Alden Valley

The Alden Valley is a small valley on the eastern edge of the West Pennine Moors, west of Helmshore in Rossendale, Lancashire, England. In the 14th century it was part of the Earl of Lincoln's hunting park. By 1840 it was home to about twenty farms, largely involved in cattle rearing, although most inhabitants were also involved with the production of textiles, which quickly developed during the Industrial Revolution into the building of textile mills. These have now been demolished and the valley is dominated by sheep grazing, with three working farms and a number of smallholdings.

To the north and north-west is Musbury Tor, to the south-west at the head of the valley is Scholes Height, to the west is Musden Head Moor and Burnt Hill. To the south is Bull Hill and the Holcombe Moor, to the south-east is Beetle Hill. Alden Brook forms from several streams draining Wet Moss on the north-western slopes of Scholes Height, which join after flowing through several gullies at an area known as Alden Ratchers. It is the last of the River Ogden's tributaries to join before it joins the River Irwell.

It has been suggested the name Alden derives from Old English ælf ('elf') + denu ('valley'), thus meaning 'elf-valley'. although the Old English root alor (alder tree) seems an equally likely element.

A story is told of the murder of a young woman by her lover on the footpath to Edgworth above and to the south of Alden Valley. Above Robin Hood's Well, the site is marked by an old cairn, and a stone carved by Rossendale-based artist Don McKinlay was erected by Horse and Bamboo Theatre at a special performance in 1978. The story was also commemorated by a Victorian ballad written by John Fawcett Skelton. The memorial is on Beetle Hill that overlooks the Valley, south of Alden Farm. It can reached by following the track to Robin Hood's Well and continuing onto the moorland.

In 1304–05 Henry de Lacy, 3rd Earl of Lincoln, nominated a large area of land from Grane to Alden Valley as a deer park. There's some uncertainty about the exact size of the park as there are no contemporary records, but it appears to have been between 900 and 1100 acres. A huge ditch was created encircling the area, which included the Alden and Musbury Valleys. £22 10s was paid "to carpenters...for felling timber and making a paling in part of the park". This was a hunting area that fell into disuse over the next few hundred years, although the boundary earthworks can still be clearly seen between Alden Reservoir and Fall Bank. Such hunting parks were status symbols of the period; there were 3,200 of them, covering roughly 2% of the English countryside.

The boundary would have been close to the old White Horse (Anacapri) along Alden Road to the lodge below Alden Farm. From there it is still recognisable as it climbs the hill. It then crosses Green Height into Musbury and runs down to Musbury Brook, eventually appearing in Grane and close to the Holden Arms. From this point there are no more signs of the earthworks, but it emerged in Station Road, Helmshore, and from there led back to the White Horse.

It would have been stocked with fallow deer. There was at least one gate through the pale in Alden Valley. In 1323 a park-keeper (a parker) was employed and earned 45s 6d (£2.31) a year. By 1480 no park-keepers were employed, and in 1507 parcels of the land that made up the Park were rented out. The site of the original manor house was believed by the historian Thomas Hayhurst to be where Great House Farm cottages are, backing onto Musbury Tor, although this is disputed. Nevertheless, the parcel of land including the Alden section of the old game park was rented to Adam Haworth in 1527. His estate centred on Great House.

The first Great House was built at the same time as the Deer Park was laid out. A date stone from a second Great House is built into the nearby farm building with the date 1600 and the initials RHAH (probably Ralph and Alice Haworth, who owned the house at that date). Below Great House, surrounded by trees and south of Musbury Tor, is Tor Side House. This was built about 1868 by Joseph Porritt for his own occupation. The relative tranquility of Alden Valley (and the fact that it was to the west, and protected by the prevailing wind from the smoke from his own mills) provided a suitable place for his son, William John Porritt, to create a house for himself, sufficiently distant from his own mills and the associated poverty. Porritt bought up most of the farmhouses in the valley, making his family the largest landowner. The Porritts were great tree-planters and planted most of the wooded areas seen today in the lower valley. Later, in the early 1900s, it was remodelled and extended by the Porritt family. From 1949 until 1982 it housed the offices of Great House Experimental Farm. In 2010 it was the setting for the BBC drama series Survivors.