What brings the crowds to Crowden?
A READER very kindly just told me that, my book The Waterman’s Tale, has enriched his life.
What a nice thing to say.
He also said that he was once told that there was nothing to see or do at Crowden but now he is there every weekend.
Good lad I thought as you’ll never hear this particular writer give the place any bad press, unlike some others I will mention.
Daniel Defoe, 16601731, should perhaps wash his mouth out as he once described Longdendale as, ‘Perhaps the most desolate, wild and abandoned country in England,’ and although Dan undoubtedly had a fantastic imagination, most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, he was miles out with the Valley.
The same was true of his latter-day compatriot, Alfred Wainwright, 1907-1991, renowned for his eulogies to the Lake District, when he claimed that, after he passed through Crowden on the Pennine Way, the best thing to do was get out of Longdendale as fast as you could, and be careful to look over your shoulder for ‘Big Brother.’
Wainwright was referencing the bailiffs and watermen of North West Water, who used to frog-march hikers from off the Reservoir Catchment Areas. I’d like to think, as the last of a long line of Watermen, that I changed all that ‘get off my land’ mentality, reasoning that if someone had made the effort to walk so far up the valley then generally they were okay, and the only thing I took exception to was swimming in the Reservoirs, not least because it was so dangerous. True or not, one story I was told illustrates the folly of Reservoir swimming. Five young men who had allegedly been drinking at one of the Valley’s many public houses had decided to stop for a swim near the Woodhead Dam on their return to Glossop. Five jumped in and only two came out alive. At any time of the year once you get a few feet down the water is icy cold.
With regard to our two literary critics, I suppose if you only visit Crowden once in your life, and it is raining, blowing a gale and winter sitting on every shivering branch, it might sway your perception of the place somewhat, so in this instance and for once only, the pair can be forgiven their slanderous mutterings.
But get up there now and for the next few months, and you will always return.
Defoe, to his credit had a wonderfully varied CV, as in no particular order he was a trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer, spy and inmate of Newgate Prison.
One week after his release from gaol, Defoe witnessed the Great Storm of 1703, which raged through the night of November 26/27.
The storm caused severe damage to London and Bristol, uprooted millions of trees and killed more than 8,000 people, mostly at sea.
The event became the subject of Defoe’s ‘The Storm’ (1704), which includes a collection of witness accounts, often regarded as the world’s first example of modern journalism.
In 1987, I was privy to another great storm which once again robbed the British landscape of millions of trees, and I described the aftermath a year later in the Sunday Times newspaper, as leaving the countryside with just the.. ’Shades of glades gone by.’
I was proud of that line, still am.
Crowden, with hardly any trees, and virtually none at all compared to the time of the Domesday Book, when a squirrel could have jumped from branch to branch, from Sherwood to Woodhead without touching the ground, got off lightly in ‘87.
The sessile oaks suffered no damage whatsoever, not least because they are a kind of dwarf oak and they snuggle up to the hillside in small plantations impervious to the most tormenting north easterlies. The valley was a very different place in days of old, packed with not only trees, including oak, ash and willow but all the attendant wildlife that goes with it.
Wolves, wild boar, red deer, lynx and even brown bear up to 1,000 years ago.
The very notion that so many wild animals were abroad around Crowden may have added to the bad reputation the valley had garnered over the years.
Although having said that, the discovery of Neolithic arrowheads in the silt of the Longdendale Reservoirs demonstrates that early man knew where his bread was buttered.
And then of course further proof was unearthed more recently, no pun intended, during research for my book when I was informed that a bronze age hoard had been discovered above Tintwistle within living memory, including this bun-ingot pictured here.
As for Daniel Defoe he obviously visited on a wet day and it must have played havoc with his hair.
Next week you will hear of some wonderful metal-detector finds at Crowden.