Another July walk in the Ribble Valley

Today I'm walking  from Great Mitton, where Hodder and Ribble's fair waters do meet, according to a  line from the  song, Old Pendle.

There are two grand halls in Mitton, one in Little Mitton,   on the Lancashire side of the river and now a hotel and restaurant, and one at Great Mitton, north of the river, and in Yorkshire until the boundry changes of 1974. A carved stone set into the fabric of the bridge indicates the old boundary between the two counties.  Both halls are now in Lancashire.  Great Mitton Hall was originally built to house monks I believe, and was once used as a hospital, but it is now a private home and the gardens are open to the public under the National Garden Scheme.

 

Next to the hall stands All Hallows Church, which dates back to 1103, but it would have been a timber building at that time. Turner spent a lot of time painting in the Ribble Valley, and he was so impressed by this church that he did a detailed pencil drawing of the interior. He also painted a canvas depicting the interior of Little Mitton Hall.

Some people are a little squeamish about graveyards, but personally I can't resist them. First of all you get the most fantastic views of the oldest surviving buildings  in Britain, and they are havens for wildlife, which seems to be much more approachable in churchyards and public parks than anywhere else. This churchyard was full of rabbits on my visit, which were quite happy to pose for photographs.

I also discovered this wasp's nest in a hedge. Late July and August are the months for wasps, as anyone who has tried to eat or drink outdoors in summer will have realised, and the little bleeders think nothing of stinging you just for the hell of it. The only thing that can be said in their defence is that they kill a lot of garden pests, now not a lot of people know that.

Time to leave Great Mitton and head for Bashall Eves, but I want to make a short diversion to show you Cromwell's bridge,  a pack horse bridge built in 1561, which crosses the river Hodder. Cromwell crossed it in with 8,000 men in 1684 on his way from Gisburn to Preston. The Battle of Preston took place the following day and the Royalists were routed. Cromwell states that he held a council of war at the bridge.

We have finally reached Browsholme Hall at Bashall Eves and I can now reveal my real reason for undertaking this walk. It's actually a genealogical journey for me. The present house was built in 1507 by Sir Edmund Parker, my 13th great grandfather although a house built by my 18th great grandfather, Richard Parker, stood on the site from around 1400. My 10th great grandfather Roger Parker didn't inherit and became the Dean of Lincoln Cathedral,  but his son Thomas was christened at  Mitton and married in Whalley.  I had hoped that there might be a family connection to Great Mitton Hall, but it would appear not.

A July walk in the Ribble Valley

     Today I asked you to meet me on the car park at Marles Wood, because we are walking along the banks of the river Ribble to the village of Hurst Green. A stepped path leads through the wood and down to the river bank, with a fence on either side to limit erosion. Because light has been allowed to enter by cutting through the woodland, foxgloves now grow along the stepped path and in the perimeter of the wood. 

      Foxgloves, or Digitalis, can, I'm told, be used in the treatment of heart conditions, but as an overdose could be fatal, self administration is not recommended by this author. I do love them and grow them in my own garden, along with a cultivated white variety. They look good growing together but I much prefer the wild native.

     This part of the river is called the sail wheel. Some people even refer to Marle's Wood, as Sail Wheel Wood. At this bend in the river the water travels in a vortex, rather like the water going down a plug hole. I assume that this circular motion of the water accounts for the reference to a  wheel, but what a sail wheel is I have absolutely no idea, unless it's a reference to the wheel of a sailing ship. I'm not even sure if I've used the correct spelling of the word.

     Today we have a fisherman. You can just about make him out through the trees. People seem to fish here often, perhaps it's easier to catch the fish just before they disappear down the plug hole?

  We are now walking along the Ribble Way, a designated ramble from its source at Ribblehead, to Lytham StAnnes, where it enters the Irish sea. I've just been watching a kingfisher diving from a branch and catching small fish. I've had numerous attempt to photograph it, but unfortunately it's too fast for me, and too far away to get a decent picture. I did get a picture of this ewe  and two well grown lambs, they appear to be trying to get out of the sun in the shade of a fallen tree. There hasn't been enough sunny days to satisfy me this year, and I have no intentions of staying in the shade when a sunny day does come along, but then I'm not wearing a fleece.

     We've reached the footbridge, which will take us across the river. There's a sand and gravel beach close by, which is popular with picnickers, and with children who want to paddle with their fishing nets, and jam jars, while attempting to catch minnows.

     The suspension bridge was built in the 1950's, and replaced a ferryman with a rowing boat. I don't know how much foot traffic travelled between Dinkley and Hurst Green in the 1950's but I wouldn't have thought his business enterprise to have been very lucrative, even before the construction of the bridge.

     This plant is called Woody Nightshade, and is sometimes referred to as deadly nightshade.  It's a member of the potato family with  similarly shaped, but differently coloured, flowers. The red berries are extremely poisonous, and they are reported to have been used by the Pendle Witches to induce sickness, and kill livestock, in retaliation for a refusal, or verbal abuse, received while begging. Thrushes eat the berries without any problems at all, and distribute the seed for the plant. This must be part of a symbiotic relationship between the plant and just one species of  birds, as the thrushes seem to be immune to the poison.
 

  We are now at Hurst Green and visiting Stonyhurst college. It was once the family home of the Shireburn family, before becoming a boarding school run by Jesuit monks. It's most famous old boy, worldwide, must be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes novels. Inside the college you can discover the names of other boys in his year,  Moriarty is one of them.  
     The son of JRR Tolkien also attended the school. It is thought that his father wrote his Lord of the Rings  trilogy while visiting his son at Stoneyhurst, and used locations within the Ribble Valley in his stories. There is a Tolkien trail in the Ribble Valley, but I haven't followed it. Perhaps I will, very soon?