Blackstone Edge, the Tour de Yorkshire, and Chartist meetings
In 2009, I published an article about radical and Chartist meetings on moors. It's in Northern History , and you can read the pre-print here: https://www.academia.edu/535605/Moors_Fields_and_Popular_Protest_in_South_Lancashire_and_the_West_Riding_of_Yorkshire_1800-1848 The Chartists in particular were keen on holding mass meetings on moorland. In part this was because the radical movements were increasingly restricted in when and where they could hold large public meetings in the towns. But meeting on moors was also part of working-class culture, drawing from the Methodist camp meetings held on the same sites, a love of rambling, fell-racing and naturalism, and what Malcolm Chase terms 'radical agrarianism', an attachment to the land as representing freedom and self-sufficiency. Blackstone Edge Blackstone Edge was one of the most famous sites of Chartist monster meetings. Large processions from either side of the Pennines would trek up to sit in the declivity of th...