Shaly Dingle

Part of the West Pennine Moors, Winter Hill itself is a well-known area for hiking and other outdoor activities, but tucked away on the north slopes, on the edge of the open-access area, Shaly Dingle not so much.

One of the first things to note about Shaly Dingle is the quaint-sounding name. A dingle is an archaic name for a small valley, usually secluded or wooded and comes from the Old English, meaning a hollow or depression. The Shaly part of the name almost certainly relates to the dark-coloured, often termed ‘blue’ shale we find locally as part of the Lower Coal Measures, a geological formation, much of which is described as “an alternating succession of sandstone and shale”. However, although there is plenty of shale nearby and underground, we don’t see a lot exposed in Shaly Dingle itself. The surface geology here below the peat is usually mudstone, overlain with even-bedded sandstone flags with boulder-clay on course grit lower down the slopes.

The lower part of the Shaly Dingle area is outside the open-access area and although it holds a couple of secrets it’s private land so shouldn’t be accessed. This area being between Shaly Dingle and the road, together with the road being a clearway or a no stopping road so there’s no roadside parking, which means the only way to get to Shaly Dingle is across the moors. My preferred route is over Whimberry Hill from Scout Road but I have made the trip the other way from The Great Gutter above Ward’s Reservoir before. Another option is possibly down from the top of Winter Hill but that could be difficult.

Many of the points of interest at Shaly Dingle are related to former industry of which there have been three types, water, coal and quarrying and I’m not sure which came first, but the first we’ll look at is water and the secret is the number of tunnels around that seem to have been related to taking water from the catchment area without it having been taken into The Reservoir of Dean Mills higher up the hill, and thereby sent down the other side of the hill to Barrow Bridge. This kind of activity was common around the time of the industrial revolution when many of the local reservoirs were constructed, either for use by mill or as a water supply for the rapidly increasing population.

This was known as Compensation Water, described in the book “Water Supply”:

“Compensation water is the flow that must be discharged below an impounding reservoir to maintain the water rights of riprarian owners and other abstractors downstream. Each country tends to have its own water law to preserve water rights and setting quantities of compensation water can involve extended legal dispute. In Britain, the compensation water from most impounding reservoirs is set by some Parliamentary Act. In the early 1900s compensation water was often set at one-third of the gross yield of the reservoir, but this proportion tended to reduce to one-quarter in later years - says Gustard 1987. Nowadays compensation water is often required to be varied seasonally and extra discharges as ‘spates’ may be stipulated at certain times of the year to meet fishing interests.”

“Riprarian” is an interesting and possibly unusual word that essentially means “related to or situated on the banks of a river.”

There are a number of water tunnels or conduits, including this large one I discovered as a kid and came back to years later. It’s located between the reservoir and Whimberry hill and the stone covering and roof slabs have been removed on this section at some point, I should note although the tunnels sometimes still hold water, many are derelict and a lot of the old wells and other infrastructure are collapsed or broken. Dave Lane of Winter Hill Scrapbook fame explained to me years ago that as we can see these tunnels have a flagstone covering or roof, they must have been constructed by being dug out, and then buried, rather than “tunnelled”.

Here’s the ruin of one of the wells, it seems to have had a stone dome shape above ground, note the cylindrical stone blocks used as a sort-of keystone there.

Here’s a view into one of the remaining, intact wells in the area. I’m not sure if they are technically “wells”, but that’s how they are labelled on the old maps.

There are collapsed tunnels in the small valley beside Whimberry Hill, here is a section exposed below Egg Hillock where we can see the stone channel and some of the stone covering fallen in.

Incidentally, Egg Hillock above Shaly Dingle is probably a glacial mound but prehistoric artefacts have been found here and we might imagine a prehistoric hunter sitting on the slopes chipping away at flint arrowheads.

This little stone bridge down in the main part of Shaly Dingle is labelled as an aqueduct on the old maps and must have a tunnel running through it to carry water across. You can see the arch to let the natural stream through is relatively small, with room in the stonework above to conceal the tunnel. To my knowledge nobody has been through the tunnel in modern times but I’ve recently discovered a trapdoor-like stone slab some distance away, although whether the section of tunnel between the two is still intact I don’t know.

After the aqueduct the water tunnel continues down the valley for a distance parallel with the natural stream before veering off to the East, this can be followed above ground, by the trail of old wells going that way. This is interesting in itself because the water from the tunnels was obviously destined for a different location to the water in the brook that went down the valley to the Belmont Paper Mills and Egerton beyond.

Along with another series of old wells, the tunnel route above the aqueduct also has a “tank” shown on the old maps. The area is covered in vegetation today but the shape of the tank can be seen in this aerial photo from around 1960.

Another industry happening at Shaly Dingle in the past was quarrying, at a rather small looking quarry known by the curious name, Martha Tree Delph. A delph is an old colloquial term for a small quarry, but whether Martha Tree was a personal name I’m not sure. Although small looking the quarry had a tramway around the time of the 1850s to remove quantities of rock. There also seems to have been some quarrying and tunnelling further downstream but this may have been related to altering the stream or related to mining.

I think the oldest industry at Shaly Dingle would’ve been coal mining. The coal seam here is known as the Holcombe Brook Coal that actually outcrops on the surface beside the stream. There’s a geological fault running roughly north/south and across the east side of the fault the Mountain Mine, Six Inch Mine and Sandrock Mine coal seams are present. There are two known coal shafts and an old mine adit in the area.

Interestingly, in the mudstone accompanying the coal seam it’s possible to find fossil stigmaria, the roots of large plants that existed before trees as we know them today. These strata would have been layed down around 320 million years ago in a tropical area where a very large river delta met the sea.

There’s also two layers in the strata known as Marine Bands, a type of fossil horizon, in this case where the area beside the delta would have flooded for a time, laying down marine sediment that can contain other fossils, and there is a location on the higher marine band where such fossils have been found. Personally I haven’t seen any here but in nearby places tiny shells are found in between leaves of dark shale.

The upper marine band here is probably the Haslingden Flags Marine Band and the lower the Holcombe Brook Marine Band. The names of these features together with the names of the rock strata and coal seams are given from notable places they occur locally. In the case of rock strata and marine bands the names have become commonly used in geology, but the coal seams have many different names across the coal field and in many places various seams can be missing from the strata.

Downstream in an area on private land there is a small waterfall with a rock cut tunnel beside that’s probably related to the coal mine but it’s true purpose is unknown, the tunnel is blocked by a rock fall after some distance. Sadly, the tunnel and waterfall shouldn’t be visited since it’s outside the open-access area but I once met either the landowner or tenant who used the area for pheasant farming a few years ago so I did have a look around.

There’s one other artefact I know about in the area, a stone marked on old maps that was inscribed with three dates, although a fourth was added in 2011 by a local urbex group - “leave only footprints” as the motto goes. There are a lot of boulders around but this one is specifically marked on maps, something usually reserved for boundary stones, although this one isn’t on any known boundary, so it’s a mystery what the dates signify.

Shaly Dingle is an interesting area with a lot of history but it’s not often visited in modern times, but it’s in the open-access area so you’re free to explore it any time.

Created: 27  November  2016  Edited: 29  October  2024