Forest of Rossendale. i47 



the declivities, was the chief moving attraction that arrested the eye. 

 Now, where the gaunt chimney belches forth its dense black coils 

 of smoke, the Forester's fire, as it consumed the " windfall " of the 

 previous winter, sent up into the clear air of spring its gauzy wreaths of 

 thin blue vapour. And, in the past, instead of a landscape dotted with 

 upland farms, and a valley threaded with long rows of substantial 

 dwelhngs, their vicinity alive with the hum of youthful voices busy 

 at play, or the cheerful ringing laughter of the factory lasses 

 relieved from their daily toil, a few solitary homesteads were all 

 that gave signs of human habitation. 



In this quiet and pleasant spot within the Forest of Rossendale, 

 overlooking the valley, it is said, was erected a house or chapel for 

 the purposes of religious worship. By whom founded, however, 

 and by whom used, no records, so far as we can learn, exist to 

 determine. 



Tradition, that strange noneniiy— that veritable "wandering 

 Jew" born of the distant past, which haunts us ever with garrulous 

 tongue replete with curious lore and dim undefined utterances that 

 we can never fairly grasp— Tradition would have it that the erection 

 was a kind of lesser convent as well as chapel, and that it could 

 boast a remote antiquity. That most indefatigable of antiquarie 

 and historians. Dr. Whitaker, has nothing to tell us of the chapel 

 at Rough Lee ; and Baines, the historian of the county, is equally 

 silent thereanent. Nothing, so far as I am aware, is in print 

 concerning the erection. There is a singularity in all this. 



That a Chapel did e.\ist at this place we know, though the date 

 of its foundation can only be conjectured. That it was erected in 

 Roman Catholic times, before the Reformation, there is good reason 

 to believe. A lady, to whom more than once I have been indebted 

 for information of this kind, has furnished me with an original 

 memorandum or paper— of which the following is a copy— which 

 she states came into possession of her family more than eighty years 

 ago. It gives an account of the old chapel, and may be relied 

 upon as being authentic : 



:S 



