by the Rambler, The Free Press, Saturday, July 28, 1888
I came across this evocative essay while searching for articles about a mass trespass in Coxley Valley (complete with Brass Band: they did things in style in 1888!):
I am one of those quaint individuals – and there are a few in Horbury yet – who seldom ever leave my picturesque residence on a quiet Sabbath to visit that popular resort, Coxley Valley. Sunday last was an exception to the rule, for just as I and my wife had finished our frugal meal at dinner time, I filled up my pipe, bent upon having a quiet hour, when all on a sudden my intention in this respect was frustrated by the sound of a beating drum and a tremendous burst of music reaching my ears from twenty brass instruments.
A day out in Coxley Valley
For the moment I was thunderstruck, but, recovering my senses, I rushed out of the room into the roadway, only to find a lot more gazeful individuals running out of their humble cottages bare-headed.
Relaxing at Coxley Dam
Naturally I became as inquisitive as the majority of bystanders to know the cause of such a commotion on the sacred Sabbath. True, I was not long in gaining the required information, and what do you think it was? Why the Brighouse Temperance Brass Band had come out that afternoon to remind us that they were going to give a sacred musical concert in Coxley Valley, not for the benefit of our noble and valuable institution at Wakefield (the Clayton Hospital), but in aid of their band fund.
With this “gentle reminder,” a very large number dressed in their favourite Sunday “togs” wended their way to the favourite spot; many went, too, because it is their custom in the summer months so to do.
I, of course, thought of a letter and its contents I had in my possession, which came from the neighbourhood of Westgate [the ‘Free Press’ office in Wakefield], and conscious of the fact that I had a duty to perform, like the rest of the curious ones, I, too, resolved to spend the afternoon at Coxley Valley.
After a pleasant half hour’s walk, with eyes wide open, and ears not closed to several compliments paid that some Horbury “Ramblers” would be there, I arrived at this much talked of “beautiful and charming resort” with senses refreshed by the newly-made hay and the various wild flowers that send forth their perfume from the woods up the slope.
A turn of the road soon brought me in sight of “Belmont Shanty” as it is called, and as I read a bill on the boards my spirits began to revive. Here is a copy of it:
4.10 pm: A kestrel hover over the meadow and dives as if it’s about to make a kill but abandons the dive at tree-top height and flies off over the neighbour’s garden.
The buzzard was doing its rounds over back gardens and the meadow at breakfast-time this morning and it’s back again as the light fades, just thirty feet above me, as I sit at my desk by the skylight studio window.
In the spring of 1996, I took my easel to the car park at the bottom of Coxley Lane and painted, in acrylics, a small canvas of this stile. I like the informal way the stile invites you to step over and explore.
As a subject, the variety of simple shapes is appealing to draw. Unlike the more user-friendly metal kissing gate fifty yards along the path that goes up to the right, this homemade stile is something that has grown from the landscape with those two blocks of local sandstone and the self-sown ash tree.
The ash saplings appear to have grown from the stump of a tree which has been felled. The one in the foreground has grown over the past twenty-two years to engulf a third sandstone block, clearly visible on the right in the original painting.
The Coxley Stile canvas is now in the private collection of an astute and discerning couple (have to say that as they read this blog) in Cumbria.
The heavily jointed and irregularly bedded sandstone always looked untrustworthy and a rockfall occurred some twenty-five or thirty years ago. Moss, fern and ash have colonised the jumble of boulders. The patterns of iron staining in one corner of the quarry fascinate me; there’s such a contrast between the iron concretions and the pure white lens of quartz sand. Large pebbles somehow got incorporated into a well-sorted sandbank at the time the sediment was laid down in a river or estuary 300 million years ago.
THE OLD WINDMILL just up our road, here in Middlestown, was already disused and converted to a dwelling when this photograph was taken about one hundred years ago. It had evidently been a good year for cabbages.
On most of the photographs that I’ve been drawing from, I don’t get an opportunity to put a name to the face but in this case it shouldn’t be difficult to look up the old mill in the 1911 census records to find out the names of, I’m guessing, mum and dad and their two daughters.
I’d love to know the names of these two boys (and their dog) who appear in the corner of the postcard of the haymakers that I drew yesterday. If I was the photographer, I’d have been annoyed that my timeless scene of rural life had been infiltrated by these Artful Dodgers but looking back after a hundred years they’re probably the best bit of the photograph. They’re so spontaneous and full of character. Looks as if they might be planning some minor mischief.
Unless they lied about their age and enlisted towards the end of the conflict, they should have escaped the horrors of World War I. It’s possible that in the past I’ve walked past them on the street but they’d have to be about 107 years old to still be with us today.
Making an altogether more elegant pair, these two girls are part of a group dressed in their Sunday bests strolling by Coxley Dam.
Straw hats were the thing to wear in those long gone Edwardian summers. I’ve found a young women in the 1911 census returns for Coxley Valley listing herself as a milliner.
IT HASN’T BEEN haymaking weather today, with a month’s rain falling in 24 hours in some places; these men were photographed making hay while the sun shone in Coxley Valley during one of the long remembered glorious summers of the Edwardian that preceded World War I.
It wasn’t just nostalgia for the days before the horrors of the war that made a generation remember golden summer days, apparently there really was a series of better summers at that time.
This is another of my sketches for the article that I’m writing for the village newsletter/magazine, taken from an old postcard in the collection of Horbury historian Christine Cudworth.
I found the simpler forms of the farm hands easier to draw than the laces and faces of the mums and children watching the procession at the Netherton Carnival in another postcard in Christine’s collection, dated 1910.
The girls are holding cards and wearing decorated straw hats – had they entered an Easter bonnet competition? It’s more likely that the parade would mark Whit Sunday, the time when people habitually packed away their dowdy winter clothes and treated themselves to new outfits.
A HEAVY DEW and a touch of frost, the rising sun appearing through mist over the wood. It might not officially be the first day of spring but today it feels like it.
There’s a meeting tomorrow about two 130 metre tall wind turbines which are going to be erected (so it seems) in the centre of Coxley Valley, overlooking Stoneycliffe Wood nature reserve. I have mixed feelings. Yes, renewables should be used wherever possible but no, not at any cost.
Sitlington Parish Council appears to be promoting to scheme and I guess that the potential income that might be generated for the community must be a great temptation to them but to me Sitlington’s greatest asset isn’t its village hall or children’s playground or even the library (currently closed and in need of repair) – the kind of things that the revenue could be used for – it’s definitely the bluebells woods, stream and fields of Coxley Valley; I couldn’t begin to put a value on it: a patch of countryside which is right on our doorsteps but where you can get a real sense of freedom and turning your back on the everyday world. You can immerse yourself briefly in the natural world.
I don’t think we’d entertain any other light industry dominating the valley, however ‘green’ it was and however many jobs it created.
Concrete Proposals
I feel there's an element of 'greenwash' in the design of this leaflet promoting the scheme. The scheme isn't without its environmental costs.
It’s something of a miracle that the valley has survived unscathed when it lies circled by the four communities that make up the parish. And that’s why the concrete towers have to go there in the middle; they’ve got to be sited a certain distance away from houses so that is the only place available for ‘wind farm’ development.
The consultant/developer’s leaflet inviting us to the meeting has all the buzzwords – environment, communities, renewables etc – but only one mention of the word ‘wind’, and that is in brackets, sandwiched between the words ‘hydro, solar . . . and biomass’.
I’d have had more respect for them if they had illustrated the likely outcome of the twin turbines. The leaflet depicts the sun shining though beech leaves, a feel-good diagram shows the benefits for all, there’s a tree made of hands and a delicate skeleton leaf. All suggestive, evoking the touchy-feely helping hand to the community spirit that multi-nationals and banks like to project – but with no specifics such as a diagram to give an impression of the scale of the enterprise. Or a pie chart of the proportions in which the profits are shared. I guess that’s all available but this is a coyly one-sided publication.
What the leaflet might have looked like if they were being honest about the likely outcome.
Even at this ‘interim findings’ stage of ‘a parish-wide study’, I think they should have been less disingenuous about the way things are going.
We’re not likely to go for a hydro plant by flooding the valley. If it was decided that we should grow biomass instead of food crops on local farms, would we really need a partner to step in to ‘share the profits’ with the community? Would the money being spent on this consultation be better invested in fitting solar panels on the village hall? Would geothermal schemes have less impact on the landscape?
It seems likely that the wind farm would be the preferred option.
After my experiences during the Coxley Meadow public enquiries I know better than to get involved in local politics these days!
Ridge or Valley
I’ve been discussing this with Stephen, who lives outside the area but remembers the valley from his schooldays:
“Shame about the wind turbines. I know we can’t just hark back to the halcyon days of our youth but I have vivid memories of Coxley carpeted from top to bottom in bluebells, grass on which you could play and picnic, and water burbling down the stream.”
It’s still pretty much like that but I think what really unsettles me about this proposal is that the only place in the parish where you can find yourself a quarter of a mile from all habitation, surrounded by farmland with a panorama of woodland, is the place they’ve chosen.
I sometimes draw the pylon that dominates the ridge beyond the wood at our end of the valley – I’m not against large man-made structures – but our end is surrounded by roads and houses. The spot they’re putting these is the furthest that you can get away from a road. If the concrete towers could be grouped next to an existing structure such as the water tower and communications mast on the ridge at the top end of the valley or here at this urbanised lower end I might feel different (leaving aside problems of bird-strike and discussions of their efficiency which I’m not qualified to comment on), but that’s not an option because of the proximity of houses.
In My Backyard?
A friend who as a boy used to tickle the trout in Coxley Beck writes:
As a fan of wind turbines I believe you should think your comments through again. Outside your window do you not have power pylons?
Would you rather have a couple of wind turbines in your local area or a nuclear power station, or how about Ferrybridge power station?
Yes, we’ve got to look for alternative sources of energy and I was trying to make the point, obviously not very clearly, that I’d much prefer that the wind turbines were sited outside my window at this utilitarian end of the valley amongst the power lines, derelict railway viaduct and housing estates than in the quiet rural centre of the valley overlooking Stoneycliffe Wood nature reserve.
We used to have Dewsbury power station a few miles up the valley and I drew there on occasion. It might not have been very green but it was rather magnificent. But it fitted in amongst the canals, railways and grim Victorian mills. They didn’t build it overlooking a bluebell wood in a valley that has been considered a ‘beauty spot’ since mid-Victorian times.
In my opinion, and it’s only an opinion, Coxley Valley has a rather intimate quality and I think that wind farms are better sited in a larger scale landscape – but I know a lot of people would disagree.
