About The South Pennines

Known as the “Backbone of England”, the Pennines are a narrow range of hills, mostly covered by high upland pastures and open moorland, over 2,000 feet at their highest point, stretching 250 miles from the Peak District of Derbyshire to the Scottish border.

The landscapes of the South Pennines have inspired generations of writers and artists, from Daniel Defoe, Joseph Turner and the Bronte’s, to Phyllis Bentley, JB Priestley, Ted Hughes, David Hockney and Tony Harrison.

The landscapes of the South Pennines have inspired generations of writers and artists, from Daniel Defoe, Joseph Turner and the Bronte’s, to Phyllis Bentley, JB Priestley, Ted Hughes, David Hockney and Tony Harrison.

In the centuries before motorways and fast trains, the South Pennines were an immense physical barrier separating the growing towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, an inhospitable landscape, difficult to cross for trade or communication, especially during long Pennine winters.

The history of Northern towns and cities is intimately interwoven with that of their Pennine hinterlands. The story began some tens of thousands of years ago, when, during successive Ice Ages, the action of great glaciers smoothed the hilltops and gouged out deep river valleys and cloughs, a process accelerated by fast flowing streams and rivers. Early humans cleared primeval forest for fuel and grazing, leaving poor, thin soils, inadequate for arable farming and only suitable, in the cool, wet, windy climate, for hardy sheep.

The harsh environment produced hardy, adaptable Pennine people, skilled at gathering, spinning and weaving their only saleable product, sheep wool, in what began as a cottage industry in outlying farms and hamlets. The weavers carried finished cloth in “pieces” along packhorse ways and early turnpike roads, to emerging market towns such as Halifax and Rochdale. Later generations were quick to harness the power of fast running moorland streams and rivers to create the first water powered mills, the basis of a textile industry.

It was the coming of the first great Trans-Pennine canals through the narrow Pennine valleys in the 18th and early 19th centuries that set alight the industrial Revolution which was to change the world. Not only could raw material and finished goods such as limestone and wool be exported from the South Pennines by barge, but energy in the form of coal from the great coalfields in the nearby Pennine foothills of Lancashire and Yorkshire could be brought in, allowing more efficient steam power to replace early water powered mills.

The cool, damp western slopes of the Pennines were ideal for cotton spinning and during the 19th century cities such as Manchester in the west – Cottonopolis – and the great wool and worsted centres of Bradford and Huddersfield in the east, became world centres of textile manufacturing, spilling over into heavy engineering as Britain, and northern England in particular, became the workshop of the world.

The canals – great pioneering engineering works in themselves – were soon followed by railways, built by such engineering geniuses as George Stephenson with the Manchester-Leeds Railway, now the Caldervale Line, that conquered the physical barriers of the hills, and expand Victorian prosperity and progress.

Not that this rapid growth was without its problems in terms of pollution, poor housing and exploitation. However, throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, men and women of vision such as John Fielden, Sir Titus Salt and Samuel Lister laid the foundations of modern towns and cities – the social housing and great public buildings, libraries, schools and institutes, parks, galleries, and universities which still benefit our lives.

In the twenty-first century, this process of change is still visible. The decline of the old smokestack industries and its air pollution, has allowed the outskirts of many Pennine towns and cities to be transformed into places of natural beauty, a true greening of the environment, where man’s often harsh industrial activity is being reabsorbed into the natural world.

The magnificent open hilltop moorlands and intimate valleys of the South Pennines are a huge asset to the people of the great towns and city regions of the North. Nothing illustrates the close relationship that still exists between the South Pennines and the cities better than the great Victorian waterworks and catchment areas which still dominate the Pennine moorlands, bringing clean water to crowded industrial towns. But that moorland is equally able to meet the needs of water catchment, nature conservation, upland farming, offering precious green space for fresh air, health-giving physical exercise, education and spiritual renewal, so vital for modern urban communities.

So the South Pennines is now a very special, multifaceted, part of England, which the 2007 South Pennine Heritage Festival is designed to help you discover, appreciate and enjoy. Join us in the company of friendly local guides and experts during 23 days of discovery and pleasure. We look forward to meeting you to share just a little of this amazing natural and cultural heritage.