Forest of Rossendale. 5 



may have, by a precipitate fall, met an untimely fate. This latter 

 conjecture is by no means the most unlikely, because the two 

 places in the neighbourhood of Bacup, bearing respectively the 

 names of Roclyffe and Roclyffswood, are situated on opposite sides 

 of the valley, and approaching the summit of the hill, just in the 

 position where an incident of this character would be most hkely 



to take place. 



Wild animals of an inferior class were also plentiful, such as the 

 beaver, the badger or brock, the otter, the fox, the wild cat, and the 

 weasel, some of the names being preser\'ed in Badger cote, Brock- 

 clough. Tod carr. Foxholes, and Foxhill, all in Rossendale; and 

 in regard to the ubiquitous squirrel, it is affirmed that, without 

 once touching terra firma, it could traverse the Forest, leaping 

 from bough to bough of the thick intermingling trees, from Raw- 

 tenstall to its extreme eastern limits at Sharneyford. 



That the streams which spring from the hill-sides to glide 

 through the different valleys, swarmed with fish of many kinds, 

 we may well suppose, as, even at the present day, trout, though 

 stunted in their growth, are found in at least two of the unpolluted 

 tributaries of the river Irwell, viz., in the small stream running 

 through Broadclough, and in the Dean Valley brook. 



The great natural and prominent boundaries of the Forest of 

 Rossendale are Flour-scar, Cliviger Moor, Hameldon Hill, Cribden 

 Hill, Musbury Tor {d), Cowpe Law, Brandwood Moor, and Tooter 

 Hill. The western side of Musbury was traversed by the famous 

 Roman road known as " Watling Street," in the tenth iter of 

 Antonine ; while on the northern limits of the Forest the pack- 

 horse road, called the " Limersgate," winds along the Rossendale 

 side of the Cliviger ridge, and from thence away onward over the 

 hill to Yorkshire. This is one of the most ancient roads in the 

 locality, and in past times was a favourite route from the west 



(d) The booths called Musbury, near Haslingden, and Yate and Pickup 

 Bank, near Blackburn, though detached from the Forest of Rossendale pro- 

 per, and lying outside of the boundary specified, are, nevertheless, reckoned 

 as part of the Forest. 



