HARVEST at Wainsgate: The Harvest Walk: Plenty and Poverty in the Wainsgate Landscape

The Harvest Walk: Plenty and Poverty in the Wainsgate Landscape

This guided walk with Paul Knights begins and ends at Wainsgate Chapel and explores the surrounding fields, lanes and open moor, looking at the landscape through the changing fortunes of those who have lived and worked here. Across two and a half miles, participants will be invited to consider a landscape that could provide remarkable abundance – grass for livestock, hay, oats and vegetables, peat for fuel, and the wild harvests of berries and other foods – but where that abundance was never guaranteed, nor equally shared. 

September is a time of harvest and gathering, when the year's growth has reached its fullness.  As we walk, we will look at the landscape differently: not simply as a place of harvest and plenty, but as a place where abundance and scarcity have always existed alongside one another. We will look at the seasonal rhythms of farming and the many things that people once harvested from these hills, while also considering how easily a harvest could fail, how economic changes could undermine local livelihoods, and how people could find themselves without enough to live on.

Running alongside this story will be the history of poverty and poor relief in the landscape. From the old system of small, township-administered hilltop workhouses – one of which is close to Wainsgate – to the much larger, institutionalised Union workhouse above Todmorden that replaced them in the 1870s, we will trace in the view some of the places where people from these hills ended up when they could no longer support themselves. We will also hear about the remarkable journey of social campaigner Julia Varley, whose 1904 investigation of the 'casual wards' of Yorkshire and Lancashire exposed the harsh realities faced by some of the poorest people in industrial Britain. This will lead us back to Wainsgate, where many 'inmates' of local workhouses are buried.

The walk is suitable for adults and for children aged 10 and over. Well-behaved dogs on leads are welcome. Participants should be aware that there will be some uneven and rougher ground on the moor, including potentially boggy sections. Suitable footwear, as well as waterproofs in case of rain, are recommended.

Tickets £8