



NEW Y 



BOTAN 



GAKD 



INTRODUCTION. 



CHAPTER I. 



The Parish of Halifax. 



T 



HE Parish of Halifax, situated in the West Riding of 

 Yorkshire, is a natural geographical division, lying on 

 the eastern slopes of the Pennine Chain, and drained by the 

 river Calder and its tributaries. Its extreme length from west 

 to east is sixteen miles, its breadth fourteen and a half 

 miles, and its circumference fifty-four miles. It is one of 

 the largest of the ancient parishes of England, and though 

 it is no longer an ecclesiastical unit, and is divided into 

 many and varying civil areas, its popular use has never been 

 superseded, and the life of the parish still centres in the county 

 borough of Halifax. It contains 129 square miles, so that it 

 approaches Rutland, or the Isle of Wight in size. But in 

 elevation and configuration it is entirely different. It is 

 essentially a moorland plateau, descending eastwards, from 

 1500 to 500 feet in fifteen miles. As, however, it is inter- 

 sected its whole length by the Calder, the moors also slope 

 downwards to the south or the north, according as they lie 

 north or south of the central valley. Hence the boundary 

 of the parish forms, with certain slight exceptions, the 

 watershed of the upper Calder. t 



The western boundary for its whole length of twenty miles 

 is coincident with the county division of Lancashire and 



Yorkshire and with the summit ridge of the 

 Boundaries. Pennine Chain. Consequently it never des- 

 cends below 1200 feet, except where it meets 

 the gap caused by the Calder, which it follows from Cornholme 

 to Todmorden. The recognised source of the Calder at Calder 

 Head, lies a mile and a half west of the parish boundary, and 

 the streams descending from Summit and Walsden Moor and 

 - joining the main river at Todmorden also lie without the 

 in parish ; but this is perhaps due to the Calder having at some 

 ><r-r period cut its way back beyond its natural watershed and 

 C**- captured the head waters of the Lancashire streams. However 



