The Alan Petford Annual Memorial Lecture

Township Boundaries and Commons Disputes in the South Pennines

Dr. Nigel Smith

In upland areas, boundaries across moorland were frequently subject to dispute occasioned by disagreements over grazing and other rights of common. The definition of boundaries thus became an increasingly common issue that reached a litigious peak during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

This talk will cover a number of disputes around the Calder Valley but will focus on two disputes: one between Midgley and Wadsworth that was still ongoing in the nineteenth century, and one involving protracted litigation by Langfield in the early seventeenth century.

This litigation provides evidence of a long-lost boundary that sheds some light on certain early township territories within the Upper Calder Valley. Nigel’s research interests focus on the landscape and agricultural history of the Upper Calder valley and the wider South Pennines. He has recently edited “History in the South Pennines: The Legacy of Alan Petford”, a volume of essays dedicated to the late Alan Petford.