Bygone Burnley: Ightenhill, with historian Roger Frost MBE 8-4-25
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00:00We're in Eitenhill Park today, and the park is only very small.
00:06Originally, it was only just over four acres.
00:09We're in that section now.
00:12It was granted to Burnley, or the people of Burnley, by the First Lord Shuttleworth in 1908.
00:19It opened in 1912.
00:22The mayoress of Burnley, who was the wife of Elijah Keithley, the loon maker, opened it.
00:30A big ceremony.
00:32And a few years later, they acquired a few more acres, about four and a half acres.
00:41So the park is just below 10 acres in size.
00:46Plenty of facilities, bowling green, tennis courts.
00:50Of course, the park itself has got recreation facilities as well.
00:55And it's in a very attractive location in one of the best residential parts of the town.
01:02We're on Eitenhill Park Lane now.
01:05And at this location, there is one of the remaining original county borough of Burnley boundary stones.
01:14As you can see, it's partly in the park, and there's a little bit of the park which is on the Eitenhill side of the boundary.
01:24But most of it is in Burnley.
01:26So Eitenhill Park is one of those things which is technically not in Eitenhill.
01:35Neither is Eitenhill School.
01:38And there are several other things that have got Eitenhill in the name that are not actually in the parish.
01:44It's a name which is used by the whole of this part of Burnley because it's an attractive historical name.
01:54The name means the hill where the firs bushes grew.
02:01Gorse, in other words.
02:03And the name goes back to the Middle Ages when, as we'll see, the manor house for the whole of the manor of Burnley was located here.
02:14Hello, we're still in Eitenhill.
02:17And we're at the site of the former Stepping Stones, which in the past were a great attraction to the people of the area.
02:25Whenever there was a holiday or an event, Easter time, great crowds of people would come and cross the Stepping Stones.
02:34But of course, now it's been replaced by this Lancashire County Council bridge, which is nowhere near as attractive.
02:41But it's probably safer and does give access from Eitenhill to a farm on the other side of the bridge.
02:52We can see here Pendle Hall.
02:54And it was at Pendle Hall with a cottage on the little estate of Pendle Hall that the Southern family lived.
03:01Now, the Southerns were one of two families who were the chief people in the Lancashire Witch Files of 1612.
03:13Elizabeth Southern was the leader of the family, and she was known as Old Chattox.
03:20The other family is refuted to have lived over in the Pendle area, and she was known as Old Dendite.
03:32So this is quite an interesting area in terms of the history of witchcraft.
03:38The cottage that she lived in is described as a, I'm talking about Elizabeth Southern, was a tumble-down ruin, even when she occupied it in the late 16th, early 17th century.
03:52But she was one of the people who paid for their witchcraft.
03:57They were totally innocent, of course, by being home in Lancaster in 1612.
04:03In Eighton Hill are the remains of the manor house.
04:10And some years ago, the parish council got funding to explore the remains and to see what was there.
04:19And we're standing at the field where the manor house is.
04:23If you look into the middle distance, you can see a ridge across the field.
04:28That is where the manor house stood.
04:30And we have some idea of what it looked like because of various references in history to work undertaken there.
04:42But just to put it in its perspective, the manor house wasn't just Eighton Hill.
04:48It was for all of what is now the borough of Burnley and a little bit more, which is in Pendle.
04:56For example, Higham in Pendle used to be in the manor of Eighton Hill and not the manor of Colm because it was on the south side of the Calder.
05:10And people have said, what happened there?
05:12What was it all about?
05:14Well, it's where local government was undertaken from at least the 1180s to the 1520s.
05:22And by local government, law and order, the condition of roads, the looking after the poor, looking after the maintenance of the church, all of these were carried out here at Eighton Hill in the manor house.
05:38And disputes between landowners were settled in courts held here by either the lord of the manor or his bailiff.
05:49However, at Eighton Hill, the lord of the manor was an absentee.
05:55He was the head of the DeLacy family, which owned castles all over the country.
06:01The main one was at Pontifact, so important that in the Middle Ages, you couldn't control the north of England without controlling Pontifact.
06:11But they also had a local castle at Clitheroe.
06:15And Eighton Hill was important for other reasons.
06:20You can see the countryside around.
06:22But in the Middle Ages, the countryside that you can see was mostly embarked in hunting chasers later on from 1399, forests owned by the crown.
06:37The manor house was sort of at the center of the forest of Pendle and Thawden, Accrington.
06:44And here, at Eighton Hill itself, was a small park here owned directly by the DeLacy family.
06:54However, its economic importance was also as a consequence of the manor house being responsible for the keeping of a royal echelon.
07:11Now, an echelon is a horse trading center, a horse trading and rearing center.
07:18At one time, there were several hundred horses kept at Eighton Hill for breeding into horses for military use and in tournaments.
07:30And also, they bred horses for agricultural use and for transport for, well, I wouldn't say ordinary families, but normal families.
07:43It was a big industrial enterprise.
07:47And Eighton Hill, from the evidence we've got, is another one of those lost villages which we...
07:54Oh, that's the one of those lost villages.
08:07So, this is the one of those lost villages where it was much more of an inevitable or worse connection that it was except that worthy of war.