Will yo’ come o’ Sunday mornin’
For a walk o’er Winter Hill?
Ten thousand went last Sunday
But there’s room for thousand still!
Oh there moors are rare and bonny
And the heather’s sweet and fine
And the roads across the hilltops –
Are the people’s – yours and mine!

These are the lyrics to a song written in 1896 by a local Bolton poet called Alan Clarke. One hundred and twenty-seven years ago you could hear this song echoing through a patch of West Pennine moorland just north of Bolton town centre as it was being sung by 10,000 Boltonians, instilling in them a sense of camaraderie, justice and a confidence that what they were doing was right.

Every story needs its protagonists, and ours are two working-class men, Joseph Shufflebotham, a shoemaker, and Solomon Partington, a local journalist. These men shared a common political view: they were both passionately socialist and key figures in the newly formed Bolton branch of the Social Democratic Federation.

Every story also needs its antagonist, and this is where our wealthy local mill- and land-owning colonel comes in. Colonel Richard Ainsworth owned moorland around his family home of Smithills Hall, which made for an excellent grouse shoot. He therefore increasingly began to restrict access to the common man and eventually closed an ancient moorland path over Winter Hill by erecting a gate. With this, our right of way dispute begins!

Working-class Boltonians, who had walked over the moor without trouble for generations and who believed it was their right to do so, were understandably furious. Therefore, the Social Democratic

Federation, with the help of Partington’s impressive journalist skills and Shufflebotham’s dutiful commitment and enthusiasm for the cause, organised, with just three days’ notice, a procession ‘to test the right of way’. This procession became known as the Winter Hill Mass Trespass of 1896.

On Sunday 6 September, a few hundred Boltonians, many of whom worked in Colonel Ainsworth’s mills, met at the bottom of Halliwell Road; they then surged up Smithills Dean and along Coalpit Road until they reached the gate which Ainsworth had erected. By this point, the crowd had swelled to over 10,000 people. With knowledge of the march, the Colonel had positioned his gamekeepers and the local constabulary next to a sign on his gate that read ‘trespassers will be prosecuted’. Many working-class men could simply not afford to be arrested, and so, for the first time, doubt rippled among the protesters. 

This sparked our protagonists to make a speech, which convinced the crowds that they were honest, law-abiding citizens, claiming their right to roam, and it was this convincing which spurred the crowd on to tear the gate down. The procession burst on to the disputed moorland path; they then carried on over Winter Hill and down to Belmont, where, in their jubilation, they drank the local hostelries dry. In the aftermath of the procession, Partington reflected that ‘It would have been a misfortune and an incalculable loss to Boltonians of the future if steps had not been taken regardless of time or cost.’ 

The demonstration caused quite the stir and, through pamphlets, word of mouth and a feature in the local paper, our protagonists were successful in organising a second march. Much like the line of the song, ‘But there’s room for thousand still!’, on the next Sunday, 2,000 more Boltonians attended than the previous week, amounting to a whopping 12,000 protesters, or close to 10% of the town’s population. The protest was one of the largest of any kind in the UK within the eighteenth century. It remains today the largest mass trespass in recorded British history, even eclipsing the more famous mass trespass up Kinder Scout in 1932. Therefore, why have its two main organisers, advertisers and enthusiasts failed to receive greater recognition? 

As working-class men, Partington and Shufflebotham were of a low socio- economic status. By contrast, Ainsworth was in a position of power, this giving him undue influence in how the events of 1896 were to be remembered. Consequently, in accounts of the trespass, such as the one in the Smithills Hall museum, the heroism of our protagonists fails to be mentioned because they went directly against the Colonel’s authority. 

In addition, Ainsworth took the ringleaders of the trespass to court in 1900, four years after the procession took place. Our protagonists were destined to lose the case, as although the people of Bolton had come together to help fund legal defence, the level of representation they could afford was no match for the highly skilled barristers Colonel Ainsworth funded.

In his book Moorlands, Memories and Reflections, the Bolton-based historian Paul Salveson refers to the aftermath of the case, stating that the ringleaders, despite not going to jail, did suffer heavy fines. I believe the defeat in court may be an integral reason as to why Shufflebotham and Partington, along with the protest as a whole, do not get the recognition they deserve. 

For Boltonians in 1896, the moorland acted as an escape from the polluted mill town and their 90-hour-per-week jobs; for Boltonians in the present day, the moor still acts as this escape. Take the recent pandemic, where the countryside allowed us to get away from the misery of quarantine. This is why our protagonists deserve greater recognition: they understood how important the countryside was to the people of Bolton and were proactive in leading the trespass that attempted to claim back this arrogantly usurped public escape, setting a precedent for public access campaigners of the future.

In the last century, our countryside has been placed under threat, through rights of way being eroded and inappropriate development threatening the landscape. Therefore, it is imperative that the 1896 Winter Hill Mass Trespass and, more importantly, those who spearheaded it are remembered, not only in Bolton but across the UK. If in the future we lose our right to roam, we can look to our protagonists as inspirations and find in their actions the courage, passion and bravery we need to claim back our rights of way and protect the countryside for future generations. 
 

Photograph: Commemoration of Winter Hill mass trespass, (Credit: geograph.org)