the late 19th century when the roof was taken off and sold. Originally owned by the Hartley family, the hall was extended in the late 18th century by its last owner, Squire Cunliffe.

A drawing showing how the fireplace would have been used 

A keen gambler, Cunliffe also borrowed money against Wycoller Hall to fund the building work. He died - heavily in debt - in 1818. The property passed to his nephew Charles Cunliffe Owen, but Charles could not afford to pay off the debts and the estate was divided up among the creditors. The hall passed to a distant relative, and then to the Rev. John Roberts Oldham. The latter arranged for large parts of the stonework to be sold off to build the cotton mill at Trawden.

Wycoller is situated between Pendle and Haworth. Links with the latter are well-documented: Wycoller Hall was frequently visited by Charlotte Bronte and it was the inspiration for Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre.

No such established link exists between Wycoller and Pendle, but as my companion remarked on the day we visited, it is not hard to imagine that many pedlars passed through, in the times of prosperity. Is it possible that this one passed through Wycoller at some point?

From the confession of 'Pendle Witch' Alison Device, 30th March 1612 (as recorded by Thomas Potts in Discovery of Witches, 1613): 'At which time she met with a peddler on the high-way, called Colne-field, near unto Colne: and she demanded of the said peddler to buy some pins of him; but the said peddler sturdily answered that he would not loose his pack; and so she parting with him: presently there appeared to her the black dog, which appeared unto her as before: which black dog spoke unto her in English, saying "what wouldst you have me to do unto yonder man?" Alice asked the dog what it could do and it told her it could lame the man, who, before he was gone 'forty roodes (300 yards) further, he fell down lame.'

The clapper bridge, above, has various names, which sum up the history of Wycoller: hints of a much earlier age are contained in the name Druids' Bridge, it was also known as the Hall Bridge, because it is the nearest of Wycoller's seven bridges to the hall, and it has been referred to as the Weavers' Bridge, because of the generations of handloom weavers who used it to cross the river.

There is one, final, poignant note about this once thriving village. Just like the pack-horse bridge, the clapper bridge had a deep groove where the stone had been worn down by the journeys back and forth of the clog-wearing weavers. But in 1910 the groove was chiselled smooth by a local farmer, after his daughter had a fatal accident on the bridge.

Wycoller repays a visit. The tiny, peaceful hamlet contains within it many visual hints of a rich and varied history. Inhabited once more, nevertheless it retains a silence that respects its past and allows the visitor to sit, contemplate, and listen for the ghosts of a once lively hub of industry and trade.
For a look 'behind the scenes' pop over to my blog HERE.

[This is an Editors' Choice post, and was originally published on 26th September 2015]

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Annie Whitehead is a history graduate and prize-winning author. Her novel, To Be A Queen, is the story of Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great, who came to be known as the Lady of the Mercians. It was long-listed for the Historical Novel Society’s Indie Book of the Year 2016 and has been awarded an indieBRAG medallion. Her new release, Alvar the Kingmaker, which tells the story of politics, intrigeu, deceit and murderAelfhere in the time of King Edgar, is available now. She has recently contributed to 1066 Turned Upside Down, an anthology of short stories in which nine authors re-imagine the events of 1066 and ask 'What If'.
Annie's Author Page
Alvar the Kingmaker
To Be A Queen
Annie's Website
Annie's Blog
1066 Turned Upside Down

Tudor and Stuart Energy Crisis - Coal

by Deborah Swift

In the period 1500 - 1700 England made the transition from a wood-burning nation to a coal burning nation. This transition affected almost everything about domestic and manufacturing life.

The poulation of England and Wales had nearly doubled between the years of 1500 and 1690. Immense pressure was put on the woodlands to provide wood for building, for manufacture, for the new printing industry - paper and books - and for fuel.

London, one of the largest cities in Europe, was a boom town and multiplied eight-fold, from 60,000 people in 1534 to 530,000 in 1696, so that although only one in ten was a town dweller in the early sixteenth century, one in four were by the end of the seventeenth century. The timber to build new dwellings (mostly wood-framed in this period) and their necessary winter fires for cooking and heating put even greater strain on the forests, until deforestation was a real issue.

In places where coal seams were near the surface and occurred naturally, coal was burnt and had been ever since Roman times, but the idea of collecting it and sending it elsewhere was not considered until Tudor times. This was because the idea of taking earth or minerals away was not part of the medieval mind-set. Mining was regarded as rape of the land. Unlike ploughing or sowing the land, taking parts of it away were seen as robbing the local people of their subsistence - land being equated to wealth and food production.

Tudor Mining Coat

This idea changed with Agricola's publication of a book on mining, which equated mining to opening a fruit to see the goodness within. However, this idea only applied to metals such as tin and copper ore, and not to coal. It took a dose of inflation plus a shortage of wood to make people turn to coal as a last resort.

Coal produces smoke and fumes and whilst there was wood, it was considered too dirty and overlooked as a source of fuel. In Tudor times coal began to be shipped short distances and used by the poor as an alternative to wood, but by the early 17th century, the shortage of decent timber for shipbuilding seemed to threaten Britain's existence, and coal became the only viable alternative for heating and manufacture. A royal proclamation of 1615 laments the former wealth of 'Wood and Timber,' but by then mines had begun to provide employment, and there were even railways with horse-drawn carriages to bring the coal to the docks.

Stuart Mining Machinery

By the time of the English Civil War (1640's) Londoners were dependent on 'sea coal' to keep warm. The surviving records of the customs officials at Newcastle-upon-Tyne show a continuous and rapid growth in the shipments of coal between 1550 and 1700. Ten thousand men worked the colliery at Newcastle, either underground or on the four hundred or so vessels moored in the Tyne river to ferry the coal around England.

Imports to London grew even faster, probably more than thirtyfold. A contemporary of John Evelyn, the diarist, described the London smog:

Such a cloud of sea-coal, as if there be a resemblance of hell upon earth, it is in this volcano in a foggy day; this pestilent smoak, which corrodes the very yron and spoils all the movables, leaving a soot on all things that it lights; and so fatally seizing on the lungs of the inhabitants, that cough and consumption spare no man.

New technology was necessary in the wake of this new fuel which burned so hot. Methods of firing glass and pottery had to be developed to protect the products from direct contact with the burning coals. After about 1610 glass began to be manufactured with mineral fuel, followed by the cementation process for converting wrought iron into steel and a method of baking bricks for building. Further advances occurred in the brewing industry, where coal fires were used to dry malt, and by the late seventeenth century it became possible to smelt the lead, copper and tin ores of Britain with coal.

I find this historical background fascinating - how the introduction of new fuel produces such a far-reaching effect on a population, in a similar way to the advent of electricity in a later era.

Links:
John Adair - By The Sword Divided 

Peter Ackroyd - London: The Biography
Paper on Coal: John U. Nef - Scientific American http://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Nef_1977.pdf
Tudor Mining Coat: http://www.leics.gov.uk/revealed_objects_tudorminingcoat.htm
Stuart Mining Machinery: http://cookit.e2bn.org/historycookbook/33-340-Life-in-stuarts.html

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My 17th century novels set in the earliest Industrial Revolution (the coal rather than steam powered one!) can be found on my website www.deborahswift.com

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