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On a day of typical “English Summer” weather, the largest group ever to participate in a UWHG walk gathered at a wind-swept lonely location on the Malham Moor Road, to the north-west of Skirethorns. By 10:30, both sides of the cattle-grid saw neatly parked lines of vehicles, a large huddle of waterproof clad walkers gathered round Alison Armstrong, and Roger Martlew, who, in the temporary absence of Janis Heward, introduced the surrounding geological and historical landscape.
What followed was an interesting and thought provoking perambulation across parts of the northern section of the Bordley Township, along a route that journeyed through a landscape of ‘early settlements’, ‘field enclosures’, ‘lines of bell pits’ of ‘shafts and shake holes’ that were dotted in profusion across the hillside on the 1:25 000 OS map.
Our walk, in slowly increasing rain, commenced by looking at an area locally known as “Lantern Holes” or as on earlier maps “Lanthorn Holes” - harking back to days when window ‘glazing’ and the sides surrounding a light source were made from animal horn. No suggestions could be offered as to why the name had been given - but one of our readers may have an answer.
At the top of this first field lay a series of boulder defined outlines marking one of the ‘early settlements’ but just how ‘early’ and ‘settled by who’ remained a mystery as the multiple Heritage Environment Record entries for this area cover a wide range of dates across a time-span of at least 2,000 years of human activity.
On our return to the metalled roadway we were joined by Janis, who in conjunction with Roger and Alison then led the willing wet walkers ever further away from the security and shelter of their vehicles – an excursion that crossed the route of Mastiles Lane, the possibly pre-historic (certainly Roman and monastic) route between the Wharfe and Aire valleys.
We entered a large field marked as Tattersal Pasture and the party, in true heroic spirit, after carefully examining a range of hard to identify features, took a well-earned luncheon break before heading uphill in steadily falling rain, encouraged by an ever increasing gusting wind (the rain that is, not the party!)
Never-the-less, excepting the prevailing atmospheric conditions, the landscape continued to reveal a wide variety of fascinating features – Lazy Beds or Pillow Mounds (depending on your choice of interpretation), lead dressing floors in the strangest of places, more ‘bell pits’ but corrected to ‘shallow shafts’ as these excavations explored the subterranean lead veins and not coal levels.
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