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Walking these ginnels, I began to imagine grand shiſts in scale. e routes themselves, when viewed from above, became the lines of mortar and moss that weave through the cobble and stone pathways. Li- chen like overlapping islands of yel- low, red, white and green: beacons against the washed out midwinter stone; organic barometers of pol- lution and disturbance. e slow creep and colonisation of the leſt- alone; the dark and the damp. Ginnels tangle the past and the pres- ent, picking paths centuries old. In Barnoldswick, a former cotton mill town on the side of Pendle Hill in Lancashire, the Pickles Hippings ginnel (known locally as ‘shitten gin- nel’ due to its damp, muddy course across a stream) leads to the site of a short-lived monastery founded in 1147 by monks from Fountain’s Ab- bey. e monks leſt aſter six years, citing bad weather, crop failure and the number of robbers in the area. A new church was established on the edge of the town, again led to by a short, muddy ginnel crossing a stream. Back in the centre of the town, the Forty Steps (although there are only 39) trace the route be- tween old workers cottages and the derelict mill. is route has recent- ly been restored with new cobbles, which gleam in the over-saturated air. ere’s not a spot of lichen or moss on show, nor any weeds, the ginnel’s lines refined and tidied. Here, ginnels join town and country, tracing well-trodden lines out onto the open moor. Forty miles south down the Pennines in Rochdale, some ginnels such as the historic Walk have been restored and celebrated by the heritage industry, whilst many are leſt derelict and overgrown. Pigeon feathers ruffle silently in the ventilation fan from a restaurant along Stationer’s Entry – a dank, narrow nick through high buildings in the town centre - and there are heart shaped notches cut in the dirty cream tiling. Bull Brow is now painted bright yellow and red as part of regeneration work, an intentional lightening of the space, and a perhaps unintentional echoing of the bright mosses which thrive along other neglected, damp and self-willed routes. Nicks in the fabric of the town Rob St. John March 2014 Ginnels are spaces in between: the paths and alleys that cut hidden channels through many towns in the north of England. Oſten following historical routes that pre-date urbanisation and are now squeezed by encroaching buildings, the dialect word for a ginnel varies across the north: snicket, gunnel, jinnel, twitchell, jitty, gitty, ten-foot, passage, shut. Ginnel and its variants are amongst a narrow set of dialect words which are still strong in daily life: a local knowledge of short- cuts and escape routes, yet to meet a linguistic dead-end. In many cases, ginnels represent a tangle of lines: blurred spaces between what is safe and what is dangerous; what is natural and what isn’t; what is conserved and what is leſt to fall into ruin. Snickets cut nicks in the fabric of the town: routes to sneak along, cobbled channels trodden down. Moss on stone on moss on stone. Brambles tangled in barbed wire. Holly bushes poking through the dull, mottled metal of turnpike fences. Ragwort, buddleia and Japanese knotweed the ambitious upstarts amongst all the spikes and sharp edges. A quirk of planning laws mean that urban ginnels in Lancashire are managed by the countryside council, fertilis- ing neglect and the growth of unruly nature: spaces for crime and twilight liaisons.
