HISTORY OF COLDWELL
The first mention of Coldwell as a place name occurs in 1592 when Elizabeth I sent her surveyor, Sir Richard Shirebourne, to settle a land dispute over the boundary of the Royal Manor of Colne. One witness called said “the boundary goes up Walverden to Coldwell and thence to Deer Stones”. Deerstone Moor is across the fields from the car park behind Coldwell Inn.
As well as a farm, in 1841 the main building at Coldwell became an Inn – thereby giving it its name. The tenant farmer at Coldwell, one James Ormored, became the first landlord of the inn. The purpose of this was to serve travellers en route into Lancashire from Yorkshire especially the town of Halifax with its now famous Piece Hall to which pack horse trains went carrying cloth from the handloom weavers of Colne and district.
Sometime in 1852 the farmer/landlord, James Ormored, left Coldwell, transferring the tenancy to a James Higgin who was required to pay an annual rent on the 1st February to the estate owner, John Sagar. The Sagar family, of Great Marsden, were extensive landowners in the district and had been in possession of Coldwell since 1775. The estate at Coldwell then passed from John Sagar to his spinster daughter, Ellen Sagar. The estate at the time was described as “the dwelling house known as the Coldwell Inn together with barn, stable, shippon, yard, outbuildings and 33 acres 2 poles 22 rods”.
By 1922 a Nelson magistrate was describing gambling at Coldwell as having become “a great blot not only on this town of Nelson but upon the social life of the whole district”. To counteract it a massive police operation took place at 3pm on Sunday, 22nd of October 1922 involving 96 sergeants and constables who converged on the district in 3 waggonettes following a tip off from PC Blackledge (Bolton diversion) who had temporarily lived Rutland street, Colne, and posed as a gambler. The gambling site on this occasion was a hollow between a rock outcrops on Deerstone road not far from the inn. Well paid lookouts were in position all around. Pies, peas, tobacco etc. were on sale. Gambling took the form of betting on the drop of a coin with full and half sovereigns in use. Warned by the lookout the gamblers, over 100 men from as far afield as Blackburn and Bradford, tried to scatter as the police moved in, but 52 were arrested on site or after a chase across the moor. Amongst them were professional people including doctors.
During the 48 years from 1941 to 1989 the building at Coldwell stood uninhabited. As time passed it decayed into a ruin, almost sinister in appearance, such that on bright moonlit nights or when storm winds and driving rain swept the moors the loan traveller could be excused an irrational glance in his rear view mirror on passing close to the old building’s blackened walls, gaping windows and half open rotting door. Had he ventured round the back in daylight hours he would have found a bed of nettles surrounding the broken doors to a gloomy barn where sheep took shelter.
The Inn and surrounding land was then bought from Massey’s Brewery by the North Calder Water Board. Subsequently, in 1974, North West Water took possession, and still own the building today.
Driven by idea, in 1985 two local probation Officers, Elsie Marshall and Don Kitson, visited Coldwell ruin. They envisaged a new life for the old building: that of an Activity Centre for physically and mentally disabled, and for the constructive rehabilitation of selected young offenders. Subsequently, plans were made and the major task begun of finding the necessary support and the not inconsiderable finance in grant and donations, a story in itself.
In the February of that year, the Coldwell Inn Activities Centre Project became a registered charity. In the July, after 4 years of complex and often difficult preparation on all fronts, the Coldwell Inn opened its doors to a new life as an Activity Centre and Cafe.