West Pennine Moors - History

History

It is possible that Mesolithic hunting camps existed on the moors but evidence is rare. The area was then covered by forest which Neolithic and Bronze Age settlers began to clear. More forest was cleared by the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Place names such as clough, fell and moss suggest they were named by Norse settlers. Parts of the moorland were within the Royal Hunting Forests in the Middle Ages. The landscape continued to change as a result of enclosures in the middle of the 16th century.

Cheetham Close above Edgworth is the site of a destroyed Bronze Age megalith and is a scheduled ancient monument. On Anglezarke Moor are two prehistoric sites, Pikestones and Round Loaf, a landmark clearly visible from the route across Great Hill from White Coppice. A burial mound from about 1500 BC was discovered on Winter Hill around 0.5 km west of the summit. Another site, 1 km west of the summit, at Noon Hill Saucer Tumulus, is a burial site consisting of two concentric stonewalls which had two sets of burnt human bones, a broken urn containing more bones, two flint arrow heads and flint sacrificial knife in the centre. The site has been dated to around 1100 BC.

In 1690, lead was discovered in Lead Mines Clough at Anglezarke. The mines were expanded in the 1790s and copper and galena were also extracted. Witherite (barium carbonate) was discovered around 1700, and used as a glaze for porcelain. Stone was quarried at several sites including Anglezarke and used for building farmhouses, barns, mills and stone boundary walls. There were small coal mines on Winter Hill and Quarlton.

Belmont was the site of a bleaching and dyeing works, powered by water from Eagley Brook which powered mills along its valley. A reservoir was constructed, despite objections, requiring an Act of Parliament that stipulated two million gallons of water had to be released daily into Eagley Brook to sustain the industry that depended on it. Streams on the southern fringe of the moorland were utilised for water power and important for the bleaching and textile industries that grew up at Wallsuches, Horwich and Barrow Bridge.

Near the transmitter is Scotsman's Stump, an iron post with a plaque, a memorial to a Scottish salesman, George Henderson, who was shot on the moor by an unknown assailant in 1838. He was en route to a local inn to meet a friend but failed to arrive. His friend searched and found him fatally shot. A man was charged with the crime but not convicted.

A ranger on Winter Hill constructed two cairns on the moor to commemorate the alleged tragic death of two young men on the site many hundreds of years ago. Bolton Council demolished them claiming they were a safety hazard. He re-constructed them and successfully fought for them to remain. In the 1980s it was planned to excavate the site, but the plan was abandoned, so the truth behind the story is not known.

There have been two air disasters on the moors. Overlooking the valley near Lead Mines Clough is a war memorial commemorating the crew of an RAF Wellington bomber that crashed there during the Second World War. On 27 February 1958 a commercial flight from Ronaldsway Airport on the Isle of Man to Manchester Airport ended tragically on Winter Hill. The weather was atrocious and due to the poor visibility, heavy snow and remote location, only seven of the 42 people on board survived. The crash remains the area's worst air disaster. Plaques to commemorate this are mounted on the Arqiva Winter Hill building and at Ronaldsway Airport.