Judging by the many Airbnb houses that are now available in the Colne Valley, it appears that it is a destination for people seeking at least its healthy atmosphere or may I go so far as to say its rugged beauty. It wasn’t that long ago, as I have said on many occasions, that the villages of the Colne Valley were a hive of industrial activity, blackened by soot and clouded in smog. We that can still remember these conditions still think it a little odd that anyone would choose to visit here for the scenery.
Cleaning up Colne
It all began to change following the Clean Air Acts of the 50s and 60s, which coincided with many of the local textile manufacturers that once thrived here moving to areas of the world that could provide the same but much cheaper. The two together caused the Colne Valley to subtly but inevitably become what it is now: a green and pleasant land with many areas of interest for travellers and casual visitors.
By the way, you could be forgiven for thinking that Airbnb’s name had something to do with the Clean Air Act, or maybe air travel; it was in fact neither of these. In 2007 a couple of forward-thinking fellow students named Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky, while living in San Francisco, came up with the idea of renting out one of their rooms during an annual conference. Not being able to afford proper bedroom furniture they purchased three airbeds and advertised themselves accordingly.
From Scapegoat Hill to Bolster Moor
Back to the Colne Valley. The very few mills that are left in the valley now seem to be a subject of pilgrimage and curiosity. Much of the housing stock was considered unfit for human habitation and was, like hundreds of areas in Britain, demolished soon after the war and replaced with council estates. The first two houses that I lived in had no inside bathroom and hot water was provided by the range fire.
Six months after I was born my parents moved from Scapegoat Hill to a little terraced house on Bolster Moor, both villages overlooking the Colne Valley. Mum was so proud of her new home. Dad had fairly recently and safely returned from the war and her little family of a newborn son, a daughter just starting school, and a loving husband could now look to the future.
The house itself was no better than their first. The toilet was down a ginnel three houses away. It was cold and draughty, ice on the inside of the windows in winter, mice and the black clock beetle regular visitors, but it was their home and as kids me and my big sis knew no different. As long as we were fed and loved we were happy.
Thousands of houses were demolished around Huddersfield in the 50s and 60s. However, both these houses that I have described above are still standing, so what the houses that were unfit for human habitation must have been like is anyone’s guess. Even though our home on Bolster Moor was not due to be demolished, as a young family we were eligible for a council house further down the valley in Golcar, which had all the amenities a young family would need: kitchen, dining room, lounge, three bedrooms, hot and cold running water, an inside bathroom, gardens front and rear. We thought it was a palace.
A monk, the Vikings, and a Golcar lass
As mum was a Golcar lass she was pleased that all her homes were within the Golcar ward. I have always regarded it as my home, too, happily describing myself as a Golcar Lily (see ‘Norky’s ramblings, episode three’).
Golcar appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Goullakarres. One of the two main candidates for the origin of the name Golcar is the monk St. Guthlac of Crowland (a place near Peterborough). The other possibility is the Viking warrior Guthlag, son of Guthlag.
The least likely of these two in my humble opinion is the monk. Guthlac (c. 673–714) was a nobleman and a soldier. Becoming disillusioned with soldiering when he was 24 years old, he became a monk and is said subsequently to have preached in Golcar, some even believing he preached from the same rock that John Wesley preached from in 1757 (see Norky’s ramble ‘John Wesley comes to Huddersfield’).
Two years after Guthlac is said to have visited the area that took his name, he must have decided that he needed to mortify his body further, and became a hermit. This may have been due to visiting Golcar. Mortifying the body can take on many forms, from just denying some simple pleasures to the extremes that Guthlac chose. He lived on an island near Crowland with little proper food and no clean water. He blamed his subsequent illnesses, of which he had many, on his demons.
The picture on the left shows a statue of St. Guthlac at Crowland Abbey. In his right hand he holds a whip or scourge, by which he apparently hoped to exorcise his demons. He claimed it was given to him in a vision by St. Benedict. Claims and activities such as this are more likely to get you hospitalised than canonized, these days. The photo on the right shows the steps down to the flat area of rock that John Wesley, and possibly St. Guthlac, are said to have preached from.
But I think it is unlikely that St. Guthlac came this far north in his itinerant wanderings, and logically there is a bit of a problem with it: what was the place called before he arrived and if it didn’t have a name, why did he visit? And I think he would have been too sore from all his demon whipping to walk this far.
My money’s on Guthlag (son of Guthlag)
My favourite explanation of the name came about following the invasions of the Vikings who first settled in Lancashire and eventually began to forge their way over the Pennines. Their celebrated 9th century leader Guthlag son of Guthlag settled in the area that became Golcar (and who wouldn’t).
There are many Norse names in and around Yorkshire and the Colne Valley. ‘Cros’, as in Crosland, means a strip of land joining two other larger areas of land. Langr ‘long’, as in Longcroft, Mikill ‘big’, as in Micklethwaite, and ‘kjar’, meaning copse or wood, which gave us Guthlagkjar (Guthlag’s wood). From there, through many other variations, we arrive finally at Golcar. One variation of the spelling seems to have stuck, at least as far as pronunciation goes. In the 17thcentury the name was spelt Gowcar, hence possibly why us locals call it Gowca, without the ‘L’ or ‘R’. It saves time.
