Marsden, situated at the top of the Colne Valley, nestles into the millstone grit of the Pennine hills. It is the gateway to open spaces and beautiful moor land scenery, home to curlews and rare twites. It is also the last town in the West Riding before crossing into Lancashire.
The Romans passed this way building a road between York and Chester in AD 79. From medieval times onwards, Marsden was the natural crossing point for travellers, merchants and goods as they travelled from east to west. It became the home for mill masters and revolutionaries. Just eight miles from Huddersfield along the A62, Marsden boasts ancient tracks and pathways, turnpike roads, the Huddersfield Narrow Canal and it lies at the heart of Last of the Summer Wine Country.
The canal arrived at Tunnel End in 1804 but then the navvies faced the task of crossing the Pennines. The canal tunnel took seventeen years to complete. Engineered by Thomas Telford, it is the highest, longest at 3.2 miles and deepest in the country.
Since 2001, the Huddersfield Canal Society have lovingly restored the waterway and turned it into a haven for wildlife, anglers and for visitors. On the first Saturday of each month, this stretch of water is alive with people daring to take the thirty-minute glass topped boat ride inside the heart of the tunnel to find out more about its history and the men who dug it. Volunteers make sure that everything runs smoothly including the five-minute ride on the little blue canal taxi that chugs up and down between Standedge and Lock 42.
Marsden boasts not one but two packhorse bridges built specifically to allow winding caravans of merchandise and supplies across the river. Mellor Bridge straddles the river opposite Marsden's church.
Packhorses and weary folk trudged along centuries old trails that radiated out from Marsden until 1759 when Blind Jack Metcalfe of Knaresburgh built a turnpike road that followed a more direct route. Bundles of heather were laid on the boggy ground. The road was built on top of this. The turnpike was the name for a gate lowered across the road to ensure that travellers using it paid their toll. Part of Blind Jack’s road survives today as Old Mount Road. Unsurprisingly, given its strategic location, Marsden had not one but three turnpikes. Each one was designed to improve on the one that came before. The A62 follows the line of the last turnpike road. Travelling across the Pennines in times past sounds rather a hazardous, not to mention gruelling business. Even today, during bad winter weather, the road may be closed.
There is a soot and lichen darkened memorial on the village green, the site of the original church, not far from the packhorse bridge, that links Marsden with revolution, riot and murder. The tomb belongs Enoch and James Taylor. The Taylor brothers are closely associated with the story of the Luddites. These days ‘Luddite’ is a term to describe a technophobe. At the turn of the nineteenth century when the Napoleonic Wars were at their height, the Luddites were regarded as dangerous revolutionaries who wanted to topple English society. The story is much more complicated than that though. The industrial revolution was coming to the cloth industry, food prices were spiralling and wages diminishing.
In the past skilled workers called croppers worked finished woollen cloth using enormous hand-held shears. By 1812, croppers were being replaced by a new technology- the cropping frame. It did the work more quickly and did not require the same numbers of men to operate it. The workers, fearing for their jobs, their homes and the lives of their families petitioned the government of the time for help. Finally, seeing no alternative croppers banded together and smashed the machines that were destroying their livelihoods. They worked under the leadership of the mysterious General Ludd.
And the Taylors? The Taylor brothers were blacksmiths. Their forges made both the machines and the huge iron hammers that the Luddites used to break them. A popular joke at the time was ‘Enoch made them, Enoch breaks them’. Strangely, the Luddites never targeted the Taylor brothers- possibly because they were republican sympathisers. Instead, they focused their anger on the masters who put them out of work and left their children to starve.
William Horsfall of Marsden owned Ottiwells Mill employing some four hundred men, women and children. He had no sympathy for the Luddites or for the plight of his workers. He was deeply unpopular because of his outspoken desire to put down the Luddite unrest with whatever force necessary. Perhaps it is not surprising that the authorities stationed both infantry and cavalry in Marsden to deal with any trouble. It did not save Horsfall. He was killed on his way home from Huddersfield one market day in April 1812. Today his mill is gone as are the forges where the Taylor brothers made the machines that did the work of five men.
This picturesque town is often alive with wonderful entertainment. There's a jazz festival each October attracting musicians and visitors a plenty. Imbolc, a winter festival of swirling fire and colour held to celebrate the Green Man (spring) triumphing over Jack Frost, occurs in the New Year. It’s guaranteed to chase the winter blues on their way. Then there’s Marsden Cuckoo Day in April with its clog dancing, music and cuckoo walk.
Now, there’s an event that sounds as if it came straight out of a script for a situation comedy. The people of Marsden, so the story goes, noticed that when the cuckoo arrived so did spring. Spring brings with it better weather. After a long Pennine winter people were keen for the sun to linger a while longer. They concluded that since the cuckoo appeared to be responsible for bringing spring that the best course of action was to build a wall around the cuckoo to prevent it from leaving. The cuckoo, as most birds are wont to do, flew away but not before the wall was virtually complete.
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