DAY OUT: Uppermill, Greater Manchester
Weavers of Saddleworth
Dotting the flanks of the Upper Tame Valley are a series of old weaving villages, each a history book divulging tales of Saddleworth’s industrial past, enthuses Neil Coates
Picture a thin path used in centuries past by workers walking to tiny scribbling mills wedged in wooded cloughs on a steep Pennine hillside. Hunched above is secluded, tree-shrouded St Chad’s Church. Its spooky, overgrown graveyard embraces a tombstone that graphically details a brutal murder on the moors in 1832.
Enough to put shivers down your spine? Recover in a brace of characterful, logfire-warmed pubs, which bookend this memorable hillside setting high above Uppermill. This is South Pennine autumnal landscape par excellence; colourful woods, gritstone hamlets and wind-riffled moors.
Advancing from this elevated enclave, the waymarked Oldham Way threads to the imposing Pots & Pans War Memorial. Nearby, enjoy mouth-watering views into the vast glacial amphitheatre holding Dovestone Reservoir, glistening below fractured gritstone crags.
MILLS, GINNELS, CANALS
Uppermill is the largest of nine neighbouring weaving villages dappling Saddleworth’s Upper Tame Valley. Its intriguing mix of repurposed mills, transport heritage, artisanal and produce shops threads the deep valley beneath the shoulders of towering hills. Old cartways and ginnels link to canal and riverside walks between cosy teashops.
Home-in on the canalside Museum & Art Gallery, a revelation of the area’s industrial past; then amble the towpath to Brownhill Countryside Centre and café, tucked beneath the slender railway viaduct curving high over the Tame and the Huddersfield Narrow Canal. Displays and information highlight the surrounding natural history and human-influenced countryside.
TREADING THE TAME
Sublime walks radiate from here. One, an energetic climb up cobbled paths, rises to glorious Dobcross, a picture-perfect village wrapped around a prominent ridge-end above the Tame. Its alluring Swan Inn is tucked into a veneer of multi-storey weavers’ stone cottages, which cocoon the sloping little cobbled square. Precipitous lanes and byways drizzle back down to the valley. Film-buffs may recognise the location as the setting for the 1979 blockbuster film Yanks, starring Richard Gere.
Another, easier walk north along the towpath reaches the portal of Standedge canal tunnel, the longest (5km), highest and deepest in the realm. The ramble offers a marvellous transect through the heritage of the area, which is dotted with old mills and threaded by tendril-like stone walls scaling the heights. Saddleworth’s villages amply repay the curious visitor.
Neil Coates is a Manchester-based writer specialising in walking and pubs.