The building, with its barn, is long gone but I am told it stood on the site of part of the former Burnley Wood School, the principal entrance of which was in Branch Road.

Moseley is an area of Burnley, not to be confused with Mosely Height which can be found above Mereclough in Cliviger, to the south of the town.

Many of you will know of Moseley Road, which connects Hufling Lane to Glen View Road. This is within the ancient area of Moseley although, today, the railway line divides the original Moseley into two unequal parts. In fact, Moseley Farm was in the smaller division to the east of the railway.

The name doubtless refers, as is often the case, to the nature of the land. In Lancashire we use the word "moss" to describe an area which is badly drained and "ley" is a corruption of "leah", a clearing, sometimes a field. Moseley is, therefore, descriptive of this part of Burnley.

In the past the area was part of the Burnley Wood to Hill Top (i.e. Church Top) Common, one of nine such commons in Burnley and Habergham Eaves. This common was quite small by the early 17th Century when there were only 25 and three-quarter acres left.

The rest of the land had been taken by the farms of the area; these included Hollingreave, Moseley and Higher and Lower Timberhill.

Studying the picture does not indicate when Moseley Farm was first built although this building probably dates from the 18th Century. We know there was a building here by 1400, but that is likely to have been constructed, not from stone but of timber and clay.

Walter Bennett speculates that Moseley Farm was of a similar status to Healey Hall and Rylands Hall (its location is now forgotten) which were not too far from Moseley itself. He says it may have been the home of Roger of Heley, a man known to have lived in the immediate Burnley area in the Middle Ages although the location of his house had not been satisfactorily identified.

What we do know is that, by the 16th Century, Moseley was occupied by a branch of the Tattersall family. There are lots of connections between Burnley and the Tattersalls, the most well-known is the connection between the Tattersalls of Hurstwood and London. Latterly, they decamped to Newmarket where the famous bloodstock firm, Tattersall, still operates, serving horse racing, the "Sport of Kings".

The Tattersalls were once a significant family of the yeoman class in Burnley. They had attempted to set up a chantry at St Peter's in the 14th Century, financing it with the income from property in Briercliffe. But the death of Edmund Tattersall in 1526 serves to show the status the family had achieved. His land was divided between his widow and three daughters but he is important to us as we know he held 50 acres at Moseley and, possibly, Higher Wood House (the site of Scott Park).

One of the daughters, Isabel, was wife of Richard Tattersall of Ridge, the area between, and including, what is now Queen's Park and the top of the steep part of Brunshaw Road.

When he, or another Richard, died in 1597 he left personal property amounting to £800 with land at Ridge, Moseley, Ightenhill, Habergham Eaves and Briercliffe.

An incident in 1546 gives us something of an insight into the Moseley Farm Estate. Records of a court case survive in which four members of some of Burnley's more respectable families were accused of cutting down 10 oaks in Nan Hey Wood (near Hufling Hall) on the Moseley Farm Estate.

The trees were valued at eight shillings and were carried away in wains (carts) drawn by eight or 10 oxen.

It might interest you to know the timber was used to build Cornfield Farm in Ightenhill but incidents like this tell us much about the time in which they take place. We know about the wood, now gone, of course, the respectable young men who thought they could make use of someone else's timber and the ne'er-do-well who carried out the deed.

The latter comprised a smith, a cardmaker, a wright and a waller – and they all had names which remain common in Burnley even today. I can visualise them chopping down the oaks and struggling with the ox-cart as it made its way over the difficult roads at the time to distant Ightenhill.

Other documents tell us more about the farm in the 16th Century. By this time there was a farmhouse, two barns, an apple orchard and 22 acres of land at Moseley. The farm land was on Moseley Hill, much of it being pasture although some crops appear to have been grown. Those living at the farm were, by the 17th Century, as one would expect involved in wool production.

In conclusion, I have not, until now, looked in any great depth at the history of the Moseley Estate although I have been involved in one of those anachronistic aspects of life, which involves Moseley and which are so common in our country. As a member of Briercliffe Parish Council I have some responsibility for the John Halstead Charity which was set up in 1672 by a man of that name in Broadbank, Briercliffe.

John Halstead left the rent charge of some property in Moseley to be distributed in five shilling (25p) doles to the poor of Briercliffe.
The connection is that when the Tattersall tenure of Moseley came to an end the Halsteads of Rowley took possession of the property and I assume John was of that family.

The Halstead charity still exists but Moseley Farm, the place was once the centre of the Moseley Estate, has gone forever.