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Debate is bordering on the ridiculous!

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date14 June 2022
If this ancient debate - all of Todmorden has been in Yorkshire since 1888 - still has any life, it's going to be in Cornholme, right? The village, which you might recall made national headlines for a "pornography prank", was hitherto entirely in Lancashire

Today Cornholme, right at the top of the Calder Valley and part of the wider Todmorden area, is the last proper village before you end up in t'Other Place. I ask if anyone in Cornholme still considers it Lancashire. "I haven't come across anyone," says the woman in a rare boundary accent that sounds Yorkshire-esque but with subtly rounded Lancastrian vowel sounds.

"Does it even matter which county it's in?" I ask.

"I know a lot of people it does matter to," she says.

But she adds: "It doesn't matter that much to me. What matters to me is if people are right or not."

And that sums it up. I doubt even in 1888, when the boundary switched from the rivers Calder and Walsden Water to the watershed, the Yorkists and Lancastrians of Todmorden were that bothered.

Walsden Water runs through the town centre, even under the town hall which has both counties inscribed on its pediment. Tod folk on all sides of the rivers would have mingled; I doubt they stood on opposite sides and traded insults and missiles.

Earlier in the day, I'm in Centre Vale Park, just outside the town centre. The Calder marks the eastern boundary of the park which means pre-1888 the land was in Lancashire.

"It does matter to a lot of people,"

says Jean Marshall, who is watching the bowls although her friend Dorothy Gray, originally from Durham, jokes it should be in her birth county. I respond in kind, noting that County Durham "pinched" plenty of the North Riding in 1974.

"It's Yorkshire," says their friend (and no relation) Les Marshall even though he's a born and bred Lancastrian. Les, 73, adds: "Some people who live in Walsden might [say it's Lancashire] but near Hebden Bridge, it's definitely Yorkshire."

Earlier in the day still, I'm in Walsden. The village, which today borders Greater Manchester, was Lancastrian until 1888. There are, however, little reminders of its former county.

The...

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