Helmshore

The area around Helmshore is moorland. Post-Ice Age this would have been forested, and bog oak can still be found on the flat peatland tops over 250 metres high. The forest declined in the Neolithic period, and largely disappeared during the Bronze Age, mainly as a result of climatic change although hastened by human activity. There is some evidence of human habitation in the area during the Neolithic period: stone implements found on Bull Hill and in the Musbury valley, and the stones at Thirteen Stone Hill near Grane, and there are a relatively complex network of both local and long-distance old tracks crossing the area.

The village is dominated by the spectacular flat-topped Musbury Tor, once the centre of the medieval hunting park, or Forest. Either side of the Tor are two valleys: Alden Valley in the south-west and Musbury Valley to the north-west. The 'whole land of Musbury' was granted to John de Lacy (before 1241) by Lewis de Bernavill. A licence for a 'free warren' was granted to the Earl of Lincoln in 1294. Work on fencing the Park was completed by 1304–05, with palings being erected. The park, with its 'herbage and agistments' was said to be worth 13s. 4d. in 1311. In 1329 and 1330 it is described as 'Queen Isabel's park of Musbury', and fines were being applied for trespass to, among others, the…