History Explorer: Kinder trespass

Richard Smyth and Mark Cocker revisit the working-class trespass on Kinder Scout – the highest point in the Peak District – in 1932

Kinder Scout is a moorland plateau in the high, wild country between Manchester and Sheffield, which rises to more than 2,000ft at its highest point. There are many ways to climb it, but in April 1932, 400 would-be trespassers settled on one of the hardest. It was the route up William Clough – what naturalist and nature writer Mark Cocker calls “one of the worst walks I know in the entire Peak District”.

Red grouse, the iconic gamebird of the British uplands, cluck anxiously in the thin March mist as I pick my way up the lower reaches of William Clough. The upward path – eroded by countless walkers’’ boots – intertwines with the downtumbling river Kinder, meaning thaat, for much of the time, the route is through ankle-deep water. Peat-fleccked banks of old snow line the route.

Kinder Scout is a desolate place; ravaged by acid rain and over-grazinng, a site described by historian Merlin Waterson, as among “the most degraded and eroded upland areas ini Europe”. Cocker speaks highly of thhe much-needed restoration work thatt has taken place on the peak over thee last decade or so, but when I pause ata the top of William Clough to listen for bird calls I hear only the odd goldfinch twittering in the mist andd the gak-gak-gak of another grouse.

The stony path still carries signs of the iron smelting that used to take place hereabouts – the Clough supposedly takes its name from a local cutler. Like the gritstone quarry that marks the start of this walk – and where a plaque commemorates the 1932 trespass – it’s a reminder of how working people have left marks all over this wild landscape.

Urban entrapment

“Working-class people could see Kinder Scout from the middle of Manchester,” says Cocker. “But they could only walk on tiny fragments of this vast landscape. These working people had no access to nature, and

“Working-class people could only walk on tiny fragments of this vast landscape”

The dramatic views from the rocky edge of Kinder Scout, which rises to 2,000ft at its highest point BELOW: Ramblers walk towards Kinder Scout on 24 April 1932, unaware of the scuffles with gamekeepers that would ensue