Brinscall

From 'lost farms' looking over BrinscallBrindle Historical Society Review says

"The West Lancashire Moors from Rivington to Abbey Village and White Coppice to Belmont are rich in remains of past farming. David Clayton has written a fascinating history cum guidebook to nearly 50 farm houses and cottages that once stood on the moors north of a line from White Coppice to Great Hill. He briefly discusses their origins but focuses on their story during the better recorded nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The plans, building styles and functions of the various sites are considered and the working lives of the people who lived in them.

The book with a number of late nineteenth/early twentieth century photographs which brings the working farms and the families who worked them to life, shows how and why the farms changed in the nineteenth century. The story is a familiar one from other upland areas in northern England: agricultural depression from the 1870s (arising from the Repeal of the Corn Laws 30 years previously) gradually drove the tenant farmers of many small moorland farms out of business leading to the abandonment of their steadings and the amalgamation of their lands to create larger, more viable holdings. Grain acreage went down from 9.5 m acres in 1870 to 7.3 m acres only 30 years later 1900" Have we ever recovered this - what are present stats? (See more p9 of History of UK farming)

"On the West Lancashire Moors, this process was at first checked by the amount of work available in local factories but was then accelerated by the compulsory purchase of the moors by Liverpool Corporation between 1898 and 1902. The need to prevent contamination of drinking water supplies led to the farms being cleared as their leases came up for renewal and then the demolition of the abandoned buildings for safety reasons."

You can see in Google Earth, The Goit, south of Brinscall, with the wood (east) clawed out of the moorland.

'The Goit' (below) was built to send water to Liverpool.