The study area lies on the watershed of the rivers Aire and Calder in West Yorkshire and on the boundary of the present Metropolitan areas of Bradford and Calderdale at an elevation of 340m AOD. The present unclassified road that bisects the area was once the packhorse route between Haworth and Halifax.
Locally the area of formerly enclosed land to the west of the escarpment of Nab Hill is known as the Fly. The area is often simply known as ‘on t’Nab’ or ‘on t’Fly’ in the vernacular and the terms are often interchangeable. Although divided by the ancient boundary between the hamlet of Far Oxenhope in Haworth Township and Warley Township, the scattered homesteads seem always to have been considered as one hamlet, particularly by the inhabitants who were often related. The present boundary also follows the old manorial division between the Greaveship of Sowerby, belonging to the Manor of Wakefield, in the south and the Manor of Oxenhope in the north. The area now consists of a series of long-abandoned ruined farmhouses bounded to the east by Nab Hill and its scattered disused quarry workings.
A quarry was present on Warley Moor in 1709 but most of the quarries date from a period of expansion from the 1840s to the decline of quarrying in the area around 1900. Quarrying was carried out on an intermittent basis several times during the twentieth century. The quarries exploited the flagrock present in the escarpment edge and on the plateau beyond for building stone.Work on Nab Hill will comprise a detailed metric and photographic survey of one area of quarrying.
Chris Mace