Harden Moor.

The battered remains of Harden Moor sit above the hamlet bearing its name a few miles west of Bingley and south of Keighley, West Yorkshire.  The remnant comprises 85 hectares of upland heathland: heather, bilberry, reeds, sedges, grasses, bracken.  Trees emboldened by the lack of sheep are spreading from their ancient refuge in Deep Cliff Hole.  Few moorland birds bother the place - too busy with denizens and dogs, model aeroplanes and motocross.  Farmers with sheep long since gave up.  A confusion of toppled "monoliths", piles of waste and deep pits tell of quarrying - the last one within the site is now being filled with builders rubble from far flung towns and cities and will leave few if any reminders that the bedrock has gone off to far flung towns and cities.

Once Harden Moor covered a much larger area and was a part of a near continuous moorland landscape running from the highpoint of Nab Hill, Oxenhope Moor to the south to Marley or Marlow or the river Aire in the north.  Nature may have known a single moor but these common lands were demarcated and named by the communities that used their resources, mostly grazing, turbary, quarrying, bracken cutting, thatch.  That moorland changes in character from blanket bog at Nab Hill to near upland healthland on the north facing slope of the Aire.  The 21st Century moor we can identify and name is now an archipelago of "moorland" islands sat in a sea of bright green improved grassland: Harden, Heather Park (St Ives Estate), Hog Holes Brow, Transfield Top, Catstones, Brow Moor, Hallas Rough Park, Hainworth, Lees, Cullingworth etc.

The exact boundaries of Harden Moor are lost to time.  The open, unwalled, unfenced  moor has been lost to a series of private and Parliamentary Enclosure Awards over several hundred years. The boundaries in the above map are a mixture of evidence from historic records and observation.

Pre Parliamentary Enclosure.

Hand drawn or printed maps so far are relatively recent, dating from the 19thC.  The oldest map find to date is Joseph Fox's 1830 "Plan of Roads Connected with the Towns of Bingley and Keighley." (Bradford Local Studies Library).  The focus of the map appears not to be the roads, which are few and far between but rather the "Estate of Mr Thomas Parker Esq" whose land ownership and field boundaries are recorded in some detail (green).  Here Harden Moor or the northern portion is shown running west of Harden Grange, now the enclosed St Ives Estate to Druids Rock, Transfield Top and down to the edges of Marlow (now Marley).  A future challenge is to project this in a digital map and to compare and understand what survives.

Why Fox draws Thomas Parker's land holding in such detail is a matter of conjecture.  It is possibly connected with a pre-Parliamentary private enclosure agreement of that part of the moor.  It would be feasible, therefore, that in the 18thC Harden Moor extended even further north.  Perhaps the tongue of land running down to Marlow was not enclosed in order to protect the rights of Marlow proprietors to access grazing rights on Harden Moor?  This strip today along with Transfield Top is still heathland and Parker's adjoining field to the east has reverted back to oak and birch.

Left: Parker's enclosed land. Centre: "Harden Moor" towards Transfield Top. Right: large open field previously Harden Moor.

The Future

Upland heathland may fare better than lowland heathland according to Natural England - they are more abundant, coherent better connected.  But it seems clear that the lower altitude heathland fringes that border  improved agricultural enclosed fields and high density populations in the settlements of the valley bottoms are threatened by fragmentation, wear and tear and possible change of use (Catstones Moor?).  Harden and other largely treeless landscapes are now attracting the attention of the Environment Agency and NGOs who believe climate change and its impacts, such as extreme rain and flooding, can in part be mitigated by planting more trees.  The target driven Northern Forest and the Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme could accelerate the loss of open moor.   Whether there is merit or not in sacrificing these Biodiversity Action Plan priority habitats is an open question and one to be explored and tested.