Robin Longbottom explores how now-barren uplands were once covered by woodland areas

IN about 1968 a grip, or drainage ditch, was cut across Stott Hill Moor above Cowling, just to the north of the Hitching Stone.

It was about a metre-and-a-half deep and at the bottom it exposed a tangle of roots from long-dead trees. They appeared to be the roots of silver birch trees that had once grown on this area of moorland in pre-historic times.

Today it is hard to imagine that our now barren, windswept uplands and moors were once covered by large areas of temperate forest, composed of broad-leafed trees that shed their leaves in autumn.

Evidence of this lost upland forest can also be found in place names recorded on the first OS map, published in 1853, which suggest that small pockets survived into historic times. Such words as clough, coppy, greave, shaw, wicken, quicken and withins provide us with the clues.

Cloughs are small, deep moorland valleys, such as Slatesden Clough and Smallden Clough on Keighley Moor and Ponden Clough on Stanbury Moor, but unlike those on the lower slopes of the Aire Valley they are now stripped of trees. The word clough for a small, wooded valley is peculiar to the southern Pennines and also rather surprisingly to the south-east Netherlands where it appears as ‘kloof’.

Coppy is another word that is found on our uplands and appears in Coppy Hill above Laycock and Copt Hill at Sutton. It echoes a once-wooded area and is a variation of the more common word copse, or coppice, describing a small area of woodland that was once managed to grow lengths of wood for turning or fence posts.

Other once-small areas of woodland are recorded in the word greave, a northern variation of grove, and are found in the name Roms Greave on Keighley Moor and Moldgreave above Oxenhope.

The word shaw is also associated with a wooded area. Its origins lie in the old English ‘sceaga’ meaning a strip of woodland. It appears as Fernshaw Hill on Sutton Moor, Turnshaw Hill and Bradshaw above Oakworth.

Other names indicate tree species, such as Withins on Stanbury Moor, within or withy being an old word for willow. The word sallow also appears in documents and is again another word for a willow tree.

Wicken and quicken are associated with the rowan, or mountain ash tree, and also with the hawthorn, the saplings of which are still known as quicks.

Also largely missing from our uplands are the once large areas of shrubs and heathland plants, such as whins (gorse), broom, bilberry, cloudberry and crawberry.

In the 19th century Keighley Moor was famed for its bilberries and townsfolk would flock from the end of July until September to harvest them.

It appears that the owner, the Earl of Burlington, or his agents, attempted to stop this tradition and in 1848 the Leeds Times published a satirical report about a fictional court case involving Dos a’Micks – the Bilberry Keeper of Keighley Moor – who charged a widow and two young men with having picked his bilberries. The comic account concludes with a judgement in favour of the commoners, concluding that their right to gather bilberries was laid down by Act of Parliament.

Today, the treeless moors are predominantly heather and even the bilberry and the crawberry are now reduced to small pockets and roadsides. Whilst the cloudberry, an upland relative of the strawberry, has not been recorded for many years.

Perhaps as much as 99 per cent of our upland is now cultivated grassland, heather moor or expanses of purple moor grass, a landscape that our ancestors would be hard-pressed to recognise today.