Hayfield

Friends have hired a terraced house in Hayfield for a week as its half term, and invited me over. I’ve decided to say yes to things, so I travelled over today. A (muddy) walk on Snake Path towards Kinder Scout after lunch, a visit to the nearest pub, and a very late meal.

The road the terrace is situated on has two interesting plaques on walls nearby. Down the hill a blue plaque identifies a house as the birthplace of actor Arthur Lowe, well known to people in this country as Captain Mainwaring in the TV sitcom “Dad’s Army”. Up the hill a plaque on a wall at the starting place of our walk commemorates the Kinder Scout mass trespass of 1932. The arrest and imprisonment of protestors for up to 6 months caused outrage, and helped to generate support for moves to allow access for people to the countryside, including the creation of the National Parks in 1949 and subsequent legislative changes to enable people to more readily enjoy the countryside. Ewan McColl, who was one of the trespassers, wrote his well known song “The Manchester Rambler” as a sing-a-long thing for the trespassers to sing, it sums up what the protest was about.

The image is of the River Sett tumbling over a weir in the centre of Hayfield. We had gone down to the village store after our walk for some last minute provisions.