'The changing face of Whalley Nab: A naturalistic and cultural landscape in Lancashire'

Two  hundred  years  ago,  the  hill  known  as  Whalley  Nab  in  Lancashire  was  a  sparsely  populated,  rural  prominence.  Its  appearance  was  deliberately  improved  by  landowners  and  became  a  place  of  natural  beauty  as  well  as  an  agricultural  landscape, location of cottage industry and home for mill workers. This article is an original, microhistorical study of the Nab that indicates how the people of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries experienced the hill and used it for work and leisure. The discussion charts the shifts in appearance of the area and finds that although in various respects the hill is unchanged, some features are very different. Opportunities for biodiversity, in particular, are greatly reduced through human intervention. The article adds to seminal work by authors including Don Mitchell and Robert Macfarlane.