The Gallows Pole

The heather’s flowers prop had been taken and set to boil in pots or Jung to dry in clusters from mullions and over inglenooks, their mauve colourings turning darker with the darkening of shortened days bookended by nights that birthed new mythologies from old fears.

William Deighton would take them on. Take them on himself. Take them on and bring them down. Bring them in. Let them swing. String them up. For all to see. He would write a message across the sky with their blood then let the crows at them. Let the gulls at them. The shrieking gulls far from the sea. Create carrion of them. Send a message. A message to the hill folk. That time was were changing. The empire expanding. That men earned money not made it; that a country ran on rules. Rules for everyone. Call it society. Call it civilisation. From the crown all the way down. Rules. Laws. Restrictions. The dark days were over. New ways were coming. Big ideas. Ideas that would change the world. Call it economy. Call it industry. Call it England.

With the king of the coiners deposed and his army defeated it was now open season in Calderdale. David Hartley has been wrong about many things but not this. Isaac Hartley too. The great hellish cathedrals of toil were indeed coming. There were new turnpikes and talk of a canal; new houses and furnace chimneys. New folk from beyond the valley – from beyond Yorkshire – were flooding their world.