44 



Hittle p?ucftloto : Jits Customs anti ©in 

 l^ouscs. 



By S. O. Addy. 



HE village of Little Hucklow, in the parish of Hoi^e, 

 is about midway between Bradwell and Tideswell. 

 According to the six-inch Ordnance Survey, the 

 ground on which the houses and their gardens stand 

 embraces an area of rather more than seven acres. The houses 

 are few, and are mostly built on the north and south sides 

 of a piece of open land, which answers both for road and 

 village green, and is called the Town Gate. The middle of 

 this open land has been encroached on by a Sunday School, 

 now used as a Dissenters' Chapel, built in 1854, and the owners 

 of the various tenements have from time to time enclosed bits 

 of the green to enlarge their homesteads. But some of the 

 houses still abut on this open space. The road by which 

 the houses stand goes from east to west up the hill to the 

 top of the village, whence it still ascends in the direction of 

 Peak Forest. Parallel to the road on the south side is a back 

 lane, and between this lane and the road are the crofts of the 

 houses, most of which are on the south side, and have a 

 southern aspect. The village is nearly a thousand feet above 

 the level of the sea, yet it is so sheltered from the prevailing 

 wind that a crop of wheat, tall, strong, and golden, may be 

 seen, as I am now writing, at this height. But if shelter from 

 the wind is an advantage, the lack of water more than 

 countervails it. Old people remember how the lads and lasses 

 used to fetch water in the evening from a place called the 



