Bygone Burnley: Thursden Valley
Bygone Burnley Part 2: Thursden Valley
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00:00We're here at Broadbank and overlooking the valley of Thursday.
00:06A very interesting area historically, it's got just about everything.
00:11The name often interests people too.
00:14In the old days, people thought it meant the valley where the god Thor lived
00:20and that would be to the pre-Roman people who lived in ancient Britain.
00:25However, recently I've looked at the early spellings and I've come to the conclusion
00:30that the name really means Valley of the Goblins.
00:35Dead in Thursday means valley in Viking language.
00:41And Thurs is another word for a goblin, an evil fairy, but a goblin is.
00:48So it was a very haunted area.
00:51On the other side of the valley, there was a chute from the 18th century.
00:59They used to shoot birds.
01:04In the background, the hillside is dotted with ancient burial sites from the pre-Roman period.
01:14The area is dominated by the Winnip Road.
01:19You can see it's snaking up the side of the hill.
01:23The hill to the right is the Revenge and ultimately goes over the hill towards Hebdenstow and Hebdenbridge.
01:36We're looking here at the Thursden Bushes.
01:39They are the most well-known example of this kind of activity that took place in the past.
01:48What these little mounds are of is sandstone and gritstone,
01:56which has been left behind after limestone has been washed out of the hillside.
02:04In the past, limestone has had all sorts of uses, particularly good for farmers to improve the quality of their land.
02:14In Thursden, there are lots of interesting places.
02:18This one, unfortunately, you can't see because it's become overgrown in recent years.
02:24But in the immediate foreground here, just on the other side of this little street,
02:31which you can't see because of the angle or something like that, there is a prehistoric flint workshop.
02:41It was not known until the early 19th century when a Burnley poet spent some time in this area in a tent.
02:52He went looking around and found lots of arrowheads and pieces of worked flint.
03:00We're just above Thursden here, at the back horse, on an ancient road which was used by Persians in the cold to halyards in the days when wolves came.