Alone Beneath The Sky: Normanton to Thurnscoe 11/06/22

16 miles, via Winterton's Hill, Old Snydale, Common Side, Mill Pond Meadow,

Featherstone, Purston Jaglin, High Ackworth, Ackworth School,

Ackworth Moor Top, Scholey's Bridge, Hagg Wood, Hemsworth Marsh,

Hemsworth, Highfield, Moor Top, South Moor, Brierley Common, Brierley Gap,

Burntwood Hall, Houghton Common, Hargate Hill, & Great Houghton.

A break of six days allows my body to recover from the stresses that it suffered at the end of the bust two weeks that it had endured, and as we return to the trail today, we can feel happy to report that there are no limb or foot related concerns to take with us as we return to our quest for new railway station destinations across South Yorkshire, also digging deeper into my patriotic 70-mile June for that matter, and start by heading back to the Five Towns to start hanging the High Season trips into the southern unknown onto the framework that we laid out almost four months ago. We alight at Normanton for an early start at 9am, soon getting away from the combo of long platform and footbridge, and away from the goods yard that’s finally getting the residential redevelopment that it always seems destined for, and head through the town centre via the Market Place, with its station hotels, and up the High Street before the shops have really got going, taking a turn onto Church Street to lead us through the town's southern terraces on the way down to the municipal cemetery and the leafy passage through the yard of All Saints church before getting on our southeastwards track with Snydale Road. The B6133 will lead us for the rest of this day’s first hour, soon wandering beyond the vintage town and on through the suburban spread of the southern reach, meandering its way among the semis and bungalows before arriving by the field above the A655 bypass road, which is crossed at the Winterton’s Hill traffic island, with Church Lane leading us uphill between the high hedges bounding the narrow lane beyond, leading us into the village of Old Snydale, a settlement still retaining most of its rural footprint, despite the amount of coal mining that encroached hereabouts, with the Don Pedro colliery branch showing its bridge remnants midway along New Road. It’s remarkable how little it’s grown, either with colliery terraces or later suburban arrivals, keeping it quietly out-of-the-way feeling as we pass the Cross Keys inn and the other arm of the Snydale branches, leading to the Ackton Hall and Featherstone Main pits, then into the fields beyond, leading us around the grounds of Snydale Hall and below the rise of the Calder - Went watershed that we crossed in April, not that we're really feeling the ridge ahead from the roadside this time around as we pass up by Common Side farm, with its many enclosures and preserved fire engines as we come up to the previously seen Common Side Lane at the western edge of Featherstone.

Normanton High Street.

All Saints, Normanton.

Snydale Road, Normanton.

The Don Pedro colliery branch remnant, Old Snydale.

The Cross Keys inn, Old Snydale.

New Road, Common Side.

The route is thus matched south, over the railway and down to the junction with the A645, where the route south that I’d really like to take, by Huntwick Grange farm to the Nostell Priory estate is certainly not a right of way, and thus we’ll have to head east with the Wakefield Road to visit Mill Pond Meadow, to see the War Horse up close and regard the memorial to the 353 local men killed in the First World War, before we start off along the long drag towards the town, passing below the many packaging plants on the north side of the lane, and above the suburban growth and the allotment gardens to the south, ahead of the B&M and Aldi stores. Meet the old town itself beyond the old chapel and the former Jubilee Hotel, ahead of the town council offices, with its adjacent carved reliefs of Featherstone’s historical passage, which sits below the main street up to the station, where we’ll cross Gimhill Lane by the Lidl store, and carry on along Pontefract Road by the Brookway crescent and St Thomas’s church before heading up toward the former Junction inn and joining Ackworth Road as it splits off to lead through Purston Jaglin, the older village and smarter suburban end of town that sees us heading on around Purston Park, upon the grounds of Purston Hall once again. Beyond the lodge house, the fields above the shallow Went valley open up again, taking the left turn at the road fork this time, keeping us on with the B6421 as it leads southeasterly towards the Ackworths, keeping us at a remove from the river to the south as we wend a way among the fields of wheat, barley and rapeseed that’s well past its flowering stage, happy that we’ve got a footway to negotiate as we pass through the countryside, meaning we’re safe among the sharp and testing corners, as we pass the Westwinds close, incongruously built on a brownfield site at quite a remove from the village at the lane’s end.

Mill Pond Meadow.

Wakefield Road, Featherstone.

St Thomas's church, Featherstone.

Ackworth Road, Purston Jaglin.

Ackworth Road, in the Went valley.

Westwinds close, Purston Lane.

The first feature of High Ackworth on Purston Lane is Ackworth Old Hall, a very admirable pile at a short distance ahead of the main village, where the lane tangles with the A628 by the market cross and green, with almost an excess of features, not limited to St Cuthbert’s church, the Mary Lowther Almshouses and the Brown Cow inn, abounding in the stony idyll, where we’ll have an early lunch break before joining the Barnsley Road as it pushes south, keeping us in the vintage flavour of the settlement all the way down past the cottages and villas ahead of the grounds of Ackworth House, with its Georgian pediment peering over its estate walls. Soon enough, beyond fields and trees, we arrive by Ackworth School, the county’s enduring private establishment noted on our last passage this way, though the elaborate road sign on the Low Ackworth corner wasn’t, along with the gothicky Methodist chapel and the John Fowler house which we pass on the way down to Carr Bridge, where the river Went is crossed rather incidentally before powering uphill towards Ackworth Moor Top, where all the suburban arrivals in the vicinity have landed, and the former chapel and tavern are noted on the rising lane before we pass above the rocky cleft of the Fitzwilliam colliery branch and another fun milepost on the Bell Lane corner. Beyond the Co-op store and the garden centre, we meet the island on the A638 Doncaster Road, crossing by the Beverley Arms and the Stoneacre dealership, and note the war memorial across the way before the A628 dives off the hillside, out of Ackworth as it terminates by Oakfield Park school and the outcome of the local scarecrow festival, reentering the fields as the lane drops down to Scholey’s Bridge, with its beck still flowing Went bound as we try to get ourselves a landscape fix hereabouts, spotting Went Hill and Wragby on the rises behind us but barely sensing the proximity of Upton Beacon and Walton Wood to the south until we meet the Hemsworth bypass.

Ackworth Old Hall.

The Mary Lowther Almshouse, High Ackworth.

The Low Ackworth Signpost, Ackworth School.

The old Victoria inn, Ackworth Moor Top.

The Ackowrth Moor Top war memorial.

The haul along the Pontefract Road, towards Hemsworth.

We’ll stick to the old Pontefract Road as it leads into this town that seems to have no presences on any horizon, still drifting uphill as we pass through Hagg Wood and the suburban houses that sit opposite, which soon turns into the enclave of Hemsworth Marsh, just removed from the town which is met by the suburban ribbon, ahead of the railway line and the site of the still perplexingly absent station, and keeping on with the rise of Station Road through the suburban band as it draws us south, matching the route we took out from Featherstone in 2015 again as we go. A new pavement is nabbed as we swing sharply east to pass below the redeveloping school in the old Hemsworth Hall, and come down below the parish church of St Helen on the Wakefield Road corner before passing through the centre of town southbound, between the pubs at the top of Cross Hill and tangling with the lanes of Market Street as they approach, and avoid, the green and the Tesco store as we settle onto seen pavements again coming up past the community centre and the Sacred Heart RC church, before splitting off with the B6273 as it rises up Southmoor Road, among the terraces and estates of Highfield. The top of the town is met at Moor Top, by the eponymous farm shop, with a bench providing the second lunch break location before we continue south to cross the A628 bypass road as it reaches west along the alignment of the former H&BR mainline, with the fields of wheat and barley resuming as we come down to over Hague Hall beck, flowing eastbound and directly for the river Don as it falls between the Went and the Dearne, with the rise revealing the views back to Upton Beacon and Walton Wood as we track uphill among the fields of South Moor, on a diminishing footway that ends suddenly by the Hemsworth Gate farmstead, as South Yorkshire lies beyond, only welcoming careful walkers.

Suburbia in the woods, Hemsworth Marsh.

Station Road, Hemsworth, looking awfully familiar.

Cross Hill, Hemsworth.

Southmoor Road, Highfield.

The Hemsworth Bypass / former H&BR mainline.

Southmoor Road, South Moor.

A thick hawthorn hedge may obscure views across Brierley Common to the west, but we have a clear line of sight ahead to keep us out of harm’s way, despite the lane being too busy to accommodate me and the speeding traffic on the rise up towards the woodland and farmstead at Brierley Gap, where we cross our recently established boundary and press further into south Yorkshire, cresting the ridge which puts us unto a rib above the fall of the streams around Howell wood to the east, and below Ringstone Hill farm and its elevated reservoir cistern to the west, with Southmoor Lane clear ahead through the beanfields. The western horizon is gradually revealed, across and up the Dearne valley towards Barnsley, with its upper reaches and the Dark Peak fringe beyond, with damp clouds that weren’t projected coming on with the stiff breeze as we come up by Burntwood Hall, nowadays a care home with a view at 100m altitude, and then delve into the woodlands beyond, passing the static caravan enclosure in the old formal gardens and passing across Houghton Common, which has become a wild plantation rather than having been ploughed up, which provide shelter from the brisk showers and fierce sunshine that both pass overhead. The drop into the Dearne valley comes beyond the Howell Lane and West Haigh Lodge farm corners, with the western views obscured by thick trees for so much of the way down Moor Lane, with our latitude relative to Barnsley being gradually revealed before the view opens up, back up Hargate Hill to the spread of Lady Wood and over to the wind turbines that perch on this eastern side, with our way to the south and east being hidden for the longest time, before we finally get a view of Great Houghton village spreading out ahead of us, the first settlement of note seen in more than an hour, settled on the edge of the South Yorkshire coalfield.

The rise of Southmoor Road to Brierley Gap.

Southmoor Road, Brierley Common (south).

Burntwood Hall.

Houghton Common.

The Dearne Valley view, from Hargate Hill.

Moor Lane arrives in Great Houghton.

Back on the footways at the western Houghton Green end, where we’ll take a sharp southeast-bound turn after we’ve entered its suburban fringes, little in the urban landscape suggests of anything other than a previously rural vintage, which persists down among the stone terraces on the High Street past the Houghton Arms and the corner by the modestly sized St Michael& All Angel's church where a final lunch break is taken, beyond which the dynamic style change comes, bringing extensive red brick council housing to the landscape, reaching in all directions around the Miners Welfare Hall on the Thurnscoe Road corner. We slip off the B6273 to join the B6411 on the eastbound last leg, not getting any views to the low hills that bound the north side of the Dearne watershed as more high hawthorn hedges prevent that revelation until we’re halfway across the green spaces where Thurnscoe Dike falls to the south, with the embankments of the former Dearne Valley Line making an appearance beyond, shadowing our passage from the Billingsley Lane corner and keeping us company as press on towards Thurnscoe, home to the Robert Ogden National Autistic School, and otherwise familiar to anyone who listens to train announcements for fun. It’s another old village which grew with the mining industries, with the old lane down to St Helen’s church being passed over as Houghton Road pushes us along among its council house and terrace along to its main shopping drag, revealing there’s quite a bit to it in this land of settlements detached from both greater Barnsley and Doncaster, also finding an ASDA store and a redeveloping parkland ahead of the other shops on the Station Road corners, beyond which the railway line can be found, and risen to, a relatively late arrival of 1988 on the Swinton & Knottingley line but providing our next new destination for the year as we land at 3.30pm.