X27   THO c.1800 MAP

Thornton & Ovenden Common

Size: 8” * 13”

Material: Paper

Date: unk Scale: unk

Condition: good

Since much of my waking life is consumed with thoughts of historic coal mines I assumed that this plan from the Local Studies Library reserve collection would be easy to interpret. I think that I do understand the broad principles, but I have certainly struggled with the details. As so often happens the plan is undated. There are no signs of the civil engineering projects for which this area became known in the nineteenth century: no turnpike roads, no railway, and no Ogden reservoir. On these, and stylistic, grounds I would place this map in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The map seems to have been planned with ‘west’ at the top. Since the four major compass points are indicated it is easy to rotate it by 90 degrees to put it in a more conventional orientation. An obvious omission would seem to be the community of Queensbury (Queens Head). The local villages were probably not of interest to the surveyor: even Thornton (Bradford) and Ovenden (Calderdale) are simply represented by a few stylised images of houses and, in Thornton’s case, a church, which must be the Bell Chapel.

If you sunk a shaft and started a colliery a number of people would require a share in the profits. You, as operator, naturally would, but so would the landowner on whose property the mine was located. Then somebody would have rights on the minerals: this would often be the local Lord of the Manor. If the product of the mine had to be transported over another landowner’s property there would be ‘wayleave’ to be paid. Finally, underground, you would need to take care that nobody from adjacent colliery was entering to win coal for which you had paid for the right to extract. You probably wouldn’t be too concerned over the complexities  of the geology but the high ground in this area is Elland Flags sandstone and the solid geology of the lower ground is Lower Coal Measures. This arrangement is common over much of north Bradford, and so is familiar to me in Heaton.

In order that appropriate rewards and compensation would be made to the correct people the first step would be to know exactly where the pit was, on the surface. In the days before the Ordnance Survey and GPS this was no easy matter. There might not even be an agreed parish boundary, in which case actions that came to court which might have entailed elderly witnesses saying: ‘in my father’s day the boundary was said to run from the corner of farmer Giles’s barn to the large rock and then on to the old oak tree’. When pits were placed near a boundary, between Heaton and Shipley for example, there were often acrimonious disputes (which could turn violent) over who was stealing whose coal. Anyone watching the TV series Gentleman Jack, set in nearby Shibden, will recall a plot element of exactly this type.

In broad principles then this plan shows the moorland between Ovenden and Thornton with indications of where the boundary between the two parishes might run. Two established collieries (Thornton Pit and Ovenden Pit) are clearly marked as squares, and a third square is labelled ‘the pitt in question’. Presumably a question has arisen over its exact location. I am interested by a larger circular feature near the third pit which is labelled ‘peat pitt’. It would seem to indicate that someone had the right of turbary, and that peat was being dug on the moor for fuel. There is even an extraction track (marked ‘peat gate’) leading off due east.

The red and yellow lines must indicate various versions of where the Thornton – Ovenden boundary was considered to lie in this area. There would appear to be western (Dike End) and eastern (Popple Well) agreed points. The southernmost line is clearly marked as the Thornton boundary and several intermediate points are identified: the grey stone and the Rish or Rich Bed – could that be a recognisable outcrop of coal? The northernmost yellow line is named as ‘Ovenden’s new found boundary’ and again there is an intermediate point, this time more clearly a Rich Bed. One of the two middle lines is marked ‘Elmsall & Hird’s agreement’. I can’t identify these two people at present.

North of any of the possible boundaries is a hockey-stick shaped dotted line marked ‘White Wall’ which must be approximately in the position of Cockin Lane. Was this simple a new wall on its way to becoming an identifiable landmark? As so often happens if there is a reader with detailed local knowledge of this area I should like to hear from you.