Lancashire Walk: Towneley Hall to the Swinging Ringing Tree

In January, I started a new job working at Burnley College. Burnley is an industrial town in east Lancashire. The town is surrounded by countryside out to the pennine hills, it hosts a section of the Leeds to Liverpool canal and has several pleasant parks such as Towneley and Thompson park. From outside of the college, I can see a small hill in the distance with a monument on top. This is the Swinging Ringing Tree, a wind powered sculpture designed by Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu, completed in 2006. I have been meaning to see the sculpture close up for some time now. And with the nice weather over the weekend, I decided to go for it.

There is a car park at Crown Point, which is really close to the Singing Ringing Tree (I have subsequently been informed that this car park is used for more questionable purposes, which I will leave to the reader's imagination). To make more of a walk of it, I decided to start from Towneley Hall Estate Car Park (£1.50 for the day). There are several car parks on this large estate. Towneley Hall was built in the 14th century and was home of the Towneley family for nearly five centuries. The hall is now owned and managed by Burnley Borough Council. 

My walk left the park to the south east, leading to Park Road, on the river calder. This was one of the oldest settlements in the valley, whose history is described in an information board. After crossing the calder, the route proceeds under the railway line then uphill through green fields, following a dry stone wall on the right. 

After crossing the A671, the final uphill stretch follows, first following a track, but shortly after opens out onto moorland. This last part was a little tricky. I found the waymarkers to be somewhat misleading and my advice would be to use a map or GPS. At the time of walking, there was not a visible path and the waymarkers appeared to be pointing in the wrong direction. My trusty OS Map app led me up to the Swinging Ringing Tree, where I stopped to take in the fine views over to the Forest of Bowland and Yorkshire Dales. 

There is a car park just near the Swinging Ringing Tree at Crown Point. The area near Crown Point was subject to a land dispute in the 1500, emanating from Sir John Towneley's decision to enclose the area to connect his Towneley and Hampton estates; a decision which infuriated local farmers who previously had common rights of use over the land for grazing and other purposes. 

From Crown Point, I followed an off-road path which joins up with the Burnley Way long distance walking path. I followed this section of the Burnley Way through a golf course, over the A646, then through a section of woodland before re-emerging at the park from the south end. After passing "Foldys Cross," dating back to 1520, I walked past Towneley Hall back to the car park.