Virtual Walk around The Five Guide Stoops
(4miles)
Wednesday 27th May 2020
As you probably know, I was allocated the May walk this year. Before I could actually do the walk and sort out the pub we were in lockdown so this really is a virtual walk. There are no photographs just some grainy images that I’ve managed to acquire so here goes.
So, if we had been doing the May walk to quote a well known phrase from a game show, “Here’s what you could have won”!
A little history information for the walk.
To develop roads to meet local needs, in 1555, Parliament made local parishes
responsible for their upkeep. In 1697, County Justices were ordered to erect inscribed guideposts (stoops) on the moors and where highways crossed. Our walk takes in five of these stoops.
Here we go then.
We start at the Rose and Crown Thurstonland. We soon emerge onto an
edge with spectacular views of the Holme Valley and the Pennines. Over a stile, through fields and around a black air shaft of the Penistone railway line ; (Thurstonland tunnel).
Over another two stiles and past Heights Farm onto Hal Ing Road. (Ing is an Anglo Saxon term meaning to). Just to the left is a mid -18th century boundary stone; not a stoop.
Along Hall Ing Road at the junction of Greenside Road and Thurstonland Road is our first stoop dated 1738. You can just make out two spellings ‘miles and miels’ on different sides of the stoop.
These are old and new measurements of a mile. (3 miels and 4 miles).
Along Greenside Rd and over a stile then across 8 fields and several stiles, towards
Farnley Tyas church. (Tyas was the surname of an ancient local landowning family). A reservoir building supplies Storthes Hall Student Village formally West Riding Mental Hospital. Going a little further there is another mid-19th century triangular boundary stone marking the boundary between Farnley Tyas and Thurstonland.
Now our second stoop on the corner of Storthes Hall Lane dated 1861.
Now we continue along the road to the third stoop, a simple stone incorporated into the wall at
the top of Wood Lane,
‘To Thunderbridge’.
We have a choice here, a scenic walk along a woodland track which is a little steep and can be
muddy or a touch of road walking. Taking the road route means we take in stoop 5 before stoop
4, get it? Never mind, just try and keep up. So, the road has it.
At the bottom of a field we enter Clough Wood and follow the footpath to a footbridge at
Clough Dike and up a field. Through a sprung wooden gate stile and into Brown’s Knoll Wood.
Down to another footbridge over Town Moor Dyke and to a stile at the railway line. Cross to a stepped
stile and via a farm track to Stocksmoor Road and the fourth stoop spoiled by a postbox.
Along Browns Knoll Road, into Town Moor, past the war memorial, through the village to the Rose and Crown. Rated highly for the food and real ale we will be (would have been) ok here.
Hope you enjoyed the walk, not too tiring I hope and seeing as it’s virtual the drinks are on me and keep safe.
Dennis
