Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The start of the long flight down soon arrives with the Railway pub facing its namesake
across one of the first locks. Also crossing here is the stiff 20km Colne Valley Circular Walk,
which re-crosses at Golcar.
Approaching Slaithwaite, the River Colne is never far away on the right and sometimes
exposes bare crags. These enhance the scenery; steep hillsides with farms, weavers' cottages
and, increasingly, mills, all in darkened stone.
Slaithwaite is steeped in history. Slaithwaite Manor is a Grade II Elizabethan house, dating
from the 1560s. The nearby St James' church was built in 1789 to replace one that was sub-
ject to flooding by the River Colne. Its shape is based on the Puritan ideal that it was easier to
be devout in a barn than in a temple. Its name was twisted into Sanjimis, a four-day festival of
feasting, dancing bears and Waffen Fuffen bands (dialect for waifs and strays) playing in the
contemporary equivalents of jug bands. The present funeral parlour was the old Slaithwaite
Free School, a fine building. The canal passes Empire Brewing, public toilets, the Shoulder
of Mutton and the Commercial before moving behind the Globe Worsted Company and the
Shaw Pallet factory.
From 1825, Slaithwaite was a spa based on mineral springs in the bed of the River Colne.
It modelled itself on Harrogate. The village was a hive of industry. Smuggling was rife in the
19th century too; the usual procedure was to place things in the canal by day and then hook
them out by night. One gang, caught in the act by the king's men, pretended to be drunk and
claimed to be trying to rake the moon's reflection out of the canal, thus acquiring the title of
Slawit Moonrakers.
The canal runs right through the centre of Slaithwaite, once again
.
The route becomes rural once more. It is progressively more overlooked by houses on the
A62 at Linthwaite and Milnsbridge. Westwood Mill is the oldest in the valley, on what was
a fulling mill site in 1604. Old mill buildings have been fitted with incongruous balconies
and now serve as residential buildings, accompanied by a tall chimney. Three 19th century
cottages in Golcar form the Colne Valley Museum, including an 1850 weaver's living room.
The Luddites were active in Milnsbridge the year after the canal was opened. They shot
a mill owner from Marsden, broke into a number of mills and smashed up cropping frames,
which they thought would put them out of a job.
