Saddleworth Moor: A place of mystery, tragedy and peace

THE M.E.N. TRACES THE HISTORY OF A LANDSCAPE NOW RAVAGED BY FIRE

THE rugged uplands of Saddleworth Moor form Greater Manchester’s untamed edge.

This landscape, over 1,300ft above sea level, has a unique place in the popular imagination and a dramatic, at times tragic, history.

This week’s inferno, in which 9,000 year-old peat turned to tinder, threatening homes and blanketing parts of the city below with smoke and ash, has turned the eyes of the nation to the moor once more.

Riven by hidden gullies, rapid streams and rocky outcrops, Saddleworth Moor is known for its bleak, forbidding beauty.

Winnie Johnson came here as often as she could. Her lost son Keith Bennett will be forever associated with the moor, and yet she didn’t see it as a place of darkness. She would travel the 14 miles from her home in south Manchester’s suburbs to collect her thoughts and feel close to Keith.

“I love it up there, it’s so peaceful,” she said of the moor to the M.E.N., a few years before her death in 2012.

The monstrous crimes of Hindley and Brady and the searches for their victims are undoubtedly what thrust the moor into national consciousness in recent times. But the place has a folklore stretching back centuries.

Two giants, Alphin and Alder, were said by Lancashire legend to live at the hills that form the gateway to the Upper Tame Valley, Alphin Pike and Alderman’s Hill.

The story has it that the pair were rivals for the affections of a water nymph called Rimmon, who came from Chew Brook in the valley. Rimmon chose Alphin, but Alder refused to accept it and the pair hurled boulders at each other in a duel. Alphin was killed, and Rimmon, in grief, threw herself from the crags to join him.

This myth, recorded by the 18th century poet Samuel Bottomley in the poem ‘Greenfield,’ is believed by some local historians to be an allegory for a Dark Ages border dispute.

Even today, debate about borders continues to rage in this area.

There are still a significant number in the villages to the west of the moor, from where Saddleworth takes its name, who follow the white rose of Yorkshire, rather than the red rose of Lancashire or the metropolitan bee of Manchester.

Certainly until 1972, when Saddleworth became part of Greater Manchester – as part of Oldham – the parish was in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Church, family and geography had linked the community to Lancashire for years before the border change, but for some the parish will be forever Yorkshire.

In 2012, the Saddleworth White Rose society erected a sign in Lees, Oldham, telling visitors they were entering the historic West Riding. And, arguably the most famous element of traditional Saddleworth culture is its brass bands, more common to the Yorkshire tradition.

Apart from the dispute of where the parish of Saddleworth actually lies, the Pennine moorland is where counties meet. It straddles Greater Manchester