Day 4. Accrington – Haslingden.
I completed this short walk a week or so ago but didn’t get a chance to record it before being carted off to the hospital. I have left it till now to maintain the sequence of my ‘pilgrimage’ to Manchester or even Lichfield.
Leaving Accrington bus station, I end up in the Town Square area: municipal buildings, banks and churches from the Victorian era. Faded grandeur comes to mind. 
I search for St James’ Church, founded on this site in 1546. The present building dates back to 1763 and is showing its age, but services are still taking place. Inside are memorials to the Peel family and 11th Battalion East Lancashire Regiment, better known as the Accrington Pals. 
Nearby Cannon Street Baptist Church has been converted into luxury apartments. And looks very smart. The centre of Accrington would be worth further exploration. 
I strike out past the Tesco store, past the skate park and pick up a Cycleway 6 sign. Hynburn Greenway. 
Hereabouts is the Ashton Frost Cog Wheel from the steam engine of Primrose Mill in nearby Church. The mill was built in 1884 and was capable of driving 400 Lancashire Looms. Demolished in the 80s. 
Scaitcliffe Mill was built in the 1850s as a cotton mill and later became Platt Brothers manufacturing looms. All that was left was the canteen, now the offices of Hynburn Borough Council. 
Across the way is the building of Globe Mill, a rival works manufacturing machinery for the Lancashire textile industry, 1853 – 1993, at its height employing 6000 people. Now a conference centre. 
We are in the centre of Lancashire’s Industrial Revolution here. At one time, wall-to-wall mills and even a coalmine, right under the centre of Accy. 
The cycleway goes alongside Platts Lodge between tall red metal columns. I now find these were the supports for a railway bridge. The lodge was built before 1848 when the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway arrived from Bury, hence the surviving bridge columns over the water. The lodge served several industries in the vicinity but is now a nature reserve, even if it is a little neglected. Mill buildings across the way are a further reminder of the industrial past.
Looking back at town centre flats.
Before leaving the urban environment, another mill site, Victoria Mill, is passed through, the obvious weaving sheds displaying their roof lights. 
This is what the whole area looked like on a 1900 map.
National Library of Scotland.
Now, on the Hynburn Greenway, the old rail line stretches slowly up a 1 in 40 incline from Accrington towards Baxenden—a good example of a reclaimed cycle/footpath. One soon forgets the busy town.
Down to the right is the Priestly Clough; the woodland here is ancient, from at least AD1600. At Shoe Mill Bridge, there used to be a five-arched bridge carrying the railway over the stream and a very tall mill chimney. 
At Baxenden, the railway walk runs out, and a diversion through more old cotton mills, now used as a scrap yard, takes one across the road almost next to the famous Holland’s Pies factory. 
Now, high on Back Lane, I have better views of the open countryside and distant moors. Was this the original byway before the Turnpike Road and industries arrived in the valley bottom? A stone trough gives some antiquity. 
There is Holland’s Pies in the valley. 
As I drop into Rising Bridge, there are terraced houses heading steeply down to the main road where there had been cotton mills. Note the cobbled streets; to be accurate, these are ‘setts’. Rectangular and often made from hard-wearing granite. Cobbles were rounded and taken from rivers.
Up a side street, I find a bench for lunch before going under the A56. A nearby carved wooden ‘Once upon a time’ chair is dedicated to a baby’s death.
Sometimes, it’s the smallest stories that are most beautiful, the smallest footprints that make the biggest impact and the tiniest of hearts that create an eternity of love.
Now, back on a small lane. The traffic on that roundabout looks horrendous; this is when you are glad to be on foot.
I fall into step with a local walker; he is interested in my route. If I had known, he said, I could have used a slightly higher route, which would have taken me past The Halo Panopticon statue.
The road climbs steadily out of Rising Bridge with isolated rows of cottages at its side. When looking at the old maps, you realise there had once been collieries and mills all around, which explains their existence. Some may have been handloomers. Everything is on a slant along here. The road is named The King’s Highway on those maps.
Stone setts are just below the surface.
I come across The Griffin Inn, the headquarters for Rossendale Brewery; I can’t go past without sampling their pale ale, appropriately named Halo. 
That’s Haslingden Moor across the way. 
A distinctive feature on the hillside as one drives down the A56 past Haslingden is the squat church of St. James. This is to be my final destination for today. Little ginnels lead me into the churchyard. The church is closed. Not a place to be on a misty night, the abandoned gravestones and memorials give it a ghostly atmosphere.
Here is an extract from the church’s history:-
Our building is, reputedly, the highest church above sea level in the country. The first recorded mention of Haslingden Church was in 1284 when it was one of the seven chapels in the Parish of Whalley….in 1296, the Tithes value of the Glebe was six pounds per year, and in 1535, the value of the living was put down in the King’s Book as seventeen pounds, eight shillings and threepence.
Between 1550 and 1574, the church was rebuilt in the perpendicular or Tudor style.
Disaster struck after a long period of burying within the church, so the building became unstable and eventually fell. The church remained a ruin until the middle of 1773 when money was collected and rebuilding began. During the reconstruction, marriages, baptisms, and burials were solemnised in the old tower, which remained standing.
The third church on the site was completed in 1780 at a cost of one thousand, four hundred and fifty pounds and in 1827, the Tudor tower was demolished, costing seven pounds, and the present one erected at a cost of nine hundred pounds and the gallery was added in 1878.
The present bells were cast in 1830, and the clock was purchased through a public subscription in 1831.
The oldest gravestone is dated 1629. They give a fascinating history; life was perilous back then. 
A sombre end to the day.
Haslingden in the late 1800’s – look at all those mills.
I catch a bus back to Accrington and look forward to my next section, which strikes out across the open moors away from the industrial past.
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