The Slaithwaite Guardian and Colne Valley News. — 1905-12-22 (Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire, England)

OLD CROSLAND HALL.  Many times when huntin'g on Crosland Moor the men y sons of the chase pass the serried ground without a care for its past memories. The man in a trap drives by unthinking, and the man walking up the hill is totally unconscious of its sacrcd history. The quarrymen dig and delve clay under the ground which was run over by the great people of a past age, relations of the Beaumonts of ‘Vhitley of to-day. . . .  The school at'Crostand'Hill will have the good Christmas songs sung once again, of a Saviour who is to redeem the sons of men ; and the young folks will go about rejoicing at the grand holiday of the year, which in olden time was kept up in great revelry at the old hall of Crosland Hill. But alas ! at this old mansion was once committed one of the foulest murders of ancient time by Sir John Eland, the night after he had entered the house of Quarmby—Quarrnhy Hall—and incontinently slain the worthy lord thereof.  Then, says tradition, they went forthwith from Quarinby Hall that very night, Sir John Eland and his new fleshed followers, with all speed to the House of Lockwood, another of the friends of Sir R. Beaumont, and barbarously murdered this most honoured Lockwood in the midst of his harmless retirement. From this horrible scene these armed marauders marched up to Crosland Hall, then strongly mowed (as ably described by Mr. J. Horsfall Turner, and from whose story we largely quote) with a deep trench of water and the bridge drawn up. Not being able to enter, Sir John and his murderers lay in ambush until a maid in the morning let down the bridge, and over went these hell hounds, seized Sir Robert Beaumont, and cut off his honoured head, after- ! wards making a feast, to which they corn- ' pelled the sons to attend, but these lads had their own in due time. Nursing every art of arms and strength, they built up a power which was afterwards brought to bear, when they, in after years, found that Sir John Eland was at the Sheriffs Turn at Brighouse, they were ready for him.  'through Crornble Bottom Wood, past Eland Hall they went, and there at the top of the hill that leads from Brookfoot to Brighouse, returning the courtesy of Sir John, said " This shall avail thee little, for most bas-vly and unminly didst thou murder our noble father," and in the fight that ensued slew their man, and again afterwards those who followed by a devise of hiding in Eland Mill on a Palm Sunday evening awaiting the coming of the next heir to church, over the dam stones, which was then the nearest way to the church, after many failures, shot the knight through the head with a long bow. The son died of his wounds, and with him expired the male name of Eland. But this Crosland Hall. The sons never returned : one was betrayed by a woman at Camel Hall, and the other afterwards entered into the service of Knights of Rhodes in defence of the Christian faith. The neighbours remained, and a ronnant of the family to hunt both the red and fallow deer, the hares, and all the wild game which abounded on this noted moor' so that from all time it has been the happy hunting ground for the rich and the poor front generation to generation, for it was somewhere in 1379 that these foul deeds were done, to he happily replaced by better times and more comfortable conditions. J.S.