Glynn Hughes...

lived a mile from here. Today, Lisa, Benson and I walked through the nearby hamlet of Mill Bank and found this memorial in a tiny cemetery tucked below the road that runs through the steep sided village. Of all Glyn's works my favourite is Millstone Grit, a marvellous account of his wanders through the south Pennines.

This from the book jacket, "Written as an account of a journey on foot, the book explores the mysteries of the Pennine landscape, its towns, villages and wild places. Glyn Hughes also provides fascinating insight into the people who have inhabited this land, and who have as their history the Luddites, the Brontes at Haworth, weaver poets, non-conformists, mill workers, traditional  farm life and now the new inhabitants of the once derelict cottages. This is no ordinary guide book, but a guide to understanding the special character of this remarkable region- an island of wild beauty between the huge modern conurbations of the industrial north."

Next to the brass plaque a fine piece of slate has carved on it  a poem called Rock Rose, written by Glyn in 2003.

Rock Rose

Love and remember the many before us,

their dark hearts no better sealed than ours,

Chartists, Methodists, the fellow and sister yearners,

ill treated in Mills but not broken,

their ghosts forever drifting the Sublime.

Hammer and chisel, ledger and pen,

cradle and loom are rested,

hewn stone is overgrown or sweetened

and sacredness of field and wood restored.

Happiness is frail when entrusted to human hands

and leaves only shadows.

Here pray that upon the stones of fear or hate

may grow the flowers of loving,

the impious flowers; the rock rose.