Earlier this week, we were given the most likely explanation as to why people born and bred in Birchencliffe were called Dunnockers.
Margaret Rose (nee Clegg) used to sell tickets for sales of work at St Philip's Parish Church to people who lived in houses built on top of a rock formation off Halifax Road. They were named Dunnockers after the small sparrows that lived up there.
Now E Wragg of Waterloo confirms the story.
“In the past, when Lindley was a more isolated village before all the alterations took place, and before the rocks at the bottom of Birchencliffe Hill were demolished to widen the road to Halifax, Birchencliffe was mainly a cluster of houses on the rocks and around Burn Road.
“Older residents of Lindley, looking down on Birchencliffe, likened it to a bird's nest in a hollow and the people the dunnocks in the nest.”
The name stuck and is still used, even though the reason was lost in the mists of time.
Strange to think that the Dunnockers of Birchencliffe were actually named by folk from Lindley.
