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I recently moved about 80 miles north of my Lancashire birthplace to a small village in the west Lakeland peninsula, near the Duddon Valley. The landscape here is more dramatic than the placid slopes of the West Pennine Moors. A few miles to the east is the sea, and in every other direction there are high fells and mountains. But there is continuity too – in colour, in atmosphere and in the feel of the landscape.

Moreover, there’s continuity in the naming of things, with many features in the landscape having Old Norse and Gaelic derivations. With that in mind, I thought I’d begin by going over old ground, so to speak, and quote from “Landings”:

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Anglezarke comprises the most westerly edge of Lancashire’s West Pennine Moors. It is bounded to the north by Heapey, Wheelton and Withnell Moor, to the east by Longworth, Turton and Darwen Moor, and to the south by Rivington Moor and the river Yarrow, which descends from the hill known as Will Narr. Cross the river and you make a transition. Follow it, and you tread a liminal pathway. Stand in its shallow waters and you enter a place of meetings, the threshold of something.

And what of Anglezarke? The name itself – like those of the deserted farms on its low hills – is enigmatic, allusive, hermetic. Its etymology is tantalising – apparently Norse in origin, the first part of the word, Anglez, is likely to refer to a personal name, commonly held to be Anlaf, which itself is a derivation of the popular Scandinavian name Oláfr. In the 9th or 10th century, Norse settlers are thought to have come here from the west coast of Ireland, or possibly the Isle of Man.

The second part has a more complex etymology, having both Gaelic and Norse components. The Gaelic element àiridh is believed to be of greater antiquity, from which the Old Norse erg (Middle English ergh or argh) is derived.

Some Irish Gaelic¹ references:

Àiridh (better àirigh), Hill pasture, shieling (airghe, in Lh. for Gaelic); cf. Early Irish airge, áirge, place where cows are, dairy, herd of cattle; Early Irish airgech, herdswoman of Brigit; Irish airghe, pl. áiríghe, a herd of cattle; airgheach, one who has many herds; *ar-egia; Latin armentum? But see àrach, rear. Norse or Danish erg from Gaelic equals Norse setr (Ork. Sag.). This Norse form proves the identity of Gaelic with Early Irish airge; airge=ar-agio, *agio, herd.

This Scottish Gaelic² definition is also of interest:

Àiridh, s.m. A green grove; a place where osiers grow. “Thig taibhse gu dian an àiridh” — Ghosts shall issue wildly from the osier meadow. — Oss. Temo.

So it would seem that, like many of those ruined dwellings, the name endures long after the person who named it has vanished. Anlaf’s shieling. A kind of memorial, written into the land. And yet, like the landscape, words too are subject to the same, unflinching processes.

Attrition. Atrophy. Change:³

Andeleves arewe 1202; Anlaues argh 1224; Anlewes earche 1246; Anlawes aregh 1246; Anlawes arwe 1246; de Annelesh erg 1246; Anlaseh arghe 1285; Alaseh arghe 1288; Aneles argh 1292; Aneles aregth 1292; Anles arath 1292; Anles aragth 1292; Anlaghes arghe 1302; Anlas argh 1341; Anlaz arghe 1559; Andles argh 1627; Angles arghe 1642; Anleyz argh 1650; Anglez arke 1696; Angles ark 1704; Anglez arch 1731; Angelz ark 1841; Anglez ark 1845.

Perhaps, ultimately, the meaning becomes lost, the person recedes, and the image fades. The Yarrow, for instance, has an indeterminate origin. Just as its physical source emanates somewhere near the hill ridge above the ruins of Hempshaws farm, so its name source is equally elusive:

Yarwe 1190; Earwe 1203; Yarewe 1246;
Yarugh 1276; Yaro 1540; Yarowe 1577.

One possible derivation is from the Brittonic *arwā, in which the first element, *ar, gives us the sense of “starting up, springing up, or setting in motion”. It is also plausible that yarrow shares a common root with the little-used, Modern-English word yare (Anglo-Saxon gearu, gearo), meaning “ready, quick or prompt”. This can be traced through the Old-English word gearwe (Anglo-Saxon gearuwe, gearwian), which means “that which prepares or sets in order”. And if we also consider that curative plant of the same name (The Common Yarrow – Latin Achillea Millefolium), then we get the sense of “to dress” (ie: to heal, from the Anglo-Saxon gerwan).

Another answer is simply that the word is a corruption of arrow, from the Old-English ārwe, and the Proto-Germanic arhwō. A metaphorical description? Flight of the river. And lastly, we have the earthen, prosaic, Proto-Celtic *garwo (Welsh garw, Irish garbh), meaning “coarse” or “rough”. In all, it’s a word with ambiguous origins, but perhaps there’s a clue elsewhere – in the landscape itself? I can’t help but notice the similarity between river and moor – between Andeleves–arewe (1202), and Y–arewe (1246). An incidental connection, perhaps, but it’s one which resonates, for me at least, having experienced them both intimately. Two joined into one.

Footnotes:

¹ Quoted from An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language, by Alexander MacBain, 1911.
² Quoted from A Gaelic Dictionary, by R.A. Armstrong, 1825.
³ This list represents the most complete narrative of the word Anglezarke that I’ve been able to discover. Despite being culled from several sources, it is noticeably incomplete. For example, at some point during the 20th century, the change from Anglezark to Anglezarke occurred, but, as yet, I’ve been unable to determine exactly when. Strange that the name should continue to change, even in the modern era.

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After months of editing together various notebooks, diary entries and poem fragments into some kind of narrative, the Landings book is now available. It’s a 96-page paperback with an accompanying CD containing 70 minutes of music derived from four years of recording on the West Pennine Moors.

You can order a copy by emailing: richieskelton@yahoo.co.uk

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Writing more than fifty years ago, RS Thomas unflinchingly evoked the hardship of rural life in the Welsh hills through his stark and unsentimental poetry. These particular fragments have a special resonance, as they address the process of ruin, and echo something of my own feelings upon first meeting those deserted farms on Anglezarke Moor:

No, no, you must face the fact
Of his long life alone in that crumbling house
With winds rending the joints, and the grey rain’s claws
Sharp in the thatch; of his work up on the moors
With the moon for a candle, and the shrill rabble of stars
Crowding his shoulders.

from “The Airy Tomb”.

Too far for you to see
The moss and the mould on the cold chimneys,
The nettles growing through the cracked doors,
The houses stand empty at Nant-yr-Eira,
There are holes in the roofs that are thatched with sunlight,
And the fields are reverting to the bare moor.

from “The Welsh Hill Country”.

Leave it, leave it – the hole under the door
Was a mouth through which the rough wind spoke
Ever more sharply; the dank hand
of age was busy on the walls
Scrawling in blurred characters
Messages of hate and fear.

Leave it, leave it – the cold rain began
At summer end – there is no road
Over the bog, and winter comes
With mud above the axletree.

Leave it, leave it – the rain dripped
Day and night from the patched roof
Sagging beneath its load of sky.

Did the earth help them, time befriend
These last survivors? Did the spring grass
Heal winter’s ravages? The grass
Wrecked them in its draughty tides,
Grew from the chimney-stack like smoke,
Burned its way through the weak timbers.
That was nature’s jest, the sides
Of the old hulk cracked, but not with mirth.

from “Depopulation of the Hills”.

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By the ruins of Old Rachel’s farm, Rivington Moor, Lancashire

I couldn’t in all conscience remove something from here. I couldn’t diminish it — even by a small portion. True, I’ve taken small stones in the past, and deposited them in other ruins. But the gesture was always balanced. A reciprocal act. And so Old Rachel’s also contains deposits from Simms — that double ruin which lies on the other side of the fledgling river Yarrow. In some oblique way they are written into each other. Two joined into one.

Admittedly, over the past four years I’ve taken — and still hold on to — many things from the landscape:

—Stones and mortar.
—Fragments of roofing timber.
—Seed husks.
—Leaves and bark.
—Phials of soil.

Whilst absent from the landscape, these things act as connective tissue. Binding me to this place. They become involved in the process of composition; as plectra, or, more obliquely — by simply being placed within sight — they participate in the ritual of activation. A regenerative act of making.

But these things are borrowed only, and will be returned with interest. And yet here I am, today, wishing to remove something entirely. To steal, consume and sell. Even the birds, cattle and sheep nourish the bones of this place with their excrement. I return the stones back amongst the natural detritus and turn away, settling instead for some seed husks from a thistle growing between brick and bleached timber.

My guiding principal for making these boxes has always been to only take what is given — to only remove something that has already fallen, or is no longer needed. Funny that I should value the remnants of human habitation over those of the landscape itself. Why is it okay to take soil, leaves and seeds, but not a few sordid fragments from a ruined farmhouse, neglected for nearly a century? Perhaps because it’s still marked on maps, hovering on the threshold of memory, offering flicker-book glimpses of a private and compelling history? And yet these handfuls of soil, these phials of seeds, belong to a much older and more mysterious narrative — that of the land itself.

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I’ve recently been reading Richard Muir’s “The Lost Villages of Britain”. This passage about the Washburn valley in Yorkshire resonates with me strongly, given the many similarities it has with Anglezarke and Rivington:

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One often finds that a village which suffers the coup de grace from one cause is already carrying the scars of another encounter with quite a different form of adversity. This is true of the settlements in Yorkshire’s lovely Washburn valley which have vanished beneath reservoirs. The little dale has a colourful and turbulent history : during the nineteenth century, it suffered a typhus epidemic, while the local tradition of witchcraft was so deeply rooted that even at the end of that century the villagers sometimes carried twigs of rowan to ward off the evil influences. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the valley was industrialised and the Washburn stream powered a series of waterwheels for flax, hemp, silk and cotton mills. However, the shift from water to steam power took a toll on the secluded mills during the last century, and by the start of this [20th] century most were decayed and many of the dalesfolk had drifted away in search of employment.

Leeds, meanwhile, was expanding rapidly and during the 1860s the corporation of the city became concerned by the rising level of water consumption. In 1866 it was reported that, in the course of the ten preceeding years, average gross daily consumption of water had risen from 1,596,000 gallons to 4,407,241 gallons, the rise being partly related to new standards of hygiene which caused the number of WCs in the city to rise from 1005 to 3221. The corporation consultant, Edward Filliter, advised in 1866 that the Washburn valley appeared to provide the best potential reservoir site. The Waterworks Act of 1867 enabled the corporation to acquire the necessary land.

In 1871, the first sod was cut at Lindley Wood reservoir and the work was completed in 1875 : Swinsty reservoir followed in 1876 and Fewston reservoir was opened in 1879. The first Washburn village to be inundated was Little Timble : in 1822 it had a population of sixty-two; the typhus epidemic of 1838-40 which was thought to have originated in the nearby industrial village of Blubberhouses caused a number of deaths, while mill closures in the middle of the century reduced employment. In 1871, the village was still managing to maintain its population and large families were common, for the nine inhabited houses accomodated a population of sixty-three. However, the expansion of the Swinsty reservoir across a part of the village site caused the population to fall to thirty-one by 1881, and by 1891 there were only five surviving dwellings and the population had fallen to nineteen. The former home of the Elizabethan poet Edward Fairfax was one of the finer buildings which vanished.

An uneasy peace followed, but the Act of 1867 permitted the construction of a fourth reservoir of Thruscross, and Leeds Corporation steadily acquired new holdings and properties in the upper Washburn valley.

The construction of the Fewston and Swinsty reservoirs caused the slopes flanking the new lakes to be destabilised, with adverse effects on the hillside village of Fewston, which had escaped inundation. In the trivialising guide book prose of 1895, Tom Bradley recounted that “Fewston was in a very unsettled state a short time after the middle reservoir was completed. It seemed undecided whether to remain an examplary rustic village seated on the hillside or shift its quarters to the lake below. It was evidently activated by a desire to emulate Goldsmith’s Deserted Village… walls began to divide and roofs to fall, and altogether the village got itself considerably mixed up. The inhabitants fled from their houses, which fell out of plumb… Geologists said it was the shifting of the strata through the action of water in the reservoir.” Fewston overcame the crisis and survives today.

In 1960, the axe which had been poised over the village of West End finally fell and a start was made on the Thruscross scheme. [...] West End could look back on an attractive past and a small measure of former importance. In the early nineteenth century, five waterwheels had turned in this stretch of the valley, at mills working cotton, hemp and corn. As the water rose to inundate some 142 acres, it submerged the little Gate Inn of 1699, the small village school which had begun as a dame school and the picturesque chapel of 1688 which gained church status in the nineteenth century. Prior to the flooding, the reamining houses in West End were demolished, the villagers were rehoused and a new church was built above the high water mark from stones removed from a ruined West End mill. A century of decline and uncertainty came to an end in the valley, which had once bustled to the clatter of water-powered mill gear, slumbered in the silence of a chain of artificial lakes.

As an industrial village, West End was doomed before the administrators of Leeds cast their gaze upon it, and the decay was apparent in 1895 when Bradley wrote that the day of what he now saw as a dreamy hamlet had long departed : “The mills which formerly gave it some importance are now at rest, haven fallen into decay, and are gradually approaching utter ruin.” At the cost of the disruption of a few valley households, some fine monuments to industrial archaeology and the beauty of a Pennine valley, the citizens of the teeming conurbation to the south were able to drink more deeply. The Thruscross decision may well have been a right one, but one wonders how many other little valley communities may live unwittingly in the shadow of a thirsty metropolis?”