SOUTH PENNINE ARCHAEOLOGY GROUP
WHAT extraordinary times we live in.
I wonder what future generations will make of all of this in 250 years, several hundred or even 2000 years from now!
Will they be looking at our valley using equipment and methods we can’t even begin to imagine today?
Will they be trying to understand how we lived, what our buildings were like, what technology we used?
This isn’t just the idle musing of a septuagenarian, this is what we’re trying to do with our ancestors in the Irwell valley above Bacup, on Calf Hill above Sabden (main photo) and at the probable iron age settlement above Stacksteads.
We’re confined to barracks for the foreseeable future but the 32 people who joined our new organisation in the first eight weeks aren’t the sort to watch daytime TV!
We’ve got inquisitive minds, a desire to know more about our heritage, we want to learn.
Our gardens have never had so much attention in this unseasonal weather but colder days and no doubt, wetter ones will soon be with us.
Above Bacup there are the remains of Dog Pits Mill about which little is known other than what Mike Rothwell published in A Guide to the Industrial Archaeology of Bacup and Stacksteads.
Had we been able to, we’d have been out there by now, digging (subject to getting permission from the landowner).
What excites us – and our industrial heritage expert, Richard Matthews in particular - is that it was not developed after 1864 and so we have the remains of an original water powered mill, albeit with a small steam engine installed earlier in the century.
This could tell us a great deal about early mill design.
There seems to be little online about this mill, opinions are divided about the road on Calf Hill and our probable iron age settlement is a new discovery.
Without being able to visit the Lancashire
Records Office (LRA), Bacup Natural History Museum, local libraries etc there seems to be little we can do...or is there?
How much do you know about water powered textile mills?
How many mills were there in the Bacup area at the height of the industrial revolution?
What more can we find out about the owners of Dog Pits Mill?
The more we know as we seek permission to dig, the more we’ll understand. Interested?
Drop us an email at spag@chro.co.uk and we’ll discuss what to do next.
If you have another idea please let us know, after all we’re making this up as we go along!