Haslingden Grane is the glaciated upper portion of the valley of the River Ogden, which lies west of Haslingden and is in the north east section of the West Pennine Moors. To the north is Oswaldtwistle Moor, and to the south Musbury Heights. It was once the home of Grane village, and is easily accessible via the B6232/A6077 Grane Road which links to the M65 motorway and the A56. Grane valley is dominated by its three reservoirs, Holden Wood, Calf Hey and Ogden. The village Almost nothing now remains of Grane village. Yet before the construction of the reservoirs in the 19th century, the settlement of Haslingden Grane had a population of over 1,300. It had a church, a Methodist chapel, three mills and a school. Many of the inhabitants combined mill-work with small-scale farming. Quarrying was also an important activity, with the village being situated immediately to the north of the workings on Musbury Heights. There was also a brickwork in the village. The people were considered locally to be independent and frugal, and spoke with a strong, distinctive accent. Grane produced many local 'characters', such as the headmaster of Grane School, J.T. Pilling, who left the school to go gold prospecting in the Yukon. Grane was strongly Church of England, whereas most neighbouring communities were nonconformist in their religious beliefs. Haslingden stone was used as a building and paving material, and a lot of it was quarried above Grane from Musbury Heights quarry. A special narrow-gauge railway connected the quarry to Grane. The historian Chris Aspin notes in his book 'Haslingden', co-authored with Derek Pilkington, that the Grane community would 'almost certainly have objected' to being included under the Haslingden banner, and would have preferred to be considered as an independent community. Whisky distilling Grane was notorious as the centre of an illegal whisky distilling industry. Locally this was known as 'whisky spinning'. Great ingenuity was displayed in covering traces of the distilling operations, and many of the successful prosecutions appear to be the result of 'tip-offs' after village disputes. Excise officers, police and Inland Revenue raided Grane on 3 April 1857. At first they found nothing, but eventually - after three days - they uncovered hidden rooms and underground chambers and pipework dedicated to the distilling. There is a story that the daughter of a weaving family often delivered Grane whisky to a Haslingden hotel by donkey.