The Rossendale Rambler

Readers of this newsletter are, I am sure, familiar with Limersgate, the road which in olden times was the main route from Rochdale to the north and which, like all old tracks, kept to the ridgeways wherever possible because it was safer and drier. In Rossendale, it keeps to the slopes of Wardle Hill and Middle Hill, Whitworth, then climbs to Hades Hill, then turns north west to Sharneyford then on to the slopes of Thieveley Pike.

" Gate ", is from the Scandinavian and means " road " Our moors are full of "gates" - Moorgates, meaning moor roads ; Dulesgate or " the devil's road ". On reading an old "Rambles round Rochdale" which appeared to have been published about 1946, I was interested to discover a theory that "limers" had a significance other than the lime carried by packhorses referred to as " lime gals" ( "Gals" from Galloway, the Scottish district which bred those sturdy animals). The theory is that "lime" was used to denote a cord or leash which kept in check a limehound or leach hound used for hunting purposes. The word is used in Drayton's " Muses of Elysium Nymphal ", "...My doghook at my belt to which my lym is tied " and in King Lear, Act II, Scene 6:

"Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel, grim,
Hound or spaniel, brach or lym ..."

One of the boundaries of the Forest of Rossendale follows the same ridge as the Limersgate. From Norman times until Henry VIII, the Forest was strictly reserved for hunting. Unauthorised persons found t can evoke such vivid pictures of the past and the way people lived then. When we look now at the austere hills and deep valleys of Rossendale, eroded in places by the remains of disused quarries, it stirs the imagination to envisage the same countryside clothed in forests and alive with deer.

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