Walking Through Burnley History, Hurstwood

Walking Through Burnley History, Hurstwood, with Roger Frost 26-09-24

Transcript

00:00Today we're in Hurstwood, which is a village near Burnley, and it's a remarkable village.

00:07Normally you wouldn't associate it with Burnley, but every building in the village has got a story.

00:16It is, of course, an agricultural village. The main industry for centuries was farming,

00:22and there are still a few farms, two or three, in the immediate area which are still working.

00:28But it was also a handloom weaver's centre, and there's a row of property just in front of us

00:36which was occupied largely, though not entirely, by handloom weavers.

00:42This is Hurstwood Chapel. It has a longer history than the years in which it was built.

00:511870 was when the Baptist Chapel at Hurstwood was built.

00:56But there had been attempts to establish a Methodist chapel before that, which didn't come off.

01:03This building is Spencer's Cottage. It dates to the 16th century, although it's been slightly updated.

01:16It is a building which has got a real history.

01:21The Spencer family came to this village probably in the early 16th century.

01:30But one of them, who wasn't actually born here but was a cousin of the family that lived here,

01:38was Edmund Spencer, the great Tudor poet. He was the author of The Fairy Queen,

01:45a poem that I'm not too fond of, but he was also the author of another great poem called The Shepherd's Calendar.

01:54Now, it was when he was staying here with his relatives, according to tradition,

02:01that he got the idea to write The Shepherd's Calendar.

02:07This is Ivy Cottage. It is assumed to be an early 17th century building,

02:15but it's possible that there was something on the site before.

02:19It's interesting because although it looks like a house, in actual fact it is thought to have been a Catholic chapel

02:28in the time when being a Catholic was against the law.

02:33Catholics were persecuted. Some of them were executed.

02:38Some of them were fined for many years, like John Townley, for example.

02:43But here it's understood, and there's no direct proof of it,

02:49that this was the secret location of a rural Catholic chapel.

02:55And of course this area, in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly the 17th,

03:01there were lots of secret Catholics around, led by the Townleys of Townley,

03:07who had their own Catholic chapel in the hall.

03:11Behind me now is Hurston Hall, which was built in the 1570s by Bernard Townley.

03:19He is understood to have been a natural son of John Townley, of Townley Hall.

03:28And for three generations the hall was in Townley ownership.

03:35Bernard Townley was an architect and builder.

03:39He was number two to Sir Christopher Wren in the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral.

03:46A very significant man in his own time.