Marple Bridge

MARPLE BRIDGE, MELLOR, SHILOH ROAD

Distance: 8 miles

Difficulty: Easy

Weather: Chilly, some blue skies, intermittent sunshine.

Walkers: Pete Beal, George Whaites, Phil Welsh, George Dearsley, Colin Davison, Leslie Davison, Tom Cunliffe, Lawrie Fairman, Micky Barrett, Jock Rooney and Tips.

Apologies: Julian Ross (laying a floor), John Laverick  (ill), Alan Hart (rumoured to be in Tenerife)

B Walkers: Geoff Spurrell, Tony Job, Ken Sparrow

Non walking Drinker: John Eckersley

Leader: Welsh  Diarist: Dearsley

Starting Point: The main car park in Brabyns Park

Starting Time: 9.36am. Finishing Time: 1.51pm

This is a walk well known to our leader and your diarist, who were often accompanied by the scribe’s late lamented dog Ollie.

We welcomed yet another Wednesday Wanderers’ debutant, Mr Davison’s handsomer brother Leslie, from Bristol, who maintained the Davison family’s  reputation for calamity by smashing a full pint of ale in the Norfolk Arms.

We set off from the Brabyns car park, crossed the main road by the Midland pub and walked through Town Street, Marple Bridge, turning right at Low Lea Road.

The track rises and leads eventually to the Roman Lakes. We undertook a similar start on October 31. On that occasion Mr Davison called our attention to a hole,  which turned out to be a wheel-pit, part of the remains of a mill built by the famous entrepreneur Samuel Oldknow.

Mr Davison was minded to wander off again for a further peak into the abyss but a lack of subsequent information leads me to conclude the excavations were no further forward.

Meanwhile, the leading group of Wanderers were passing another old relic, comedian Ivor Davies.

Ivor, originally from Collyhurst, had a long career in the clubs.

He had a brief taste of fame in 1979 when the TV show The Comedians, which had made household names of Charlie Williams, Frank Carson and Jim Bowen in the early 1970s, was revived by Granada producer Johnny Hamp.

He predicted big things for his new stars Ivor, Charlie Daze, Mick Miller, Harry Scott, Roy Walker and Lee Wilson.

Walker, of course, went on to front Catchphrase. Miller has flirted with stardom. But sadly Ivor’s TV career never took off.

The final ignominy came when a signed photograph of Ivor sold for just £1 on eBay last December.

Ivor

We were now on Bottoms Mill Road and at the end we turned left and then right onto the road (Lakes Road) that passes the Roman Lakes on the left.

Gushing Weir

The water in the river to our right was a torrent after the recent snow and rain.

Just before the Roman Bridge, we turned sharp left and climbed up a very boggy path towards Mellor golf course. This involved going right at what looked like a very recently erected small gate and over a railway footbridge. The path brings walkers to the 14^th tee.

We took a path on the right which briefly leads through a wood. But a few minutes later we were crossing the fairway and making our way past the equipment sheds and to the clubhouse itself.

We cut off the corner where the small car park is located and took the road to the right which leads to the Fox at Brookbottom. But after a couple of hundred yards we swung left through another wood and then right alongside a fairway.

This leads to a metalled road where we turned left heading up an incline towards Mellor Cross.

                                     The Wanderers, led by Mr Beal, head for the Cross.

                                                               Almost there….

                                                                      Mellor Cross

In the early 1970s, despite some local opposition, the local churches together raised a wooden cross on the highest part of Cobden Edge. Each Easter there is a march with members from all the churches and a service held at the cross.

Pie Time was declared in a hollow below the cross at 10.50am. We resumed our walk at 11.01am, going first to the local Trig Point. This the highest point in Stockport,  at 328 meters (1076 feet). The area was once a plantation, but is now a wildlife preserve above the pastures of a working dairy farm.

                                        Mr Cunliffe helpfully obscures the Trig Point.

Nearby were some stones and it was here, in 1975, that John Bu'Lock identified what he thought was a possible cairn.

As every schoolchild knows cairn is a term used for a man-made pile (or stack) of stones. It comes from the Scottish Gaelic: càrn (plural càirn).

Cairns are found all over the world in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops, near waterways and on sea cliffs, and also in barren desert and tundra areas.

They vary in size from small stone markers to entire artificial hills, and in complexity from loose, conical rock piles to delicately balanced sculptures and elaborate feats of megalithic engineering.

Cairns may be painted or otherwise decorated, e.g. for increased visibility or for religious reasons.

In modern times, cairns are often erected as landmarks, a use they have had since ancient times.

Since prehistory, they have also been built as sepulchral monuments, or used for defensive, hunting, ceremonial, astronomical and other purposes.

Far from being a load of old Bu'Locks, the Mellor cairn – later called the Shaw Cairn - turned out to be very important.

For several years, Ruth Collier, Kath Lowe and John Clarke excavated the site with help from students of Marple Hall School.  They uncovered parts of a funerary cairn built around 4000 years ago, with more than a dozen cremation burials, some within stone cists, which were given names like Willie, Pericles, Cecil and Hector.

Experts reckoned that those associated with burials were consistent with the building of the cairn in the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age but the finds included around 500 flints, many dating from the Early Mesolithic Period indicating that the Cairn was built on the site of much earlier activity.

A fine example of a plano convex knife was amongst the finds along with an almost complete ceramic food vessel.

The area has another claim to fame. To the right of the cross, down a lane is a house called Three Chimneys.

It is here that Edith Nesbit, author of The Railway Children was said to visit.

The story of Edith Nesbit's Peak District connections began to unfold in 1999, when nosey  librarian Gwenda Culkin and her assistant, Barbara Matthews, were surprised to find that their microfilm reader had been booked for several days by a lady with a London telephone number.

The researcher was Laura Probert, archivist of the Nesbit Society, one of five members of the society who had travelled to various parts of the country to investigate locations that might have been used as the setting for The Railway Children.

Laura had been drawn to New Mills because she had learned from two biographies of Nesbit that the author had visited her stepsister, Saretta Deakin, living in the area with her husband, John at Three Chimneys.

This was the very name used in The Railway Children for the cottage that was home to three children and their mother during their father's wrongful imprisonment.

Although foliage obscures the view from Three Chimneys today, it would have been possible at the time of Edith's visit to see a panorama that closely resembles one described in the book: 'It was hilly country. Down below they could see the line of the railway, and the black yawning mouth of the tunnel. The station was out of sight. There was a great bridge with tall arches running across one end of the valley”.

Laura also established that Edith visited our old friend Aspenshaw Hall (see last week’s diary), where the owners - the Woodcock family - were 'dazzled, amazed and amused by their visitor’.

According to biographer Julia Briggs, 'provincial Derbyshire had never seen anyone so unconventional, so advanced.'

Later, a search through electoral forms in the Record Office at Matlock revealed that the Deakins had never resided at Three Chimneys at all, but had lived in a house called Paradise. However, almost immediately after making this disappointing discovery, the librarians were relieved to find that Three Chimneys is located next door to Paradise and so would have been well known to Edith during her visits.

Gwenda and Barbara read as many Nesbit publications as possible in order to see if the New Mills area had acted as a source of inspiration in any of her other works.

They were thrilled to discover that a short story written for the Weekly Dispatch is set in the fictitious town of Old Mills, 'where great mills and factories stare one in the face at every turn'.

Another short story called From the Dead actually names Mellor and Marple, both of which are located within a few miles of New Mills, and “Apinshaw”, clearly a corruption or misspelling of Aspenshaw.

One of the most memorable moments in the book involves Roberta waving her red-flannel petticoat to bring a train to a halt before it runs headlong into a landslide.

New Mills historian Derek Brumhead was able to tell Gwenda and Barbara that a landslip had occurred in the nearby village of Buxworth, where a newly constructed railway viaduct had been swept away.  Although this had taken place in the years before Edith's visit to Mellor, it had been well publicised in the area and would still have been talked about at that time.

There is also an incident in the novel where a boy from a canal boat throws coal at the children. The Peak Forest Canal runs through the countryside where Edith stayed and at the time of Edith's visits there was a coal store at Strines Station, which is close to Three Chimneys.

                                                         Jenny Agutter, sans undergarment

We walked down Black Lane, turned right at the end and at the finish of the next track turned left, bringing us to the five ways interchange.

We went straight over into Shiloh Road, striding on until a sign on the right for the Little Mill Inn. Here we turned left. This is a bridle way that leads to a big house with its own ménage.

Here we turned left (rather than risk more mud to the right) and were soon back on the main road that leads down into Mellor and then Marple Bridge.

A few minutes later (at 11.57am) we were at the doors of the Oddfellows pub, which fortunately was not only open but boasted a roaring fire.

Bollington Best (4.2 AVB) was £3.30. Pedigree £3.20. There were no complaints from the Wanderers about the quality of the ale.

We set off at 12.46pm, going back up the hill for a few strides before turning left at the converted chapel.

We walked parallel to the main road until (after crossing two fields) we found ourselves on the road that leads to Mellor Church. Here we turned right and duly entered the church grounds, declaring luncheon at 1.08pm.

Among the gravestones was one to Thomas Brierley (see my picture below). It boasts a sundial and insignia of the Masonic Lodge, plus what appears to be Hebrew.

Thomas Brierley, it transpires, was born on July 16, 1785 at Mellor. He was also known as Tommy and some references call him Didymus - perhaps confusing him for an uncle of that name or as a common alternative to Thomas.

Tommy became a blockprinter at the mill at Strines Printworks where calico was printed and later a carter who plied his trade between Ludworth and Disley.

He was a regular attender at the local Freemason’s Lodge, which migrated from Manchester to Mellor in 1822 and met at the Devonshire Arms and several other hostelries in the locality before it eventually shifted to the Shuttle Inn (renamed the George) at Ludworth.

Returns to the Clerk of Peace between 1834 and 1841 show that the Lodge averaged about 20 members each meeting; chiefly miners and minor tradesmen.

Tommy’s connection with Freemasonry is told in this anecdote:

When the Duke of Devonshire was Provincial Grandmaster for Derbyshire, Tommy and some friends walked to Chatsworth House in a park laid out by Capability Brown where they were refused admittance as the Duke was home.

After a great deal of pertinacity, Tommy managed to get a servant to present a message, hastily written in cipher on a paper scrap. The Duke instantly came in person and showed his humble brother and his friends over the house and ordered lunch to be served to them.

So the old dodgy handshake worked wonders even back then.

Plaque

Tommy seemed to have some periods of illness and had recourse to the sick funds of the society.

A number of members complained and made unpleasant personal remarks, as apparently his illness coincided with a slack time at Strines Printworks.

Even more ominously Tommy was the Lodge’s sometime Treasurer.

Was Tommy a serial malingerer? Was he dipping into the funds?

Friends said that he was "an honourable man and this charge grieved him sore." (Other sources refer to him as one who was prone to display his membership of the masonic fraternity and to make it known that his worth was not sufficiently recognised.)

Either way, he then had a stone coffin made by Azariah Ollerenshaw, a stonemason of local repute, and for which he lay down so that the coffin could be accurately cut for his body and head for a perfect fit.

The coffin was then placed, exposed on a previously purchased grave site at St. Thomas' Church, Mellor.

The lid was carved with some Masonic symbols and underneath the words, "I am belied," referring to the accusations of feigned illness.

(He might have used Spike Milligan’s epitaph “I told you I was ill”)

It lay there for some years and became quite a tourist attraction.

However, it eventually created too much unwanted attention for the vicar, Rev. Matthew Freeman, who ordered it to be buried.

Remember Tommy was still alive at this stage.

Not to be frustrated, Tommy had a memorial headstone prepared covered with 'cipher-writings' and ornate and masonic emblems which was placed over his grave before he died.

Subsequently, when he finally died, there was talk of burying him in his stone coffin but it was found to be too heavy to remove to the house.

 Instead he was buried in a wooden coffin presumably beside the stone one.

A real coffin dodger, was Tommy.

The cipher on the headstone was presented as a mystery in books and newspaper articles right into the latter part of the 20th century.

The headstone is actually written in five pig-pen variations. The text at the head of the stone says "Thomas Brierley made his ingress July 16th 1785, His Progress was ____ Years And his Egress___".

The headstone was never completed after his death (possibly because no one was interested and his father survived him only one more year and was of advanced age).

The cipher at the foot of the gravestone says "Holiness of the Lord". The Pigpen Cipher was used by Freemasons in the 18th Century to keep their records private and surprisingly the cipher on Tommy's grave seems have a non-standard symbol for the letter "S".

It is possible the variation in the cipher is a clue to or a key to documents that he dealt with as the treasurer.

However, at the time of its placement in the graveyard the common impression was that it contained the old charge against his fellows and was purposefully written in Hebrew to defy objections to it being placed over the grave during Thomas' lifetime.

According to some, Tommy fell to his death from the church tower, but other sources disagree so this story may be an urban legend.

To add to the mystery, a bronze plaque was added to the stone in recent times with more cipher upon it, the cipher used being similar but not identical.

He is reported to have died in 1854 aged 69 years.

So, another one Lawrie has outlived.

We walked down the steep steps from the graveyard, across the field and through the farm beyond.

This brought us to Townscliffe Lane and by 1.51pm we had reached the Norfolk Arms.

Here Black Sheep was £3 as was The Broughton.

We were joined by the B Walkers who had started in Brabyns, followed the canal to Strines and meandered via the Roman Lakes to Marple Bridge.

John Eckersley soon joined the party.

Next week’s walk will start from the car park at Chapel railway Station at 9.35am. The half way point will be the Beehive and after de-booting we will convene in the Cock at Whaley Bridge.

Happy wandering!