The Hodgkinson's Farm Stone Head

As I was saying, when I was a young kid, there was/is somewhere an old book or pamphlet in which is listed the stone head at Hodgkinson’s Farm. I think the text was saying the head was perhaps ancient like some other stone heads that were found at Smithills Hall. I decided to visit the farm as it was nearby…

There was a slight problem though, I’d been chased out a a field there previously for trying to excavate a ‘mysterious’ mound, but there’s a small lane next to the farm buildings with a public footpath leading off across the fields and I was able to take a couple of photos with an old film camera.

I’m glad I got some photos because the farm and its outbuildings were later converted into modern houses. I remember the whole side of the old farmhouse was removed - I think along with the roof and at one point I saw the top of the gable end was gone - along with the stone head. The photos aren’t so good because the camera had a fixed lens with no zoom at all.

Contrary to the text, the head doesn’t look ‘ancient’ to me, it looks old but not like the ‘Celtic’ stone heads which are usually quite round, like that of The Count from Sesame Street. I’m not actually sure that it’s stone either, the top seems to be broken off in the photos and the break seems to lack the patina of the face area. I suppose that patina is green and represents living organic material so maybe not that old itself. The head is protruding from this thin render that has been inscribed with block shapes. The rest of the house can be seen to be of stone.

The strange thing is, this end of the current building - and the one shown in the photo before renovation, seems to be a similar shape to the original farmhouse, as shown in the 1849 OS map but at a slight angle. What’s going on with that? Someone rotated the building slightly? The early map isn’t accurate?

Well I had a good thing and found that in-between the 1849 map and the building as I remember it has undergone a great deal of change. The original farmhouse was indeed a similar shape to that of today, even down to the little niche where the door was, but it’s not the same building at all. By 1894-ish the building has been removed and a much smaller, simple rectangular building - at a slight angle to that of the original that was pretty much aligned to North/South or East/West. The building was enlarged a bit but still a simple rectangle by the 1930 plan. In fact I can’t find an interim map or plan that shows how the building was extended further to replicate the shape of the original. Today the shape is much the same except there has been an extension in the southern axis. Perhaps sometime after 1930 an effort was made to replicate the footprint of the original farmhouse but with owners didn’t know the current building was at a different angle to the original.

As the stone head is on the gable end of the part of the building we know to have been constructed after 1930, we can assume the head wasn’t in its original position - unless it dates from that time. Interestingly, if the head came from the same gable end of the original house it would have looked due west.

I don’t know what happened to this stone head, whether it ended up in the demolition rubble or was picked out by someone. I don’t think it’s in the exterior of the current building. Maybe if I could locate the date of the text I’d read as a kid, it’d be possible to date it to one of the earlier building layouts.