Twitcher Clough,Bingley, W.Yorks

[dobfarm]

You tell me.

[dobfarm]

Faded-Maybe ??itcherclough Cottages

Modern Google map put in search map 'Cliffe ave. Baildon


  -Green Road-meets Cliffe ave. Below Sandal Primary school
..............................................................................................................
Old maps website

http://www.old-maps.co.uk/maps.html

Click Gazetteer next Click Yorkshire next click on 'S' top menu next click Shipley

Next Click on right menu- 1852 map of Shipley and Close view in red letters.



Shipley Map 1852 Top at Cliffe lane at 12 oclock as image

[dave the tyke]

little experience at birdwatching I think it is probably called 'Twitcher clough'

Not sure about that Joe I think we are far too early for birdwatching and 'Twitching' in that sense would have been pointless without the means of getting from A to B quickly or even getting the message from A to B.

Staying with the birdwatching theme Twite is a possibility for the origins of the name.

Twitcher might also have referred to to someone with epilepsy or similar - no political correctness in those days.

Dave

[dave the tyke]

Dobbie,
I think your second word is Quarries.

Dave

[sallyyorks]

I think the word twitching/twitcher  may be something to do with the wool industry (wich of course definatly fits in with the area of west yorks  . If you search /woolen industry twitch/ a link comes up with the heading "a machine for twitching wool"
The link when clicked is quite long though and its hard to find the actual bit it refers to

link
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/topic_wool.html

[dave the tyke]

link comes up with the heading "a machine for twitching wool"

Harden is a bit of a backwater, wouldn't this place be a bit early for woolen industry machinery ?

There is a possible link though because twitching is also the opening of fibres as in rope making or possibly stuff weaving. Carding machines do a similar job - invented mid 1700's.

Dave

[dobfarm]

Hi Dave,

Though I can't find a Witches anything' around that area, local common folk those days would be illiterate but also their vocabulary would be very limited to local slang. Vicars putting the word 'Witch' in any form of Holy document record. I would think changes to the name may have been possible on paper. Just a thought.

We're still no wiser with this issue really.

Exhausted my limits of thinking on this..off back to Compo land  My Hunting area!

good hunting 

Dobby 

[sallyyorks]

The "twitching of fibres" Dave mentions looks a good idea .
Maybe the process of twitching wool by hand or some kind of  primitive machine led to a later machine being named a Twitcher.
The word twitcher might  have already been in use for a long time . It does have a ring  of something to do with wool/weaving to me and a clough would have streams for washing wool and later powering looms . Dean Clough at Halifax  is a good example .

quote "By the time the Romans invaded these islands in 55 BC the Britons had developed a wool industry and this was encouraged by their new masters . Roman emperors cherished British woollen cloth - 'so fine it was comparable with a spiders web ' "

http://www.sheepcentre.co.uk/wool.htm

[dobfarm]

Just another thought.   

In some Mills there was/still are small single row('s) of Mill workers houses/cottages in the Mill complex and sometimes attached to the Mill with strange names. Thus maybe not a clough /cove on the hills but in Bingley town itself