All about the Natural History and History of the Northwest of England
Lancashire cheese is one of Britain’s most traditional cow’s-milk cheeses and renowned for its distinctive creamy-to-crumbly texture and a mild, buttery flavour that develops complexity with age.
Here we look at the history of this cheese’s production from the earliest records to the modern day, concluding with a nice, simple recipe for a traditional cheese & onion pie.
Mute swans (Cygnus olor), with their snowy white plumage, elegant S-curved neck, and bright orange bill topped with a black knob, are one of Britain’s most iconic waterbirds and particularly fond of our 2,700-odd miles of canals.
Here in the Northwest we are lucky enough to have over 438 miles of these waterways, namely the Lancaster, Leeds & Liverpool, Bridgewater, Macclesfield, and Manchester Ship canals, upon which these majestic birds are a common and welcome sight, even in the heart of our largest and busiest cities.
Adults are very smart and distinguished in their breeding plumage, sporting a silvery-grey back and upperwings, a clean white underbody, and a distinctive black cap. Their bill is long and orangey-red with a black tip, while their legs are short and red. In flight, they show a buoyant, floating style with narrow, angular wings, often hovering before plunging to catch prey.
The earliest phase of Samlesbury Hall dates to around 1325, when Gilbert de Southworth (Sir Gilbert de Southworth, Knight, Lord of Southworth, Croft, and Samlesbury, to give him his full title) constructed the Great Hall as his family seat, replacing a structure damaged during the Great Raid of 1322 by Scottish forces, a major raid carried out by Robert the Bruce during the First Scottish War of Independence.
A Lancashire Day Photo Album
In the latest addition to my Unnatural Histories collection I return to a part of Lancashire I grew up in to look deeper into the background of a ghost story we heard many times as children.
It is a tale of murder, trial, execution and haunting, and was made even more chilling for us as our tall red-brick town-house directly faced the black gates of the barracks it occurred in.
A Condensed History of the Lancashire Village of Tarleton, Spanning from its Viking Origins to the Modern Day At the heart of West Lancashire’s fertile mosslands, roughly 19 miles northeast of Liverpool and 9 miles southwest of Preston, sits Tarleton, a quiet and pretty village that owes its existence to the fertility of the surroundingContinue reading “Tarleton Then and Now”
The Haweswater Aqueduct delivers water from Haweswater Reservoir in the Lake District to over two million people throughout Cumbria, Lancashire, and Greater Manchester. It’s a 110km/82 mile-long pipeline, carrying up to 100 million gallons per day under gravity induced flow, built in the 1930s to 1950s and is currently undergoing extensive upgrades. This refurbishment isContinue reading “HARP in Bowland; The Refurbishment of the Haweswater Aqueduct and its impacts on the communities of the Hodder Valley”
Northwest Nature and History