HOLCOMBE MOOR TRAINING AREA, GREATER MANCHESTER Historic Boundary Survey Report

Defence Estates commissioned Oxford Archaeology North (OA North) to undertake an historic boundary survey of Holcombe Moor (centred on SD 7650 1850), Greater Manchester, which is owned by Ministry of Defence as a general purpose training camp and comprises 303 hectares of enclosed and unenclosed land. The boundary survey, was undertaken in late 2005, and followed on from an identification survey undertaken by Lancaster University Archaeological Unit (now OA North) in 1995 (LUAU 1995), which had highlighted surviving elements of a relict farming landscape and had suggested that further work should be conducted to reconstruct the development of this landscape.
The survey entailed new documentary work to examine the history of the farms and field systems, and was followed by a field survey to record the boundaries and the relationships with other boundary markers. The work was undertaken in conjunction with the local community, who helped on the documentary study and field survey.
At the start of the medieval period, the pollen record shows that Holcombe Moor was heavily wooded, reflecting that the designation of the area of royal forest was protected by
law for hunting. However, a disafforestation order of 1507 removed the Forest Law and from this date the enclosure of waste land, held as forest in Lancashire, was permitted and
encouraged the assarting (enclosure) of the waste land.
After the disafforestation of the forest in Tottington in 1507, there was increased agricultural enclosure and encroachment onto the commons. The earliest documented
farmsteads were Holcombe Hey, Hollingrove, Hoyles, and Higher Withins, which were all documented in the sixteenth century, the earliest being Hollingrove from 1517-18.
The reconstruction of the earliest sixteenth century farmland demonstrates that the individual farm enclosures were relatively large but few in number. Over the subsequent
centuries the large intakes were repeatedly divided into smaller farm enclosures, with the creation of new farms. At the same time as the farms were being sub-divided there was
ongoing encroachment of the commons particularly on the south-western side of the study area, and by the time of the tithe map (1842) almost the whole area had become enclosed
and only Holcombe Moor, to the north, remained as waste. The effect of this was reflected in the number of farms; in the sixteenth century there were only four farms, but by the end
of the seventeenth century this had increased to a total of 11 farms. By the end of the eighteenth century the number had increased to 29 farms.
The resultant shrinkage of the farm plots meant that they had to be increasingly productive, and led to their corresponding improvement, and the increase in the number of internal field boundaries.
The landscape was subject to a dramatic change with the establishment of the firing range at the time of the First World War in the west of the study area; however, those farmsteads and farmland on the periphery of the rifle range were farmed well into the twentieth century.