We live in Colne, which is a small mill town, in Lancashire but only a couple of miles from the Yorkshire boundary. As you can see from, the photos, the towns around here tend to be long and narrow, following the contours of the land. The hill that can be seen is Pendle Hill, which is why the area is known as Pendle. Historically, Pendle Hill is famous (or infamous) for its connection with Witch Trials which took place in 1612 and for its association with George Fox who is said to have been led there by a visitation and consequently founded the Quaker movement. The most famous son of Colne was Wallace Hartley who was the bandmaster who conducted as the Titanic sank.
Colne was a cotton-spinning town, as were all the towns to the west of here. Towns to the east traded in wool. Colne was a meeting point between them. It was at its height in the early twentieth century, which is when many of the houses were built. Our house was built around 1900.
The photos below were taken from the windows in our roof. At the back we look over the roofs of rows of cottages where mill-workers would have lived. The construction of the cottages is a little unusual as their roofs are a continuous slope from top to bottom.Our house is on the main road and houses of this type would have been lived in by professional and business people.
The cricket pitch you can see opposite our house has been there since 1830 and is still used regularly.
These photos show the front and back of our house.
If you look closely at the third photo below you will see our ‘eternity’ fence.