Forest of Bowland
The Forest of Bowland, also known as the Bowland Fells and formerly the Chase of Bowland, is an area of gritstone fells, deep valleys and peat moorland, mostly in north-east Lancashire, England, with a small part in North Yorkshire. It is a western outlier of the Pennines.
The Forest of Bowland was designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1964. The AONB also includes a detached part known as the Forest of Pendle separated from the main part by the Ribble Valley, and anciently a royal forest with its own separate history. One of the best-known features of the area is Pendle Hill, which lies in Pendle Forest. There are more than 500 listed buildings and 18 scheduled monuments within the AONB.
The Trough of Bowland is a pass connecting the valley of the Marshaw Wyre with that of Langden Brook, and dividing the upland core of Bowland into two main blocks.
The hills on the western side of the Forest of Bowland attract walkers from Lancaster and the surrounding area. Overlooking Lancaster is Clougha Pike, the westernmost hill. The hills form a large horseshoe shape with its open end facing west. Clockwise from Lancaster the hills are Clougha Pike, Grit Fell, Ward's Stone, Wolfhole Crag, White Hill, Whins Brow, Totridge, Parlick, Fair Snape Fell, Bleasdale Moor, and Hawthornthwaite Fell.
The area contains, by one definition, the geographic centre of Great Britain which is close to the Whitendale Hanging Stones, around north of Dunsop Bridge. The historical extent of Bowland Forest is divided into two large administrative townships, Great Bowland and Little Bowland, but the modern-day AONB covers a much larger area.
History
Possibly a region of the British kingdom of Rheged, Bowland was absorbed into Northumbria in the 7th century. In turn, as Northumbrian influence waned, the westernmost areas of Bowland became part of Amounderness, a territory forged by the Norse hold Agmundr, a vassal of Eowils, Halfdan and Ingwaer, co-kings of Jorvik, in the early 10th century.In 926, Amounderness was annexed by Æthelstan, king of the West Saxons, as a spoil of war. In 934, he granted it to Archbishop Wulfstan I of York. According to Aethelstan's grant, Amounderness at that time stretched "from the sea along the Cocker to the source of that river, from that source straight to another spring which is called in Old English, "Dunshop", thus down the rivulet to the Hodder, in the same direction to the Ribble and thus along that river through the middle of the channel to the sea". As such, Amounderness encompassed a significant portion of western and south-western Bowland.
Ekwall thus describes the eastern boundary of Amounderness as "being formed by the fells on the Yorkshire border"; a description which places the ancient boundary firmly within the modern-day Forest of Bowland. While it is difficult to pinpoint Dunshop, the confluence of the rivers Dunsop and Hodder at Dunsop Bridge seems a likely locale, situated as it is close to the eastern mouth of the Trough of Bowland, whose Grey Stone marks the line of the pre-1974 county boundary.
Contrary to the popular histories, the origins of the name "Bowland" have nothing to do with archery or with mediaeval cattle farms or vaccaries. The name derives from the Old Norse boga-/bogi-, meaning a "bend in a river". It is a 10th-century coinage used to describe the topography of the Hodder basin, with its characteristic meandering river and brooks.
The Domesday Bogeuurde is an instance of this usage – the placename thought to designate Barge Ford, a ford that sits on the wide, pronounced bend of the Hodder at its confluence with Foulscales Brook, due south-west of Newton.
Before the Norman Conquest, Bowland was held by Tostig, son of Godwin, Earl of Wessex. However, as feudal entities, the Forest and Liberty of Bowland were created by William Rufus sometime after Domesday and granted to his vassal Roger de Poitou, possibly to reward Poitou for his role in defeating the Scots army of Malcolm III in 1091–92. In all likelihood, it was this grant that subsumed the eastern portion of Amounderness into the Lordship of Bowland for the first time.
By the end of the 11th century, the Forest and Liberty came into the possession of the De Lacys, Lords of Pontefract. In 1102, along with the grant of the adjacent fee of Clitheroe and further holdings in Hornby and Amounderness, they came to form the basis of what became known as the Honour of Clitheroe.
In 1311, the Honour of Clitheroe was subsumed into the Earldom of Lancaster. Between 1351 and 1661, it was administered as part of the Duchy of Lancaster. By the late 14th century, Bowland comprised a Royal Forest and a Liberty of ten manors spanning eight townships and four parishes and covered an area of almost on the historic borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The manors within the Liberty were Slaidburn Knowlmere, Waddington, Easington, Bashall Eaves, Mitton, Withgill, Leagram, Hammerton and Dunnow. Pendle Forest was also part of the Honour of Clitheroe, but administered as part of the Forest of Blackburnshire, entirely in Lancashire.
Gradale, in the northeastern extremity of the forest, grew in population as new land was made available for colonisation. In the mediaeval period, it was a pasture of the Cistercian grange of Rushton on the upper Hodder. In 1537, its manor house, Kirkstall Abbey, was dissolved. Tenements began appearing in the area from the mid-16th century.
By 1650, the lower land of the forest had been almost completely cleared of woods, then divided into small plots, with only the higher land remaining open. Whereas their forebears of the 16th century lived in "crude timber and thatch cottages", the farmers of the following century were likely inhabiting stone farmhouses.
In October 1652, Parliament had made a survey of the area, when it was an estate of the Duchy of Lancaster formerly belonging to Charles I. The survey showed that the forest was not just a demesne hunting ground, and that, since the 13th century, it had started to become a place of habitation by commoners, including tenant farmers, who had purchased their holdings from James I or Charles I. As farming increased, so did the populousness of the forest. Parks were created for the preservation of the remaining deer. It was one of many such surveys of Crown lands made by the government during the interregnum. The common result of these surveys was that the land was sold off, but the Chase of Bowland remained under the ownership of the Duchy for a further decade.
In 1661, the 28 manors contained within the former Honour of Clitheroe, including the Forest and Liberty of Bowland, were granted by the Crown to General George Monck as part of the creation of the Dukedom of Albemarle. Monck had been a key figure in the restoration of Charles II. The Lordship of Bowland then descended through the Montagu, Buccleuch and Towneley families.
Bowbearers of the Forest of Bowland have been appointed since the 12th century. A Bowbearer was originally a noble who acted as ceremonial attendant to the Lord of Bowland, latterly the king, by bearing his hunting bow, but over the centuries the Bowbearer's role underwent many changes. In April 2010, it was reported that the current 16th Lord of Bowland had revived the office of Bowbearer and appointed Robert Redmayne Parker the first Bowbearer of the Forest in almost 150 years.
The Forest of Bowland had its own forest courts – woodmote and swainmote – from early times. These appear to have been abandoned in the 1830s around the time of Peregrine Towneley's acquisition of the Bowland Forest Estate. The halmote court at Slaidburn was disbanded following the abolition of a copyhold by the Law of Property Act in 1922. General forest law in Britain was finally repealed by statute in 1971, more than 900 years after its introduction by the Normans. The original Bowland Forest courts appear to have been held at Hall Hill near Radholme Laund before moving to Whitewell sometime in the 14th century.
The Industrial Revolution had little impact on Bowland, as it had no coal reserves or valleys with fast flowing streams to power wool and cotton industries. There was some small-scale lead mining and lime production, quarrying and paper and cotton mills.
St Hubert, the patron saint of hunting, is also the patron saint of the Forest of Bowland and has a chapel dedicated to him in Dunsop Bridge. This chapel was founded by Richard Eastwood of Thorneyholme, land agent to the Towneley family. Eastwood was the last known Bowbearer of the Forest of Bowland. An acclaimed breeder of racehorses and shorthorn cattle, he died in 1871 and is buried at St Hubert's.
Considerable areas of the Bowland Fells were used for military training during the Second World War, and there are still unexploded bombs in some areas.
Ecology
The name "forest" is used in its traditional sense of "a royal hunting ground", and rather than being covered by trees, much of the land is heather moorland and blanket bog. In the past wild boar, deer, wolves, wild cats and game roamed the forest. The last herd of wild deer is reported to have been destroyed in 1805.In recent decades extensive peatland restoration work has been carried out in the AONB , with over 755 hectares of blanket bog being restored since 2010 through the co-operation of estates including Abbeystead estate, which is owned by Grosvenor estates, Whitewell estate, which is owned by the Duchy of Lancaster, United Utility's Bowland estate and organisations such as Natural England, Lancashire Wildlife Trusts, Yorkshire Peat Partnership, Wyre Rivers Trust and Ribble Rivers Trust, amongst others. This ongoing work has helped to undo decades of damage caused to the ecology and landscape of the area by bad land management practices.