Cliviger, ENG - Postcode - BB10 4SW

Description of Cliviger, England

The civil parish of Cliviger is located in the Burnley area of Lancashire, England. You may find it to the southeast of Burnley and to the northwest of Todmorden. There are 2,238 people living in the parish as per the 2011 census.  A few farms are located in the Todmorden and Bacup postal regions, even though the entire parish is within the Borough of Burnley. It has become primarily a dormitory district for residents who commute to Burnley and other East Lancashire and West Yorkshire cities for jobs.

There is no settlement called "Cliviger," despite widespread (and, in some cases, erroneous) belief to the contrary. Walking Mill, Southward Bottom, Overtown, Mereclough, and Holme Chapel are the major communities that make up the parish.

History of Cliviger

Humans have lived in the region for a very long time. Overlooking Mereclough from Moseley Height, the Bronze Age burial mound was discovered and excavated in 1950 by the Burnley Historical Society. Urns for ashes, as well as different types of pottery, spindle whorls, beads, and flint implements, were unearthed. They are currently part of Towneley Hall's collection but are no longer on exhibit. Another Mereclough burial cairn was located behind the Law House. There was also a gold torc from the Iron Age that was discovered and is now on display in the Manchester Museum. A number of Roman coins have been discovered as well.  Easden and a second site near Mereclough have been proposed as being the sites of diminutive Roman forts. Domesday Book has no mention of Cliviger, and its wider surrounding territory (Blackburn Hundred) is only briefly covered. The monks at the freshly established Kirkstall Abbey (Leeds) built a grange on a plot of property that dates back to around 1160 and may have included the entire township. Robert de Lacy (died 1193), lord of Clitheroe, first granted Accrington to the monks, but Richard de Elland (son of the previous tenant) was eventually allowed to regain it. Cliviger was given back to Kirkstall, and they kept it until 1287, when Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, offered them a regular rent in exchange. Southeast of Thieveley Pike, you may still follow a boundary bank known as the "Old Dyke" that separates Cliviger from the Forest of Rossendale (close to the southern border of the modern parish). The de Lacy family owned demesne holdings in this area as part of the later Duchy of Lancaster-acquired Honour of Clitheroe. The summit of Thieveley Pike was undoubtedly on the salt road that connected Cheshire and Manchester with Knaresborough and Wetherby.

Cliviger was the site of a coal mine that Queen Elizabeth I demised to her chief surgeon, Robert Balthrope, in 1588. It was eventually given to John Towneley of Towneley. Shedden Clough was the site of a limestone hushing activity in the 17th century. In the early 17th and mid-18th centuries, lead mining was undertaken at Thieveley. The land where this enterprise will take place, Black Clough, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Ruins of a blast furnace built by the Spencer partnership circa 1700 can be found not far from Pot Oven Farm. Even though it was already being used as a pottery by 1760, it is widely believed to be the region's first blast furnace. Above Thieveley Scout and on Deerplay Moor, two walking draglines called Cilla and Charybdis dug for coal in the open cast mines throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Following this, the sites were back-filled and manicured. 

Geographical description of Cliviger 

Cliviger Gorge runs southeast from the parish all the way to the (then) West Yorkshire town of Todmorden. It is a spectacular valley formed by glaciers and running along a fault in the South Pennine Moors. Hoof Stones Height on Stiperden Moor in the parish's northeast is its highest point, standing at 1,573 feet (479.5 m) above sea level (on the county boundary). Heald Moor and Deerplay Moor may be found to the west, with Thieveley Pike rising to an altitude of 1,470 feet (448.1 m). On Halloween, a huntsman and his hounds are said to materialize in the gorge in their ghostly forms, according to local folklore. In his classic work about witchcraft and magic, Harrison Ainsworth describes a terrifying ride through the gorge.

The A646 and a railway line both run through the valley, making it an important transportation hub between Lancashire and Yorkshire (there was previously a railway station at Holme Chapel). The Long Causeway, on the other hand, is a route that goes above the valley and may have been built as far back as the Bronze Age (it passes the Coal Clough Wind Farm). 

The parish is home to the headwaters of several rivers, including the Calder and Irwell in Yorkshire and the Irwell in Lancashire. As the rivers Calder in Lancashire and Irwell in Greater Manchester flow westward (through the Ribble and the Mersey) into the Irish Sea, and the Calder in Yorkshire flows eastward (via the Aire, the Ouse, and the Humber) into the North Sea, the area sits astride the primary watershed of Great Britain. The western boundary of the parish is formed by Everage Clough, a tributary of the Lancashire Calder, all the way to Crown Point, where the Singing Ringing Tree sculpture is located. The parish is bounded to the north by the River Brun, the tributary Rock Water, and the stream Shedden Clough.