At The Centre of Things

By Richard Mellor

1 Year Ago

“I’m going to the centre of Britain,” I announce to my taxi driver as we depart Northcote’s red-brick hotel estate and speed towards Clitheroe and the market town’s hilltop castle. “Oh right,” he replies. “It’s been officially measured,” I explain, trying to substantiate my apparently underwhelming brag. “Gotcha,” he says.

Point taken. I pipe down after that and soon commence goggling as we leave the Ribble Valley and climb into the Forest of Bowland proper. Suddenly, stretching away ahead is an extravaganza of high moorland fells mottled like army fatigues. Occasional settlements pockmark the narrow B-road we’re on, but a thrillingly desolate feel has already taken hold. Now conspicuous by their near-total absence are trees: like the New Forest, down in England’s south, the Forest of Bowland’s confusing name refers to its past as a deliberately uncultivated tract reserved for royal hunting — an historical definition of “forest,” distinct to our solely-sylvan meaning. Today, this 803-square-kilometre expanse is a certified Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, one often overlooked in favour of the nearby Lake District.

Ten minutes later we arrive in pretty Dunsop Bridge, the nearest village to those coordinates which supposedly denote Great Britain’s geographical centre. Before striding off, I resist a tea-room stop and instead examine a working, old-school telephone box — for there’s no signal here, and won’t be any all hike — which proudly, and now erroneously, locates itself “at the centre of Great Britain.” (This unit was also, quirkily, British Telecom’s 100,000th phone box when installed in 1992; Sir Ranulph Fiennes cut the ribbon). Last night, I swotted up on local news stories about plans to regenerate one derelict Dunsop Bridge garage; “it is felt that the site is under used (…) given its location in (…) the geographical centre of England,” explains the planning application.

This underlines, I think while setting off along an asphalted track shadowing the energetic Dunsop River, one reason why these geographical centres matter: as a valuable marketing tool for tourism purposes. In that derelict garage’s case, the errant land-owners meant “centre of Britain,” not England, and are wrong anyway, as the precise spot is now stated to be the one I’m heading towards, four miles north. But meh, details. Adding that label to Dunsop Bridge gives the hamlet precious cachet.

In 1996, the squabbles between three communities claiming to host France’s geographical centre became so deliciously heated that global newspapers took note. Emphatic permanent artworks were pricily commissioned to back up ownership claims, and scientific third parties later called in to adjudicate. “For many years, being the centre of France was our trademark,’’ ranted Rene Larguinat, then-mayor of one the most regularly-touted contender, Bruère-Allichamps, to a New York Times journalist. “Now, our neighbouring villages are trying to take it away from us.’’

The economic value of that same trademark is evident in Lebanon, Kansas, too. This decidedly humdrum town reckons to lure thousands of visitors a year, aided by wooden signs on US Route 281 proclaiming the “Center of the USA,” souvenirs, a wedding chapel and a flag-bearing, selfie-ready stone pyramid on the exact spot itself. Well, close to the exact spot. Amusingly, that actual site — as guestimated by government surveyors in 1918 — is actually half a mile away on what was, at the time of that monument’s proposal, a private hog farm whose owner didn’t want gawkers worrying his swine. So locals instead chose a more convenient, less odorous lot nearby and, ahem, kept this translocation to themselves.

I chuckle heartily about such skulduggery while continuing up the snaking track for several miles, past a few staggered houses, countless curly-horned Swaledale sheep and three silent birdwatchers statue-still on the Dunsop’s shallow near bank. As blue dragonflies lark about the valley narrows, whenever I pause, the only sounds are “baas” or babbling water. A young family cycles by, bound for the village behind me. Footholme Flume soon appears. This cute brownstone building, I gather, helps to measure the river’s flow, presumably to warn of or prevent flooding.

Science makes my artistic brain uneasy — including the methods involved in calculating geographic centres. Methods, plural, because there are numerous ways to do it and thus no definitive answers. That at least makes sense as I further ponder the question: just how would you establish the centre of a country? And where to first place the borders when island speckled coastlines or, more problematically, overseas territories are concerned?

The most popular measure involves representing the specified area as a two-dimensional shape and using that to work out the ‘centroid’ position — in layman’s terms, the point wherein a cardboard cut-out of the country will perfectly balance on a fine tip. Offshore isles are usually included, but not far-flung territories. In America’s case, the 1918 centroid models which defined a ten or 20-mile radius around Lebanon were completely undone four decades later when Hawaii and Alaska joined the Union. Include it, and we’re not in Kansas anymore; Belle Fourche, South Dakota — 430 miles northwest — is now the midpoint; insist on a mainland US centre, however, and Lebanon retains its title.

As if all that isn’t ambiguity enough, there are other concerns — ought topography to be reflected in that two-dimensional shape? Should bodies of water be weightless holes or filled in? — and alternative methods. Perhaps the centre of a country should simply be the point furthest from the sea? Or from high-tide marks? Maybe it occurs at the intersection of the longest-possible north-south axis? Every approach produces wildly different results (another supposed centre for Great Britain lies in fields northeast of Northcote, near Whalley), and that’s before one considers shifting boundaries due to erosion.

The answer, ultimately, is that there’s no answer. Centroid measurements have the most cheerleaders, however, and it’s by that technique that, in 2002, the Ordnance Survey national mapping agency denoted a speck of peat moor amid the Forest of Bowland as the centre of Great Britain and its islands (but not the United Kingdom, a nation incorporating Northern Ireland) — fine-tuning a former, vaguer estimate of Dunsop Bridge, as per its phone box.

That newly-identified place is the one that lies ahead for me. Just after Footholme Flume, I have a choice. Many hikers opt to cross a narrow footbridge here and continue north on a charming path hugging a tributary river. The alternative is to keep to tracks for a while longer and temporarily bend west. This approach passes one last farm and is consistently steep — yet also quicker and almost half as short, a critical factor given I must get back to Dunsop Bridge before dusk. It’s the clear winner. Now, I think, those are the kind of straightforward calculations this simpleton much prefers.

One to my left bulldozes downwards in demented fashion; on each wing are clumps of heather which must bloom a glorious purple in late summer. Overlooking them are barren pockets of gritstone scree. Veering northwards again now, the trail unfurls a preposterous sweep of whale-back hills in 50 shades of green and maroon. Separating their squat, boggy tops are, evidently, an equal abundance of watercourses.

Tooth Hill, Wolfhole Crag, Black Dell. Names like these remind me of those used for places in The Lord of the Rings, perhaps uncoincidentally: J.R.R. Tolkien often resided at Stonyhurst College, back amid the Ribble Valley, and is said to have written some of his famous trilogy there. It’s faintly possible that being in proximity to the centre of Britain, if he knew about it, inspired the idea of Middle Earth.

Certainly, the idea seems firmly intertwined with mythology. One of Tolkien’s inspirations was probably Nodens, an ancient Celtic god of weather, water, dreams and more. One medieval Welsh tale finds Nodens failing to defend his kingdom from three plagues (symbolically representing the Romans) and consults his French brother, Llefelys.

To overcome the second plague, a terrifying annual scream affecting minds and lands, Nodens is advised to carefully measure Britain in order to locate its very centre, where he should dig out a pit to entrap monstrous dragons. Much Celtic significance was placed on the omphalos, or navel, of a land.

The same term is present in lots of Ancient Greek texts. Numerous locales are purported as the centre of the entire world within these, but most common is the precinct of Delphi — hence its hallowed Temple of Apollo. Greeks attached great ritual importance to such physical navels; these were focal points where gods lived and portals through which other mystical worlds might be accessed.

My own access now requires me to leave the track and slowly squelch across a boggy plateau. I’m aiming roughly 225 metres northwest of ten or so large, brawny boulders known as the Whitendale Hanging Stones.

Just about visible ahead are portions of Salter Fell or the Hornby Road, an old Roman route that beelines across the Forest of Bowland in typically direct fashion. It was along here in 1612 that most of the so-called Pendle Witches were ferried from Clitheroe to Lancaster Castle, further up in England’s northwest, for a notorious trial and — in ten cases — their subsequent hanging.

Relieved to live in less-paranoid times, I now arrive, as far as I can make out, upon the precise spot. A hole references the stake which once stood here as a marker. Fell-top wind ripples my trousers and mud oozes out of the saturated, tussocked ground as I start on a well-earned sandwich and contemplate how it feels to be here.

There’s definitely no sense of a portal to another dimension, nor any mystical sensation of hitherto-unexperienced centredness or balance. Instead, chuffed satisfaction holds sway. My earlier cabbie probably wouldn’t agree, but perhaps this is the final attraction of pinpointing and then attaining centres, alongside tackling dragons or communing with gods; the simple, geeky joy of being there — especially when that place turns out to be as pleasingly isolated and beautiful as this one.

After grinning a lot and automatically taking a few useless photos, I start the five and a half mile plod back to Dunsop Bridge. Civilisation, and increasingly less centrality, awaits.

The exact coordinates are 54°0’13.176”N 2°32’52.278”W, or grid reference SD 64188 56541. Dunsop Bridge is a 15-mile drive from Northcote.