The Birks

The walk was inspired by Abigail Amos’ article on barn door graffiti in the 2004 NCHT Journal, in which she described the often now lost inscriptions made by farm workers. She had lived at Lesser High Birks and investigated the neighbouring buildings. The walk was constructed to take in Low, Middle and High Birks farmhouses. Walking started from Hawksheath, then went down to Turnerford and up past Brocklebank to cross the Slaidburn road and take the footpath to Long Bank farm and then onto Low Birks.

Just before the walk I had received a letter with two photographs from John Heaps of Keighley and from which I now quote:

’The main reason to write was to pass on the enclosed photograph which you may just recognise as Low Birks Farm. The original is a watercolour painted by my great uncle, Thomas Heaps of Keighley about 1890 which was inspired by the family connection with the farm from about 1740. The first Heaps to live there was John who originally hailed from Lancashire but was accepted as a tenant of the Austwick Manor Estate perhaps because of his useful skills as a blacksmith or perhaps because of his marriage to Agnes Hancock, who belonged to a long established Austwick family. The tenancy was passed onto successive generations with sons of the family adopting the trade of carpenter to earn a living while waiting for their inheritance and to supplement the (meagre?) living offered by the farm. The untimely death of Robert in 1836 broke the chain and precipitated a migration from the country to the town.

The Heaps family were associated with the early days of methodism in Eldroth and from about 1808, when Christopher was the tenant, fortnightly services were held over a period of several years. I have not been able to find any reference to the farm by name in the Manor Court Book but the Clapham Parish Register is more helpful although even here the earliest entries for the Heaps family described them as being from “High Moors” which I assume was the name of the locality. However, from 1758 to 1831 the name Birks is consistently used in the register and this also appears on Jeffrey’s 1775 map. The present name of Low Birks only occurs in entries after 1831 when it had presumably become common usage’

Having walked through Low Birks yard we gained Middle Birks where an old cheese press has been taken out of a stone wall and is now well displayed. The ascent to High Birks was very wet and instead of then carrying on along the permissive path to higher up the Slaidburn road we took a shorter and drier route home.