Shipley Glen

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Quick description

What’s there?

Descending steeply from Baildon Moor, Shipley Glen is a narrow ravine lined densely with oaks. Along its route are numerous rocky crags and flat land at Bracken Hall Green, scattered with a wealth of prehistoric artefacts and carvings.

Shipley Glen Tramway 

Shipley Glen Tramway was opened on 18 May 1895 and built by local publican Sam Wilson and is Britain’s oldest working cable-hauled tramway run entirely by volunteers.

Bracken Hall Countryside Centre  

The Friends of Bracken Hall Countryside Centre organises frequent activities designed to enable visitors to appreciate the nearby landscape, including moorland, forests, stones, wildlife, heritage, and archaeology.

Visit the Friends of Bracken Hall Facebook page for more information on the centre and events  https://www.facebook.com/brackenhallcountrysidecentre   

History

Shipley Glen Pleasure Grounds 

After the introduction of the railway to Shipley in 1847, residents of the surrounding area could easily reach Shipley Glen, which soon became well-renowned as an iconic local attraction.

 By the 1870s, the tourism of Shipley Glen was starting to take shape, with the Old Glen Hotel supplying boat swings and donkey rides. Eventually, in 1879, the Voss family built Vulcan House, and their original tearoom was supplemented with donkey rides, swings, dodgems, paddling pools, a penny arcade, and ice cream stands, promoting Shipley Glen Pleasure Grounds.

 At the Queen Victoria Silver Jubilee event, attendees were delighted to experience a range of attractions, such as one of the UK’s first rollercoasters, a horse-driven carousel around the pond at Glen House, a camera obscura, cable cars, and even a toboggan slide.

Nowadays, only the Shipley Glen Tramway serves as a reminder of the recreational past it used to celebrate.

The name – Shipley Glen

The name Shipley Glen is said to be been coined by Revd Peter Scott, a Shipley clergyman who brought his Sunday school class here for annual Whitsuntide excursions in the 1840s. – Goddard, C. (2021). The West Yorkshire Woods. Gritstone Publishing

Archaeology

Shipley Glen is rich in archaeology, and recent surveys have found evidence of historic charcoal-making platforms on the wooded slopes. The area was an extremely popular destination in the late 1800s as thousands of local people visited the open countryside and, at the time, its theme park.

Formation of the landscape

Shipley Glen was shaped during the last Ice Age, but not cut by the tongue of ice which stretched up it. Instead this widened an existing gorge and deposited glacial moraine in the bottom of the glen beneath a lake somewhere above Cragg Hebble Dam. The winding stream around Raygate Well was created by the water Dam. The mass of fallen rock in the glen is a result of the softer underlying shales having been eroded to allow the gritstone crags to collapse into the valley. – Goddard, C. (2021). The West Yorkshire Woods. Gritstone Publishing

Natural history

Wildlife

Three species of woodpecker resident in the UK can all be found at Shipley Glen. The smallest and most elusive, the lesser spotted woodpecker, is in steep decline across the country.

Wood chippings are thrown to the wind as the male lesser spotted woodpecker excavates a nest hole in a dead tree.

Green woodpeckers feed on meadow ants, and this is why they are often seen on the ground. Listen for the distinctive “laughing” call, which indicates their presence.

Invertebrates

Invertebrates play an extremely important role in the woodland of Shipley Glen. They provide food for the woodpeckers plus numerous other birds and insectivorous mammals such as shrews, moles, hedgehogs and bats. This wide-ranging suite of animals lacking backbones includes pollinators and detritivores. The latter assist in deadwood’s breakdown, allowing nutrients to return to the soil. Pollinators include bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, moths, and beetles. Many of these can be found locally as adults on the wing or as larvae.