The Assheton family, lords of the manor from the 16th century, ensured that nothing was allowed to spoil the tranquillity of Downham. You will see no electric cables, television aerials, dormer windows or street signs, not even a sign to tell you that you are in Downham, hence it is often used by film and television companies for period village scenes. The village was most famously used as a location for the 1961 film Whistle Down the Wind. First written as a novel by Mary Hayley Bell in 1958, it later became widely known as Richard Attenboroughs classic film starring Hayley Mills, putting Downham on the map.
 
Hayley Mills plays Kathy in Whistle Down The Wind, a 15 year old Lancashire farm girl who discovers a mysterious man hiding out in a barn. When she asks who he is and he utters "Jesus Christ" it’s as if all her prayers have been answered. Kathy and the other children in the village vow to protect the stranger from the world that waits outside – the townspeople who are determined to catch a fugitive hiding it their midst. Even after he's eventually captured and led away in handcuffs before her, she continues to persevere in her belief. Even her little brother knows better by then, having been shattered by the fact that the stranger failed to prevent the death of a kitten that the child had placed in his care. When the children go to the local priest to get his help in explaining why Jesus was unable to prevent the death of the cat, he turns out to be more preoccupied with who has been vandalizing his church. Ultimately, religion is seen as little more than a childish delusion. I'm not sure the filmmakers see the story quite as pessimistically as I do, but I think it bears this interpretation. Well worth seeing.

There is also a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber based on this movie, and having the same name. The locale was inexplicably changed to backwoods Louisiana, and some names were changed; Kathy became Swallow. The plot remains largely the same, with the children finding the man in their barn and believing him to be Jesus. Instead of turning himself over at the end, though, the barn is burned and the man disappears without a trace, possibly allowing Swallow to believe that he ascended into heaven. Good music. Better than Lloyd Webbers average.

More recently The Assheton Arms became The Signalmans Arms for the BBC comedy drama Born and Bred. which stared James Bowlam (Likely Lads), Michael French (Eastenders), Roger Lloyd Pack (Only Fools & Horses), Clive Swift (Keeping Up Appearances), Denise Welch (Coronation Street) and Naomi Russell (Coronation Street).

Click on any of the frames opposite to view an enlargement of these behind the scenes photos.

Could the Ribble Valley be the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkiens Middle Earth?

A dispute has broken out over the books geographical inspiration. Is Birminghams Sarehole Mill in Moseley Tolkien's childhood playground the true inspiration for the Shire home of the Hobbits? . Or is it in the Ribble Valley, where Tolkien wrote most of The Lord of the Rings having visited Stonyhurst College? Could Hobbiton actually be the nearby village of Hurst Green and the River Shirebourne named after the Shireburn family who built the Stonyhurst estate? Follow the map of Clitheroes fields and, it is claimed, you can trace Frodo Baggins route across the Shire, through the Old Forest and on towards the Crack of Doom. The Old Forest is then not Birminghams Moseley bog after all but the conifer groves of Clitheroes Mitton Wood.

To try and decide a walk through Middle Earth was attempted, comparing the map of Middle Earth, which has Hobbiton, the River Shirebourne and the River Brandywine and the ferry that takes you across to the Old Forest, with the Ribble Valley Map showing Hurst Green and the rivers Ribble and Hodder; including the ferry that hadn't run for years. It would be nice to believe that maybe the landscape of Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings trilogy is copied from this corner of the Ribble Valley in the misty, green Lancashire countryside near Clitheroe. Or that you can trace the route Frodo Baggins and chums take as they head across the Shire, through the Old Forest and on towards the Crack of Doom, carrying with them the Ruling Ring of Power, which they must destroy.

The walk starts from the Shireburn Arms, and even this pub has a place in The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien, who was partial to his beer, was a regular visitor in the 1940s. He came to visit his eldest son, John, who was studying for the priesthood at the Jesuit seminary at St. Mary's Hall, now the prep school for Stonyhurst College. The impressive approach to grand, grey, towered and turreted Stonyhurst begins at the edge of Hobbiton, or rather Hurst Green, and it would feature later in the walk. Tolkien loved woods and walking, and he roamed all over the Ribble Valley. The places he visited and their names often found their way into The Lord of the Rings.

Leaving the Shireburn Arms and setting off in his footsteps, cross the field beside the pub, heading for the wide, rippling, foam-flecked and fast flowing Ribble. Scattered across the landscape there are green mounds too big to be man-made burial mounds but too small to be hills. Pass an old iron bath, dug into the hillside beneath a spring, the water from which fills it before trickling over the top and on down to the river. This was one of Tolkiens favourite walks. He would amble along here to the spot where a passenger ferry used to cross the Ribble, at the point where it is joined by two other rivers - the Calder and the Hodder. The ferry hasn't run since the 1950s, but it was here in Tolkiens day and he used it as the inspiration for the Buckleby Ferry, in which Frodo and friends take to leave the Shire and enter the Old Forest. The boathouse was dismantled and taken to the museum in Clitheroe.

Across the bank is the imposing Elizabethan pile of Hacking Hall, which is Brandy Hall in the book, and Mitton Wood, the dark conifer groves behind it, which became the start of the Old Forest. Head north following the River Hodder (the Brandywine River in the book) and pass an earthen mound which, in the book, becomes the long barrow which swallows up Frodo. At Winkley Hall Farm the path turns inland, winds through the farmyard and crests a rise. Before you is Stonyhurst College in all its stately splendour. Before heading to it, take a quick detour to Tolkiens Brandywine Bridge, which takes his Great East Road (the B6243) across the river. Its really Lower Hodder Bridge and, beside it, is the ominously named Devils Bridge, the three arches still standing. Its sides removed, it said by Cromwell so that he could get his carts over as he went about subjugating a local Catholic stronghold.

Stonyhurst marks almost the end of the walk. When Tolkien visited, he stayed at a grey-stone Edwardian guest house, New Lodge, which is now home to the deputy head of St. Marys and which Tolkien sketched on one of his last visits. This building is passed in the lane on the way down to the college. New Lodge entered Tolkiens fiction as Tom Bombadils home, where Frodo spends a brief respite from his gruelling journey. The college itself is breathtaking with two chapels almost as big as cathedrals, grand staircases and corridors wide enough to drive down. Originally an Elizabethan mansion built by Sir Richard Shireburn (that name again), it was given to the Jesuit order of St. Omer in France in 1794 and they moved their school here. Among the treasures that Stonyhurst College owns are a 7th century Gospel of St. John, said to have been used by St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, a gold cloak worn by Henry VIII, and a chasuble belonging to Catherine of Aragon. They also have the Book of Hours that Mary Queen of Scots carried to her execution. No fewer than three former pupils have achieved sainthood. And of course, there is the Tolkien connection, which continued when his second son, Michael, taught at the school in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Tolkien, who died in 1973, persuaded him to plant a copse in the garden of the school house he occupied, Woodfields, on the road to Hodder Bridge. The driveway that takes you back to the village stretches dead straight for half-mile, flanked by two long oblongs of black water and rugby pitches, finally rounding a bend brings you back to Hobbiton. Or Hurst Green. Is it possible that the map of Middle Earth works?