Thornhill Edge

17th January 2001, West Yorkshire

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THE GROUND has been wet for months but thanks to the hard frost it's easy to walk the footpath across the ploughed field. By the stream there's a rectangular pool, iced over at the moment, which lies in a stone enclosure. At the one end there's an arch over what I assume was its feeder channel.

Perhaps it was associated with the colliery that once stood here. When, as boys, my friends and I first walked to this little valley we discovered a derelict water-filled pit shaft surrounded by a fence. We threw a stone in and timed how long it took to reach the water. I seem to remember that it took, by our counting, at least two seconds, which would have made it a hundred feet deep!

From down here by the brook, Thornhill Edge is a prominent feature. A sketch map by Barbara Nuttall of medieval Thornhill shows Deadman's Lane climbing the fault scarp of the Edge.

Richard Bell,
wildlife illustrator
E-mail; 'richard@willowisland.co.uk'

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