30 DAYS WILD : 27 - THE WILD SIDE OF TOWN

E Mill, Dean Clough. The mills at Dean Clough were built over time.
E Mill was built in 1857

I invite you to draw an equilateral triangle with its base parallel to the bottom of the page. Put an X part way along its right hand side. Now, from the bottom right hand corner of the triangle draw a vertical line of about the same length at a right angle to the base. You are creating a not-to-scale diagrammatic map of the area I've been covering in recent weeks for Loose and Leafy. Doing it this way is in the tradition of the London Underground Map. It doesn't precisely show what things are like 'on the ground', you couldn't use it easily in order to walk from A to B, but it sets things enough in relation to each other they can take a place in your mind. 

Roses and coronavirus street plants at an entrance to
Dean Clough, Halifax, Calderdale, England.
June 27th 2020

The base of the square is the town centre. The apex is Warley Moor where we saw the meadow pippit (or lark), the Large Heath Butterflies and the Hare's Tail Cottongrass. Going down the left hand side we are descending into the Luddenden Valley - where we walked in the woods and looked along the stream by a bridge. The Tale of Three Levels noted some of the changes in the terrain in between.

Roses and coronavirus street plants at an entrance to
Dean Clough, Halifax, Calderdale, England.
June 27th 2020

The X is where I live and the vertical line is the Hebble Valley which is so steeply sided in places I think of it as a ravine. Where it meets the base of the triangle there's a huge, renovated mill complex called Dean Clough, which was once one of the largest carpet factories in the world and is now converted into offices, art galleries, a theatre and restaurants. In its hey day,  Crossley Carpets employed 5,000 people - the majority of them there. (According to Wikipedia this number was reached in 1900 after nearly a hundred years of manufacturing. According to the 'Let's Look Again' site it didn't reach this number till 1923.) Now, around 4,000 people work in the replacement industries. Or, rather, they do usually. There's a pandemic and the car parks are empty. And this week, because of the rain there are few people wandering around at random. Perfect for my first foray into 'town' for months.

To be blunt, the contents of Dean Clough are not as exciting as they sound on paper (though they could be!) but unlike the residential areas high on the banks either side, it is usually pretty well manicured. The coronovirus is 'seeing to' that and plants are on their way in, springing up between the stone paving slabs in front of the rose beds at one of the access points on the west side.

Nettle growing through cobbles in street. Halifax, England. June 27th 2020.

Walking through Dean Clough is not only to dip into the combined history of the area and the hopes for a Halifax 'on the rise', it's very good for leg muscles. You go down lots of steps to the buildings, then can climb even more on the other side of the valley to reach the park by the Bankfield Museum in Boothtown via a steep cobbled street which is unkempt at the best of times. But with less traffic and fewer pedestrians, plants here are beginning to get even more of a hold than usual. Nettles are one thing 

. . . the tomato plant was a surprise!

It's a little disconcerting. A bit 'end-of-the-world-ish'.

An extraneous fact: 

during the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester (1819) many escaped injury or death because the horses of the Manchester Yeomanry couldn't managed the slippery cobbles of the steep streets in the rain. Manchester is nearly 60 miles away but I think of Peterloo as well as the mill workers in their clogs when I am walking these kinds of streets here. I am amazed the clogs gripped.

LINKS

Dean Clough on Wikipedia

Crossley Carpets on 'Lets Look Again'

Hebble Brook on Wikipedia

Bankfield Museum

Peterloo Massacre on Wikipedia

Manchester Yeomanry on Wikipedia

British Clogs on Wikipedia

Wearing Clogs in Yorkshire in the 1920s on the Bancrofts from Yorkshire Blog

Buying clogs in Calderdale now - the Walkly Clogs site.

   

This post is for Day 27 of the '30 Days Wild' challenge organised by the Wildlife Trusts.

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