my ridge & vale

Mary Meecham, Rainow

I have known Kerridge for 75 years. I was born on the west side of the hill, and could see it from my bedroom window: part of my evening ritual as a child was to wave to White Nancy before climbing into bed. Later, during the war, our school holiday treat was to walk the field paths and climb up to her, having bought a bottle of Vimto in the shop at the bottom of Grimshaw Lane.

Entertainment was very innocent in those days! In my early twenties we came to live at Kerridge End and began to explore the network of paths there, dragging pushchairs along the tracks, and exploring the old quarries as the children got older. Now I live at Tower Hill and the ridge is the first thing I see when I open my eyes in the morning, and what I look for when the sun drops down behind it in the evening.

My daily pleasure is to walk the dogs along one or other of the paths, watching the coming and going of birds and animals and the passing of the seasons. As I go I often think of all the people whose feet have trodden the tracks before me - the groups meeting for a day's work at Cow Lane mill, or going further on to Ingersley Vale, the farmers building the walls and tending their stock, and the men toiling in the mines and quarries. Happy parties too, climbing the wedding steps and walking over the hill to a marriage at Prestbury church.

As I watch the children sledging down the hill I remember the the boys and girls crawling along underground in the mines, dragging tubs of coal from the dark into the daylight. How lucky are we, the walkers of today, who have the leisure to look around and enjoy the beauty of Kerridge and its surroundings, and can spare a thought for earlier people as we explore the marks they have left behind.