Setting regions’ boundaries has not always been straightforward over the centuries, as local historian Robin Longbottom explains

PERHAPS the most familiar date in English history is 1066 when the Normans defeated King Harold at Hastings.

At the time of the conquest, Yorkshire – once the Viking Kingdom of York – was a huge county extending from the North Sea across the Pennines to the Irish Sea. West of the Pennines it included all the land north of the River Ribble to the southern Lake District, but in 1182 the Normans created the county of Lancashire to encompass both this land and that south to the River Mersey.

However, they never marked or recorded the new boundary with Yorkshire, and that between Oakworth in Keighley, the township of Cowling and Lancashire remained fluid over the next 400 years. It was not until towards the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who had inherited the Duchy of Lancaster from her grandfather Henry VII, that a determined effort was made to establish and fix the boundary.

In 1592 officials from the Duchy of Lancaster met with Alvery Copley, lord of the manor of Cowling Hill in the township of Cowling, to agree the boundary between his small manor and that of Colne in Lancashire. They settled it along a line between an existing wayside cross, known as Tom Cross, on the boundary with Lothersdale, and the "Bothome of a litle Cloughe that was the boundary with the neighbouring manor of Ickornshaw. They marked it with two new boundary stones – the first was named 'Nappinge nicoll' and the second one 'Slipinge Sander', perhaps after the two local characters who had erected them.

Having fixed this short length of boundary the process then stalled until 1605 when the new king, James I, took up the mantle to settle the county boundary with Ickornshaw – also in the township of Cowling – and with the manor of Oakworth in Keighley.

George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, represented the freeholders of Ickornshaw and the chancellor and lawyers of the Duchy of Lancaster represented the king and neighbouring Colne. They were instructed to make "a true and perfecte plott of the said wastes betweene the said Sheires and Counties" and to "sett out the meares and boundaryes". At the “litle Cloughe” then referred to as "Haynslacke Cloughe" they erected a stone called the King's Stone – and from there almost to the present A6068 to Colne they put up four further stones. The last stone, the Attorney's Stone, stood at the head of Sandyforth Sike and the boundary was to follow this watercourse to where it joined Laneshaw Beck and then along that beck to its headwaters, and from there in a straight line to the Wolf Stones on the edge of Keighley and Oakworth moors.

Settling the boundary with Oakworth was more problematical. The freeholders of the village claimed all the land beyond the present Watersheddles Reservoir in Lancashire to Comb Cross on the watershed stating that from time immemorial they had grazed their cattle and their lord had "hunted with his hawk" as far as the cross. However, the Duchy of Lancaster claimed that their land extended to a place below the present reservoir that was marked by an ancient stone known as the Hanging Stone or Watersheddles Cross. The matter went to court but the men of Oakworth were taking on the king and were no match for his lawyers. The matter was finally settled in 1614 when Oakworth lost the case and the boundary with Lancashire was fixed at the Hanging Stone.

In 1973 many county boundaries were redrawn under the Local Government Act 1972 but the one settled between the Yorkshire manors of Cowling Hill, Ickornshaw and Oakworth and the county of Lancashire has remained unchanged to the present day, although many of the old boundary stones have been lost over time.