In Nutclough Wood

Nutclough Wood sounds to me like something out of a Beatrix Potter book. It is rather attractive: a steep, wooded ravine only a short walk from Hebden Bridge town centre. ('Clough' means a gorge or ravine in these parts.) It always amazes me how such huge trees can cling to life on these precipitous valley sides. 

There is a mill in the town, Nutclough Mill, built in the 1700s, which became the first ever workers' co-operative when it was purchased in 1873 by the Hebden Bridge Fustian Manufacturing Society. Fustian is a type of sturdy, cotton corduroy cloth. In Nutclough Wood there is an overgrown pond that was once the mill dam. 'Friends of Nutclough Wood' has been set up to care for the woodland and they have a management plan which includes restoring the pond, improving the paths, placing seats and managing the woodland itself. Traces of the industrial past are there to be found, like these stone steps, part of a path perhaps used by workers on the way to the mill.