The first part of the route goes uphill past sturdy, stone farms and rough pasture. Farming has always been important here, although the land has never been very fertile: oats, beans, and peas were grown in the valleys, and small farmers kept pigs and poultry, but most of the area was devoted to cattle and sheep (along with bigger landowners breeding horses, and hardy Dalesbred sheep grazing rough pastures today).
Most families needed other work to supplement the meagre income derived from agriculture, and work was provided on a small scale by quarrying. In the 19th century it became a major industry; thousands of tons of stone dug out at Musbury Heights made setts, kerbs, and flagstones for Lancashire's streets.
The walk passes through the spoil heaps of the old Musbury Heights Quarry, where chimney remains are part of the scribbling mill where flagstones were dragged round and round to smooth their surface, with the finished stone brought down the hillside in tubs supported by a steel rope on a long, straight incline.
The immediate area flourished until the turn of the 20th century, when it fell victim to the growing demand for drinking water from the mill towns below: three reservoirs were created here — the Haslingden Grane Reservoirs — and the hillside was depopulated to ensure the purity of run-off water. Beyond the quarry is moorland where you may spot skylarks and curlews, colourful lichens on grey gritstone walls, mosses, rushes, and crumbled ruins of farmhouses abandoned when reservoirs were built.
The path runs along a bank next to a deep gully, part of the boundary of the old Musbury Deer Park, which was enclosed in 1304 on the orders of Henry de Lacy (then Lord of the Manor), reserved for hunting until Tudor times when tenants were encouraged to lease and farm the lands.
In the 16th century, people earned extra money by spinning, bleaching, and weaving wool in their homes and selling the cloth (a trade involving almost every family on the Lancashire moorlands) before mills were built in the valleys and people moved down from high moors for work.
The last stage of the walk leads over the shoulder of the prominent round of Musbury Tor and returns along a walled green lane — an old packhorse route. Two mills have been converted to textile museums: Higher Mill was built in 1789 for 'fulling' (where wool is beaten to interlock its fibres), and in the 18th century, cotton began arriving from America, leading to Whitaker's Mill being built next to Higher Mill to spin cotton after Richard Arkwright's water frame made large-scale power spinning a possibility (housing early examples of textile machinery including James Hargreaves's Spinning Jenny).
Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.
