MAPPING SADDLEWORTH
Announcing our NEW PUBLICATION
MAPPING SADDLEWORTH Vol. 2
For those with an interest in local and family history “Mapping Saddleworth Volume II” will prove indispensable. Charting the development of Saddleworth’s hamlets and villages over a period of two hundred years, it sheds light on the history of individual buildings, their owners and occupiers.
The maps also tell a tale of moorland enclosure, the dramatic impact of which is still evident in the Saddleworth landscape of today.
The earliest map results from the division of Quick Moor in 1625. Covering the areas of Lydgate, Scouthead, Austerlands, High Moor and Strinesdale, it shows how the wild moorland was colonised for the first time and how the present settlements originated.
A series of eighteenth century estate maps celebrate the proud ownership of places such as Grotton, Thornley, Coverhill, Hollingreave and Uppermill. The last of these provides a fascinating insight into the modest beginnings of what was to become the most important village in the district.
By far the most extensive of the early maps is that created for James Farrar in 1770. The beautifully executed map and its accompanying key describe in detail every farmstead on the Manor of Saddleworth. Beyond this, the key also lists the occupiers of each estate.
Parliamentary Enclosure reshaped much of Saddleworth and many of the maps illustrating this are reproduced here. Significant are the five maps of the Denshaw Enclosure dating from 1808 to 1812. Beyond the details of the enclosure process itself, interesting features, now lost, emerge. Ancient boundaries, medieval packhorse routes, abandoned cock fighting pits and a hermit’s well are all revealed.
The final map is a meticulous historical reconstruction of the first complete survey of Saddleworth. Primarily based on an original of 1822 and supplemented by a recently discovered copy, this map records every building in Saddleworth. Such is the detail that every field wall is shown, all acreages are given and the ownership of the farms and other properties are comprehensively listed in the key. For the purposes of comparison it has been reproduced at precisely the same scale as the 1849 - 51 six inch Ordnance Survey Map reproduced in Mapping Saddleworth Volume I.
A general introduction sets the maps in the context of contemporary cartography and each is accompanied by an explanatory text which gives an account of the circumstances of their creation and their historical significance.
MAPPING SADDLEWORTH VOLUME II
This new publication features a selection of manuscript maps of the Pennine Township of Saddleworth dating from 1625 to 1822.
Over twenty maps are reproduced in facsimile, all in full colour and many at full size. Not only do they reveal a wealth of detail about Saddleworth itself but also illustrate many aspects of the development of cartography in England.
