West Pennine Moors
[4] The company operates four information centres at Rivington, Jumbles Country Park, Roddlesworth and Haslingden Grane.
[3] Cheetham Close above Edgworth is the site of a destroyed Bronze Age megalith and is a scheduled ancient monument.
[5] On Anglezarke Moor are two prehistoric sites, Pikestones and Round Loaf, a landmark clearly visible from the route across Great Hill from White Coppice.
Another site, 1 km west of the summit, at Noon Hill Saucer Tumulus, is a burial site consisting of two concentric stonewalls which had two sets of burnt human bones, a broken urn containing more bones, two flint arrow heads and flint sacrificial knife in the centre.
A reservoir was constructed, despite objections, requiring an Act of Parliament that stipulated two million gallons of water had to be released daily into Eagley Brook to sustain the industry that depended on it.
Streams on the southern fringe of the moorland were utilised for water power and important for the bleaching and textile industries that grew up at Wallsuches, Horwich and Barrow Bridge.
Near the transmitter is Scotsman's Stump, an iron post with a plaque, a memorial to a Scottish salesman, George Henderson, who was shot on the moor by an unknown assailant in 1838.
A ranger on Winter Hill constructed two cairns on the moor to commemorate the alleged tragic death of two young men on the site many hundreds of years ago.
The weather was atrocious and due to the poor visibility, heavy snow and remote location, only seven of the 42 people on board survived.
The underlying geology is the Millstone Grit series with sandstones and coarse gritstones separated by bands of shale.
There are gritstone crags and steep escarpments creating dramatic landforms with V-shaped valleys drained by fast-flowing streams.
Unlike many areas of moorland in the north of England, the moors here are not managed for grouse shooting and consist largely of rough grassland and peat bog.
To the east of the area can be found the separate chains of Belmont, Delph, Turton and Entwistle, Wayoh and Jumbles reservoirs.
Situated in the northeast is Haslingden Grane, a glaciated valley with three reservoirs, Calf Hey, Ogden and Holden Wood.
In March 2020, the West Pennine Moors SSSI was on fire during the Coronavirus lock down, presumably due to a barbecue.
Due to its prominent position, Rivington Pike was used as a beacon on 19 July 1588, when it was lit to warn the population that the Spanish Armada had been sighted off The Lizard in Cornwall.
A beacon was lit to mark the end of the Great War in 1918, the coronations of George V and Elizabeth II and the Royal wedding in 1981.
It is 85 ft (26 m) in height, and there is access to the top via the internal staircase from where Yorkshire, Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, Cumbria, and surrounding moorland can be seen.
Moorland birds include peregrine falcon, merlin, dunlin, wheatear, short-eared owl and golden plover.
The moorlands of the West Pennine Moors have largely escaped the extensive planting of conifers suffered in some other parts of the northern uplands.
Some of the more improved pastures still retain populations of breeding wading birds such as Peewit or northern lapwing, snipe and curlew, and particularly in the fields and margins around Belmont Reservoir there are oystercatcher, redshank and common sandpiper.
