Chronicles and stories of old Bingley
An extract from Chronicles and stories of old Bingley. A full account of the history, antiquities, natural productions, scenery, customs and folklore of the ancient town and parish of Bingley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
Chronicles and stories of old Bingley - full text
PRIMEVAL BINGLEY
" A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it ; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee." — Deut. viii, 9, 10,
N order to determine the causes which led to the site of Bingley being first chosen as a place of dwelling, it will be necessary to go far back to primeval ages, long before the human epoch. It was then through the wisdom of their infinite Author that the rocks with their mineral treasures were deposited, followed by a wondrous vegetable growth and a beauty of form and mould adapted to man's services and advancement, as implied by the words of the above scriptural text.
As was the case with most ancient centres of population, the spot was unquestionably selected by reason of the physical advantages of rock-structure and surroundings. Moreover, the situation of Bingley at the confluence of two secluded and well-wooded valleys, was one calculated •to inspire the early love of meditation and retirement, and even long antecedent to the time when the first fragment of local history was carved in stone, now more than 1100 years ago, the place doubtless was the scene of a happy religious devotion. Ages before then , however, the aboriginal
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skin -clad native rowed his coracle on the bright waters of the Aire, albeit the full manner and fruition of his life in the district are obscured in the darkness of antiquity.
Yet, again, this man's presence at Bingley is but as of yesterday compared with the time that has elapsed since the rocks on which he first stood and the valley in which he first lived were formed. How came these rocks and this valley, are questions I must now engage to answer. The divers grit rocks and sandstones which constitute the floor and sides of the valley are said to be the result of the decomposition and dispersion of the constituents of granite. Granite consists of an aggregation of -felspar, silica or quartz and mica, such materials in fact of which the first solid crust of the earth was made. But how this grit came to be deposited here is a problem that may well arouse enquiry. There appears, however, to be a consensus of opinion that it was derived from the granites of Norway and Sweden, as no other granite resembles so exactly the fluids, gases, and crystals of the grit rocks of this country. As' granite decomposes most readily under alternations of great heat and cold, it is conjectured that this took place when the earth was sufficiently cooled to admit of this possibility, and that the particles were borne from the east by hurricanes of wind to find a barrier and stay upon the range of Carboniferous Limestone, at a time when no land existed eastward of the limestone, — all the present land surface in this direction being of more recent formation. The phenomena of wind-borne particles over long distances is not unreasonable when we consider the travelling power and desolating effects, even at this day, of great masses of sand in the desert region of Sahara in Africa and in Central Asia ; the sea bottom in many places is covered with a great thickness of sand blown from the desert of Sahara, as was proved by the dredgings brought up by the Challenger, often at very considerable* distances from the African coast. Yet the wind-bearing theory while it explains many circumstances attending the deposition of the gritstone in England does not explain all. The angularity of the enclosed quartz particles may be accounted for in this way, whilst on the other hand the
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rock at Bingley is often found to have these pebbles in varying size rounded and smoothed as if by the action of water. The precise determining causes of these variations have never been satisfactorily explained.
Overlying the Rough Eock, which forms the topmost bed of the Millstone Grit series we have the Coal Measures, consisting of alternating beds of sandstone, shale, and thin seams of coal. Bands of ironstone and a stratum of fire-clay are also associated with these measures at Bingley. A valuable sandstone, close-grained and highly silicious, termed galliard, is likewise found in small quantities usually directly beneath the lowest coal seams.
In these upper beds appeared the first vegetable life at Bingley. Also the vegetable origin of coal has long been established. With the gradual cooling and thickening of the earth's crust fresh deposits of mud and sand were formed, and as each successive surface rose above the water it was soon covered with a luxuriant and dense vegetation. The jungles of tropical forests at the present day are mere barrenness in comparison with the extraordinary growth of terrestrial vegetation during this warm period of local history. The giant lepidodendron, or fossil tree of our quarries, waved its palm-like branches over a rank and profuse undergrowth of large and magnificent ferns, of which half-a-hundred kinds grew within a few miles' radius of where Bingley now stands. Enormous calamites, so called from the reed-like jointings of the stalk, flourished on the muddy banks of these primeval streams; their representatives being the dwindled " horsetails " of our hedge banks and beck sides. Occasionally, as at Gilstead, we find these fossil trees encased in a thin cylinder of coal, formed by the preservation of the bark, the tree having- become hollow got filled up with mud or sand, and so took the shape of the trunk. Sometimes, too, we find the sandstone ripple-marked, produced by a gentle flow of water over the surface, which had hardened on the retreat of the wave ; hkewise the sandstone pitted with small holes caused by rain drops, and we may sometimes tell by the position and form of the holes which way the wind blew when it rained in those far-off days.
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Undoubtedly at one time the land within and adjoining the parish was almost one unbroken level surface, but the eye of God alone beheld this. The places which we now know as Greenhill, Druids' Altar, Cottingley Moor, Wrose Hill, Baildon Hill and Gilstead Moor were once joined together by an almost continuous table-land. There happened at this time and also at intervals before, great subsidences in the strata, some taking place suddenly, while others were gentle and protracted. The effects of these subsidences, throws, or " faults," as they are technically termed, we are witnesses of at the present day. An important one extends from near Greenhill, by Gawthorpe Hall, and crossing the town extends the whole length of the Harden valley, throwing out some fine springs in Bell Bank Field and at the back of St. Ives, until its course is stopped by a cross fault through Harden Moor, forming the romantic ravine of Deep Cliff, and passing southwards by Harden Hall towards Wilsden. There is little doubt that the beautiful Harden valley owes its inception to this fault, although so much removed above the present valley bottom.
The Aire valley, where Bingley is situated, is however not directly due to any such faulting as I have described. This dale, like the other great valleys of Yorkshire, owes its origin to the great and much older Penine ridge, which runs in a north and south direction from Derbyshire to the Cheviots. It is noteworthy that most of the great rivers of the world run east or west for similar reasons. The Danube, the Po, and the Tagus in Europe ; the Amazon, the Orinoco, and the La Plata in South America ; the St. Lawrence, the Ohio, and the Missouri in North America, flow towards the east or west ; though the Apennines in Europe, the Andes in South America, and the AUeghany and Rocky Mountains in North ' America, extend northwards and southwards.
That the Bingley valley is a valley of denudation only is obvious from the corresponding position of the strata on opposite sides of the valley. These strata when not interrupted by faults are perfectly conformable and rise in regular sequence. It is impossible to estimate correctly in point of years how long it has taken to form the valley.
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In remote times no doubt the denuding power of water and the actions of heat and frost, have been much more rapid than they are at present, but if we are to accept Dr. Geike's hypothesis that upon an average one-tweKth of an inch is worn out of the valleys in 8J years, or say one foot in a century, we arrive at the conclusion that it must have taken fully 450,000 years to excavate the Bingley valley, say from the level of the Druids' Altar and Greenhill (650 feet) to the river level at Castlefields (270 feet). This may be an over-estimate, inasmuch as the thickness or depth of the valley is not wholly solid rock, but contains a good proportion of shale, which would wear away much quicker than the sandstone and grit. The trough of Priesthorpe, for example, was excavated out of this softer material, and forms a plateau resting on rock sloping westwards to the valley.
I have spoken of the vegetable life of the local rocks and the earliest evidence of animal life I have met with in the parish is an annalide or form of water-worm ; petrified castings of which are found in the sandstones of the millstone grits and coal measures. An admirably -preserved specimen is to be seen on a sandstone gate-post at Ravenroyd, and this may be regarded as the oldest representative of animal life extant in the parish. Little or nothing is known of the life-history of these interesting creatures, which occur in varying forms in the rocks long antecedent to the sandstone era, even far down to Cambrian age. Doubtless all our freshwater and terrestrial worms are modern developments of these primitive estuarine and marine forms. Higher up in the series of local rocks we find a more advanced type of animal life in the shape of fossil shells and fish remains. No insects, however, or reptiles are seen, which belong to a later period than is yielded by the local strata. And these facts, by the way, are quite in accord with science and the Bible ; the humble forms of life are the oldest, and the most wonderful and complex, viz., man, appears as the consummation or climacteric of life on the earth.
In the coal measures is found a well-preserved mollusc, Aviculopecten, accompanied with a goniatite, a univalve
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shell coiled up like a snail, a form of which occurs in the Carboniferous Limestone of Bolland, Derbyshire, and the Isle of Man, as well as in the limestone and coal measures of Ireland. A higher type still, ranking between the fishes and reptiles, is found in the roof of the Hard Bed coal, including the colossal Megalidhys Hibberti, a fine specimen of which is in the Leeds Museum.
The "fossil mussel," hardly distinguishable at sight from the common sea-mussel of the present age, which is found in quantities close above the coal seams on Baildon Moor, is doubtless a descendant of the primeval form occurring in the Carboniferous Limestone, and allied to the freshwater types found in the neighbourhood of Bingley at the present day. I am told on the authority of several old men, still living, that when the railway was made at Bingley in 1846, the stone tippings in the bog caused numerous specimens of black mussel and sea-cockle to ooze to the surface, and in places where they could not possibly have been thrown. That these should appear at Bingley dark coloured, or even black, is easily accounted for by long continuance in stagnant water and subject to the pressure of decayed vegetable matter excluded from the air, precisely in the same way as the vegetable accumulations of coal become black. But the occurrence of the sea-cockle at Bingley, if it be ever proved to be such, is of more than ordinary importance. Until, however, actual specimens are produced from the spot the subject is purely speculative. Possibly the shells were the freshwater helices (Tellina cornea) which have been found in peat-moss, but in these forms the stripes are across the shell, from side to side, not in the same directions as the sea-cockle. I have met with but a single mention of the occurrence of sea-cockle in peat-moss in Yorkshire, and this about forty miles from the sea, at a point about two miles from Greta Bridge and about two miles from the river Tees. The cockles were, it is said, found in considerable quantity, and an old farm- house near, called Cocklesbury, is said to have taken its name from the circumstance. But in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, vol. II (1827), Sir W. C. Trevelyan doubts that they are native to the place, and asserts that
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after an actual visit he found some freshwater specimens, the common whelk ; and if the sea-cockle [carduum edule) has been found there, they have been put there for the purpose of hoaxing the individuals who collected them afterwards. The only shell which I have myself found in the peat at Bingley was obtained during the recent draining in the highroad on the edge of the bog going to Crossflatts. Here at a depth of 16 feet from the present surface I obtained from the peat dead specimens of Helix rufescens, a common and still-existing land shell. A marine shell (Cyprina Islandica), I may add, has been found in this valley at Greengates, but embedded in glacial drift. In the same material at Bingley, about 8 feet from the surface, there was found, while digging a grave on the east side of the cemetery, in January, 1898, about sixty well-grown specimens of the peculiarly limestone mollusc, Helix nemoralis. It is not unusual for this creature to burrow 3 to 4 feet down, but to find it at a depth of 8 feet is very remarkable. Probably they had slipped through an aperture in the gravel. All were dead.
When the conditions which had produced the rocks and strange life above described had ceased, and the hills and valleys were clothed with a tropical growth, there was another and more complex kind of life existing here, of which, however, we know little. Still we are sure there were some strange quadrupeds at Bingley, for the bones of the hippopotamus, the teeth and bones of the mammoth, bear, bison (a tooth was found in forming the fish-pond at Milner Field), and the molars of a single lion, all found in Airedale, constitute undoubted evidence as to the kinds of creatures that infested the local woods and glades in those primeval times. But we have no evidence of the presence of man and his handiwork until after the close of the Ice Age, a comparatively recent event when considering the antiquity of the valley he inhabits, an antiquity that recalls the words of the divine Interrogator to His servant Job : " Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ? Declare if thou hast understanding ! " And the man answered : " Behold I am vile ; what shall I answer Thee ? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth."
WILD BIEDS OF BINGLEY DISTRICT
I LAP! flap! What is that? Bingley by the sea ! No, that cannot be. yet the great white wings of the sea-gull pass close before my window, the birds doubtless making for their old accustomed haunts by the quiet reaches of the river near Marley. I have seen them sometimes, too, in the retired marshy hollows about Beckfoot. Are they instinctively scouring the land in search of some long-lost prehistoric sea ? I trow not, although the vagaries of migration are yet but imperfectly understood. In this district it is generally accounted a sign of approaching stormy weather when the gulls are seen ; but they do not stay long, merely making this a halting-place in their quick passage from coast to coast. Flocks of wild geese also fly inland, resting in the same spots as the gulls, and I have noticed that their presence here has been followed by sudden storms of wind, rain, or snow. The delicate organisms of birds are, no doubt, more susceptible to atmospherical changes and alterations of season than are the larger animals. This is unquestionably one of the motives for seasonal migration, inasmuch as an equable climate conduces to the comfort and consequent health and maintenance of the species. To trace the complexities of migration to their source, and to explain the reason for the preferences of certain birds to particular climates and surroundings we must again go back to the remote Ice Age. Then there must have been a forcing southwards of certain northern types and a re-installation of certain species on the amelioration of climate as the ice withdrew. The common red-grouse of our moors, for example, possesses a close affinity with the willow-grouse (Lagopus albus) ; the latter, however, is arboreal in its habits, and the differentiation of the species can only be explained by isolation at some remote epoch when the changed
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aspects altered the food supply. The red-grouse is now strictly confined to the cold, bracing moors of the north, and the theory of its continuance in these latitudes since the Ice Age is very ingeniously set forth in an interesting chapter of Mr. Chas. Dixon's " Migration of British Birds."
Most of our so-called resident birds are more or less migratory, and this is especially applicable to a district like Bingley, where altitudinal range is so marked. It is also noteworthy that in any general migration southwards the female birds of some species greatly preponderate, and this fact did not escape the vigilant eye of Gilbert White, who, writing from Selborne in 1770, remarks upon the vast flocks of hen chaffinches appearing in that neighbourhood in winter time, and Linnaeus remarks the same thing. In this district "resident" birds are usually more markedly numerous in summer than in winter, and this is especially the case in high or exposed situations, like, for example, the Park top, whence there is a general exodus of bird-life on the approach of winter's cold. The winter season, however, has its compensations in the appearance of many interesting species driven by the hyperborean cold and insufficient food supply to pass the winter with us ; also some moorland types occasionally seek shelter and nutriment in the lowlands. About Crow Nest and in Priesthorpe, the ring-ouzel, which appears to be only a partial migrant, will sometimes come down for a meal to the gardens, and even hop among poultry. Large numbers of these birds are to be found on the Sussex downs in winter, and also in North Africa, and they return to our moors in spring. Harden Moor is one of their early and favourite haunts in this district. Fieldfares and redwings, which belong to the same genus, also visit us in some numbers in winter. Both these interesting species breed in Norway and Sweden, building their nests, which are most like those of the ring-ouzel, against the trunk of the spruce fir or birch, at varying heights from the ground. Flocks of wild ducks also generally pass the winter in one or two places near Bingley, and there are water-hens also to be found.
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Among the rarer winter visitors to this district have been noted, principally by Mr. E. P. Butterfield, of Wilsden, the'siskin, great crested grebe (P. cristatus), green sandpiper {T. ochropus), pochard (F. Ferina), greenshank {T. canescens), common buzzard {B. vulgaris), once an abundant resident among the crags of northwest Yorkshire, and hooded crow (C. cormx). A handsome specimen of the honey buzzard was shot by Scott, the keeper, in Blakey Wood, Marley, some ten years ago, and is now at Cuckoo Nest. In the severe weather of January, 1895, Mr. Butterfield observed several snow-bunting (P. nivalis) in the Main Street, Wilsden. I have seen numbers of these pert little birds about the snow on the summit of Ben Nevis in the warm days of mid-August. Its nest has been found as far north as Grinnel Land, at latitude 82°-83'. In February, 1896, an immature specimen of the great northern diver (C. glacialis) was shot on Baildon reservoir. It was sent for preservation to Mr. Fred. R. Kirby, taxidermist, of Bradford. It is a very rare visitor to this district ; its nearest home and breeding-place being in the far-away Western Hebrides. The true Canada-goose [B. canadensis) is also reported from the Bingley district, and I am assured by the Eev. J. Beanland, of Calverley, that it has nested on the tarn side near St. Ives, in 1887, and that he obtained three eggs from the nest. The nest was very large, and built of twigs, grass, &c., and originally contained six eggs, but three were hatched when the nest was found on June 24th, 1887,
Of all seasons spring is the best time to enjoy the company of the birds, to learn something of their ways, and delight in their varied notes and songs. Who, after the long, dull, winter-time, does not rejoice at the arrival of the first summer migrants, seeking their old accustomed haunts by stream, or moor, or woodland ? Who does not welcome the familiar twin notes of the cuckoo as they issue from the depths of the green, awakening woods, or perchance a little later are heard in the solitudes of the far-extending moorlands ? In the glistening skies of April the lark, too, keeping tune by the vibration of his wings, floods the air with joyous melody.
THE ADVENT OF MAN
The Aborigenes.
HE deluge following the Ice Age rendered, as I have said, this immediate district uninhabitable by man for a long period subsequently. In some parts of North England evidences of a post-glacial people are to be found in implements made of the bone of reindeer and in the galleried tombs and dwellings, which are identical with those of the Esquimaux of the present day. Implements and weapons of bone and stone were used at this time, and it was not until the commerce in flint had been established by Neolithic traders that flint was adopted in the manufacture of these articles in this district. The rude flint implements picked up on our moors are probably of more recent date than is generally supposed ; mere crudeness of make cannot be accepted as a criterion of antiquity, and the oldest of these articles are, as I hope to shew, not older than the late Goidelic settlers of the great Celtic immigration. Metal, of course, was well- known to the ancient Britons as well as to the Romans, yet stone and flint continued to be used even down to historic times. Not, however, until the Goidelic immigration have we any positive knowledge of man and his work in this district.
The Celt.
On the westward emigration of the Indo-Celtic races the aborigenes were driven further and further north, and that branch denominated the Goidels or Gauls of France and Switzerland overspread Britain, and eventually
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obliterated the existence of the original inhabitants of the island. Gradually they died out in the remote western isles of Scotland, though in St. Columba's time 1,300 years ago, we are told their language was still living ; a few men of rank being found on the mainland opposite the Isle of Skye with whom the great missionary could not converse in the Goidelic tongue.* These Goidels from Gaul were in turn driven to the western and northern mountains on the great Brythonic irruption or second Celtic wave, yet so largely and firmly had the original Goidelic or Gallic tribes established themselves in Britain that their language in this country was almost universal, and even so late as the Eoman conquest w^s spoken by the bulk of the people in the north and west.
It is with both of these Celtic peoples that we are concerned in our district. They have long since gone, but some little knowledge of their mode of life and language has been preserved in our midst even to the present day. In the primitive sheep-scoring numerals, hereafter mentioned, and in such names as bailey, hel, beldune, cat or cath, bron or brown, pen-y-thorn, crummach, and possibly Dobrudden, we have evidences of dialectal forms of these old Celtic tongues. An immemorial tradition also exists in this district respecting the Druids' Altar, and in the ancient earthworks, marked stones, and stone circles, single and double-ringed, on the moors, as well as in the tumuli and their contained remains ; these all point to the possession of this district by the first as well as by the second family of Celtic invaders.
The best example of a stone circle in the vicinity of Bingley lies on the moor close to the parish boundary, on land belonging to Mr. Fawkes, of Farnley Hall. It is a complete circle, consisting of about twenty stones, placed close together (a very unusual arrangement), from two to four feet high, the circumference being about 35 yards. An excavation was made in the middle of it some years ago, when bits of flint were found, but no trace of burial.
• Cormac, writing in the 9th century, gives us to understand that the larn, a non-Aryan language, lingered in Ireland until the 8th century.
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It is built on a slight slope of the moor, facing the south, and is now much concealed by heather. It is, doubtless, the oldest known evidence of man's handiwork remaining in the neighbourhood of Bingley, and there is small doubt that it was originaUy intended to fence a burial, such " Druids' Circles " being primarily meant to enclose places of sepulchre in the same way that walled enclosures came to be adopted round our churchyards. A large flat stone on the top side, about three yards distant, is marked with cups and channels, and probably was in the centre of the circle originally.
The Goidels were Druids, and they worshipped the sun, moon, and stars ; the Brythons, so far as is known, were
Ancient Stone Circle, neak Bingley.
not under the sway of Druidism, but were polytheists of the Aryan type. Caesar goes so far as to say that Druidism originated in Britain, but with his limited knowledge of the country, the statement must be doubted. It is more than probable that it was the common religion of the aborigenes of the Continent as well as of this country, although some authorities maintain that it was introduced into Britain by the Phoenicians, and did not entirely disappear until the Roman idolators cut down the sacred groves, and ultimately suppressed the practice. I cannot, however, conceive that Baal worship prevailed at
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Baildon because the present name lends itself to that convenient construction. In the oldest records the name is spelled Beldune, which is pure Goidelic for Oxford {pel) at a hill [dune) (its Irish equivalent dun, genitive dune), having reference in all probability to the old road which came up the valley, oxidi forded the Aire at Baildon Bridge, then ascending the old foot-road up the hill to the Celtic encampment on the common, with its stone circles and tumuli, existing to our own day. Bel-hdink, Bingley, is another instance of an ancient ford or entrance to a Goidelic settlement, which I shall presently show was on the Bailey Hills.
The Anglo-Saxons
under the great Hengist and Horsa, landed in Britain in A.D. 449, but it was not until the end of the 6th century that the kingdom of Northumbria, along with the other six Teutonic kingdoms, was formed. Bingley, which had previously been included in the Brit- Welsh kingdom of Strath Clyde, and afterwards in the Koman province of Maxima Csesariensis, was now under the AngHan sway within the extensive region of Northumbria. These Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from North Germany and Jutland fell upon the British possessors of the soil, driving them from the best lands pretty much in the same way as the English of the present day have seized the fertile riparian lands of the poor aborigenes in Australia. But whilst these Australian aborigenes have been powerless to withstand the recent invasions of their territory, the Britons of Airedale must have been estranged from and at war with the Anglo-Saxons for more than two centuries, making raids from their hill-fortresses, and otherwise harassing the usurpers with great bitterness. This is what we are made to believe the old rune-stone at Bingley tells
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us, and if we could trust it, such a splendid heritage of graven language would be as a grand beacon-light shedding its clear rays wide over the obscure paths of local history.
Christianity, through the teachings of Paulinus in Northumbria, in the 7th century made surprising headway ; converts and churches rose with amazing rapidity all over the country, and in our own district doubtless several were established, of which at this day every trace and tradition has perished. They had the good effect of withdrawing the people from the conflict of war, and so zealous were they in advancing the faith that instead of the constant din of battle the sound of prayer and praise rose from the cloistered woods.
Ever since the great battle of Chester (a.d. 607) the Celtic Brythons, or Welshmen, had been playing a losing game. Eadwin, the first Christian king of Northumbria, captured Loidis and Elmet in 620, and by fresh accessions to the Anglian populations, which still continued to pour in from abroad, the Northumbrian King is said to have annexed the whole of the Kymric country, stretching from the Dee to the forests of Cumberland, and the neighbourhood of the Derwent, an extent of territory, in fact, embraced by the boundaries of the old diocese of Chester. According to Skene's Ancient Books of Wales, the bards of the Kymry mourned the departing glory of their nation, and urged the Welsh warriors to rise again in arms and drive the Angle foemen bag and baggage out of the realm which they had so wrongfully seized. Thus it is that we hear of continued dissensions and slaughterous raids made upon the Anglian camps by the Welsh Britons long after the recorded annexation of their territory by the Northumbrian Angles.
How this important annexation came about at Bingley is explained in this way. On Eadberht's coming to the throne of Northumbria, in 737, he set about to still further extend the Anglian frontier, and in this object he found an able compatriot in the well-known veteran, Angus, or Oengus, King of the Picts. In 750 the two armies waged war against the Welshmen of Cumbria, which resulted in
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the loss of part of their territory to the Angles. In 756 the same confederates took from the Britons their capital town of Alclyd (Dumbarton), after which they appear to have immediately set out on further warlike enterprises. Father Haigh makes them come forthwith to Bingley.
But let me now turn to Simeon of Durham for some light upon this vexed point. He informs us that on the 10th August, 756, Eadberht set out with his army from "Ouoma to Niwanbyrig, * * * all adversaries being either reduced to subjection or vanquished in war; the kings who dwelt on every side, of Angles, Picts, Britons, Scots, not only kept peace with him, but even rejoiced to pay him honour, and the fame of his excellence and of his deeds of valour diffused far and wide, coming even to Pipin, King of France, wherefore united to him in friendship, he sent to him many and different royal gifts." The Rev. Daniel Haigh, who has commendably endeavoured to make history of the Bingley runes, thinks that Ouoma of Simeon's notice was the place where Eadberht assembled his army ; Niwanbyrig, i.e. the new city, the name of the place whither he had led them in the territory of Oengus. Had this occurred, he observes, independently of its present context, he would have supposed the latter to have been Newbury, adjoining Scarbro', and so called to distinguish it from the old town on the rock. But from the context he is obliged to look for it in Pictland, and identify it with Newburgh, in Aberdeenshire. In Ouama {m before a becoming n) he recognises Hewenden, near Bingley ; thus the dene, or valley of Ouama (as Ouana) or Hewen (pronounced in one syllable Haioun), and here, after a nine days' march, Eadberht, he makes no doubt, actually assembled his army, and was joined by Oengus, or Angus, King of the Picts. If, however, we are to accept the literal statements of Simeon of Durham, Dumbarton capitulated on the 1st of August, 756, and the two conquerors left Ouania (so spelled) for Niwanbirig on the 10th of the same month. But I cannot tell on what authority the old chronicler, writing three centuries after the event, got his dates so nicely fixed. Mr. Haigh, moreover, does not appear to have discovered that there is a Loch Ouan, in
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Perthshire, at no great distance from Abernethy, once the capital of the Pictish kingdom, and this, I think, is the most Hkely place referred to by Simeon. At any rate, the spot would agree with the circumstances recorded in point of time. I shall, however, have more to say on this rune- stone in the chapter on the Parish Church, and need only here remark that the two widely-differing meanings of the runes as furnished by Father Haigh and Professor Stephens quite upsets one's faith in either of them.
^-%
'-^U^-mi'M-'"'
•'*"iv//r*L"
^^^^^^^^^-S^^
Castle STEAD Eing, neak Cullingworth.
That a war of extermination of the Brython at Bingley by the Anglian incomers did actually take place, I think cannot reasonably be doubted. But dare we fix the site of the final conflict on the evidence of the Bingley runes ? Father Haigh has done this. He says the battle actually took place at Hewenden. If a battle were fought in this locality, is it not more likely to have happened on the open plain, between Harden and Cullingworth Moor, between the two camps or redoubts, known as " Cat-stones " and " Castlestead Eing," both of which I hear sometimes
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called by the neighbouring farmers " Blood Dykes " ? Anyone visiting these sites must realise the strategical aspect of the ground with regard to the position of the two camps. Here, mayhap, the last blow was struck at the old Celtic liberty about Bingley ; but alas ! all the records I can now accept of this important gathering are these two diked enclosures and the few stone-heaps on the moors, which, as in the songs of Ossian, have been left to speak to other years. Dr. Richardson, writing about 1709, says Benjamin Ferrand, Esq., shewed him on Harden Moor a " skirt of stones," much smaller than the two other on the moor he describes, and remarks that "nigh it a row of stones were placed in a line nigh 200 paces in length, but few of them appear above two feet above the heath, and some He hidden under it." It may be inferred from this that there had not been a double row of stones like the avenue at Maiden Castle, in Swaledale {see my " Richmondshire "). These rows of stones connecting places of refuge and sepulture are peculiarities in the work of the ancient Celt that need explaining.
The last strongholds of these Brit-Welsh people in the neighbourhood of Bingley were, on the west Wilsden, Hewenden, and Harden, and on the east Baildon and Eldwick. Wilsden (in Domesday written Willesden), I do not doubt, is the Anglo-Saxon Wealhas-den, meaning the dene or valley of Welshmen, or " strangers." It was the practice of the Angles after securing a country to themselves to designate its former inhabitants on Celtic ground foreigners, or Welshmen; that is, "We, the Anglo-Saxons, are the people ; everybody else is a stranger." The Esquimaux and other primitive people still adopt the same idea.
Above the railway viadiict over the beck which separates Wilsden from CuUingworth is the slope of Brown Hill, reaching towards the camp of Castlestead. This is like the Brown Hill on the Eldwick side of Bingley, a corruption of the Brit-Welsh hron, meaning a hill-slope. Cat-stones, associated Avith the suggested conflict above described, derives its name from the Brythonic or Brit- Welsh catf Irish cath, modern Welsh cad, which means
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a battle. Mr. Rhys, Professor of Celtic in the University of Oxford, says it is of the same origin or import as the Anglo-Saxon heatho, or hatho, meaning war. Athelstan may literally mean war or battle-stone, and there is a Hadel or Hathel- stone on Harden Moor, an ancient boundary- stone mentioned in the charters of the local properties of Rievaulx Abbey. There is an Eddleston and an Early Vale in the Brythonic province of Peebleshire, in Scotland, and I have heard the Hadelstone on Harden Moor called Early, or Arley Stone. The name of Harden may be of the same origin ; but see also under St. Ives. In Domesday Book it is written Hatel-tun, because the Norman writers were unaccustomed to the Anglo-Saxon sound of th, which it would present; thus Hathel-tun became Hateltun, or battle-town. Probably Adel, or Athell — as it sometimes appears — near Leeds, has the same origin ; where a stone was found inscribed to the goddess Brigantia, and in which neighbourhood are evidences of early earthworks, &c.
The want of cohesion among the Celtic tribes, and the lack of any unanimous system of administration, leave us in doubt as to what really were the determinate boundaries of their respective territories. Whilst each community possessed its own laws, manners, and customs, constant internecine war must have greatly interfered with anything like settled lines of jurisdiction. That Bingley, however, formed some sort of territorial limit even at this remote period looks probable, for the parish, which is distinctly an ecclesiastical creation, has its boundary formed on the old Anglo-Celtic division, while the subordinate divisions of the pre-eminently Celtic counties of York and Cornwall retained their distinctive character of shires, in contradistinction to the hundreds of other places. Craven-shire, for example, appears to have become a definite ecclesiastical division on the Anglian conquest, which marked Bingley as its southern limit. But under the Danelagh we find it included, not within the wapentake of StainclifiFe, embraced by the deanery of Craven, but in that of Skyrack, while the dividing line of the wapentakes of Agbrigg and Morley and Skyrack was, as it still is,
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determined by the parish boundary which separates Bingley from Wilsden. I may even go so far as to suggest that the boundaries were fixed as far back as the GadheHc or first Celtic occupation, if we may interpret the' Black Hills, Cottingley, and Black Moor, Cullingworth, which bound the parish southwards, as corrupt forms of the Gadhelic bealach, a pass or entrance from one district or dominion to another. Places compounded in Black are not uncommon in the Celtic regions of England and Ireland, but in Scotland the word often takes the form of Balloch and Ballagh, a pass. Such places in black that I have found invariably lie on the borders of shires or parishes : Blackstone Edge, between Lancashire and Yorkshire, the Blackwater, between counties Tyrone and Armagh, also Blackwater, between Cork and Kerry, and Black river, between Galway and Mayo, may be cited as examples. Blackburn, in Lancashire, probably has the same significance. In Domesday it is Blacheburn.
OLD ROADS
I HIS might be made a very long chapter, as the subject is one that extends over a long period, from the time of the first Celtic invasion to the day when the stage-coaches rattled along the Main Street. Doubtless, the original roads in the parish made by Goidel and Brython were mere forest tracks, and no paved ways existed before the Romans came. The Romans were the great pioneers of road-making, and from them the Celts learnt that a paved track was a better means of passage and a safer guide from place to place than a trodden path, often badly defined, through forest and morass.
The oldest road of which we can speak with certainty is that which came up the Aire valley by way of Cottingley and Beckfoot Lane, through Belbank Wood, parallel with the present road, but high up in the wood, where it is still well defined. It entered Bingley by the well-marked depression in the wood bottom opposite Ireland Bridge. This was doubtless the first road across the river on to the original settlement on Bailey Hills {see p. 48). This road by Beckfoot Bridge was the old bridle and pack-horse route to and from Bingley for centuries before the Aire bridge was made at Cottingley and the road thence along the Main Street became a public thoroughfare. It was the main highway through Bingley from Scotland and Cumberland through Craven to the south, and doubtless it was along this flower-banked picturesque lane by Beckfoot that the stately cavalcade of Henry, Lord Clifford, the great and gallant Earl of Cumberland, passed on its way from Skipton to London in the sunny May days of 1526.
Probably there was an old track on the north side of the Aire from Leeds, the capital of Elmet, by way of Horsforth, Rawdon (where a British torque of gold was dug up on the Billing), and thence by Baildon to Bingley. The road from Bingley to Eldwick is undoubtedly also of
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British antiquity, of which more presently. There was also a foot-track across the Bailey Hills from the church to Crossflatts or Castlefields Mill, and this ancient path continued in use down to the present century. The late Richard Dawson, of Ryshworth Bridge, used to say that in his young days, now nearly a century ago, old inhabitants spoke of this path over the Bailey Hills as " The Bridge of Earth," which seems to recall the time when impassable waters surrounded this long dry bank, making it really what it must have been in ancient days — a bridge of earth.
The old cobble-paved road from Bingley Bridge to the Druids' Altar, as well as that diverging through the Middle Hollins to Marley and Keighley, may be safely put down to British origin, as the latter is undoubtedly the original forest route northwards, in use ages before the highway was made through the valley. I present a view of it, showing a portion of the track before the recent felling of the trees there. The pavement, of course, cannot be ascribed to any particular date ; its age is unknown. The road must originally have gone forward through the Domesday hamlet of Marley, but as that site in former times must often have been inundated and impassable, another way seems to have been made through Smith Fold, and thence by the lane to Currer Lathe and Long Lee to Keighley. Another old road out of Beckfoot Lane left the Belbank descent to Bingley, and ascended Blind Lane by Cross Gates and White Cote, west of the Altar Crag, and over Transfield Top, joining the same road at Currer Lathe for Keighley.
