The Rossendale Rambler

Most good tales begin with "once upon a time". This one however, begins in 1723 and ends with the removal of a brown and white sign in the village of Sabden. Most of us who wander the hills of our beloved Lancashire, know about life down the pit, in the quarries and mills; it was the life of our recent ancestors. Few however know much about the lives of the treacle miners of Sabden due to the rather clandestine nature of the industry. As with all other natural resources, sooner or later someone will fall over it, or in this case, put a foot in it. Eli Ebenezer Jeremiah Smith the third, known to everyone as Stink, did it! Put his foot in it that is. He was planting a row of pipe cleaner seeds in his garden when he stepped in something. No he didn't keep a dog and his elephant was in the next field, so he didn't notice anything unusual until the following morning when he found that what was on his boots was now also on the sheets of his bed. Being quite bright with the IQ of a carrot grown in horse manure, he backtracked over the course of two days to the source in the garden of a 'seep' as it became known. As we do with wet paint, he did with treacle - put his finger in it, then he tried to wipe it off on his shirt front and ended up licking it, which proved two things; it was sticky and it tasted pretty good, as long as it was off his fingers and not his boots. Over the course of the next three weeks he sold treacle (so named because it treacled over everything) for various uses such as flavouring dried ragwort for smoking, as a cure for squeaking hinges and raising the octane rating of the local ale. A woman knew where her man was after he'd been drinking that brew - sat on a seat in the small hut at the bottom of the garden reading small squares of the Sabden Times.

The seep faltered and stopped and the Treacle miner was born. Several shafts were sunk, some without trace, and as the treacle level fell the problems mounted. Being sticky and slippery, descending and ascending the shaft was tricky until the invention of the sink plunger. One was simply stuck on to a bald head, a rope attached and the miner lowered down the mine to fill the buckets. At a hundred feet, however, treacle changes from a liquid to a solid and is brought out as treacle toffee, cut into small pieces and wrapped in paper it proved very popular. Pockets of liquid treacle were found from time to time and most of this was knitted into parkin and traded with the Accrington Tripe Dressers for wild tripe furs. These were renowned for their non-stick properties and ability to sniff out a marauding black pudding at 200 yards. On rare occasions a pocket of treacle gas was struck and blasted skyward from the vertical shaft with great force. Pendle witches were once snow white and just happened to be flying in close formation over Sabden when one of these blasts exhausted from the shaft. They didn't have Persil in those days and have been black ever since. Some of Lancashire's unique expressions have their origin in treacle mining: A miner going over to a wall or tree for example saying "Ahm just. goin' t' empty mi clog" was doing just that, because naturally it was full of treacle.

As Sabden was, and is, the only source of treacle, it found its way to most places of the world and although considerable quantities are still to be found, the discovery of syrup wells in Milton Keynes played economic havoc. The councils refusal to provide facilities for decontamination to meet new regulations concerning the welfare of miners wives proved to be the final straw and the mine closed with the loss of four miners, five hangers-on and a three legged, one eyed, broken tailed mangy cat called 'Lucky'.

The industry threw up many characters over the years and many characters threw up, all with tales to tell, but those are other stories.....

Back to The Rossendale Rambler Contents Page

Back to The Rossendale Ramblers Home Page