The White Bear pub in Cross Hills was once the regular meeting place of a notorious band of poachers. The men, who went by names such as Ben ‘Spenom’ Snowden and ‘Old Wasner’, mostly hailed from nearby Glusburn and Cowling.

Dressed in their uniform of skin cap and coat with large pockets, they met to sup beer, smoke their clay pipes and discuss sport – much like the men of today.

But what they plotted on the last Saturday in February of 1859 was to end in a bloody and vicious battle between them and “the enemy” – the local gamekeepers.

After supping two or three pints, their chat turned to business. A few had learned that the gentleman of an estate had put the word out that he would pay handsomely for some of the famous Broughton Estate hares.

The estate was well-known in the area for its fine, sporting traditions. Some years before, it had had its own pack of hounds and ran celebrated coursing meetings – described as second to none in the country.

And for any sporting gentleman keen to be the best in the country, the Broughton hares were considered the best for top-notch coursing.

So it was that the poachers could not resist the lure of safe money and congenial work. They decided there and then to take action and arranged to meet at Car Head to discuss tactics.

Once there, it was put to all that there would be no running away if there was to be any trouble. Two men immediately changed their minds and another was considered too drunk to take part.

The remaining 25, armed with cudgels, nets and sacks, set off by way of Stone Gap and Cross Green, over the moor towards Yellison Farm, to Sir Charles Robert Tempest’s estate – some three miles away.

What they didn’t know was that they had been spotted by the estate’s under gamekeeper, John Kidd, who lived at Scar Cliff and had been out that night keeping a watchful eye when he had seen the men approaching Cross Green.

The gamekeeper, realising something was afoot, dashed back to Broughton to raise the alarm and gather together as many men as he could. The estate men, loyal to Sir Charles, readily responded and also called on the help of men from neighbouring farms.

Armed with “sound poacher’s sticks”, the men set off to Dane Cliffe Wood where they lay in wait behind a wall next to the plantation.

Meanwhile, the poachers, oblivious to the fact the alarm had been raised, had set up camp in a barn near Dane Cliffe wood, where their sacks and bags – to carry away their spoils – were later to be discovered.

The poachers set their nets round one side of the wood and prepared to chase the hares into the traps.

But a small group, who were not involved in the chasing, strayed too close to the watchers and were immediately set upon. All 15 gamekeepers and estate men jumped on the poachers, knocking them quickly to the ground.

But the poachers shouted out for help, and the fight began in earnest.

Some 50 years after the notorious event and in response to a letter in the Craven Herald, a George Moore, from Broughton, gave his account of the battle.

Mr Moore, who claimed to have known all the men involved, said he would never forget the pools of blood at the scene.

He described how more than 40 determined men fought long and hard and how murder had only been prevented because none had been armed with guns.

“Imagine about 40 or more men fighting in a field in the dim starlight, friend and foe barely distinguishable, with their passion at fever beat; each man with a poacher’s stick and each with the passion of strong men to kill each other,” he wrote. Heavy branches were torn from two nearby willow trees to use as weapons and, by the end of it, none escaped injury.

“Fortunately, neither side had firearms, or murder would have been committed,” wrote Mr Moore.

In Mr Moore’s view, the watchers triumphed – because they knew who they were hitting in the dim light.

The two gamekeepers, John Stott and John Kidd, followed the retreating poachers, but six of them returned and beat the keepers, almost battering them to death.

The journey home for the poachers was long and hard. One, a giant of a man called Big Tom Emmott, or Tom o’ t’ Windhill, had been beaten very badly and had to be carried by his friends.

Tom, known locally for his ability to tame the wildest of horses, had turned down a job with Wombwell’s Menagerie and had only turned up on the night because he’d had a row with his girlfriend.

His friends, believing him to be dead, laid him down in the heather, but he opened his eyes and asked if they’d won. He was eventually taken home in a dog cart and then taken away, out of harm’s way, to Manchester.

Others nearly fainted as they crossed a river and another was left in a barn, until he could be collected the next day.

But, the day after, Cowling and Glusburn were full of policemen trying to secure arrests. One of the poachers’ dogs, Lassie, caught at the scene, was taken to the home of her suspected owner.

A young boy in the house recognised her, but was thumped into silence, while the man of the house claimed a large wound on his head had been caused when he had ‘tummelled off t’ hay-mow’. Not to be put off, the police arrested the man and made him feed Lassie every day, so they could judge whether she recognised him.

She never did and the man was released. Years later, he told Mr Moore that poor Lassie had been “leathered” so much that she would not recognise her owner.

Another poacher was arrested without his coat and taken before the gamekeepers to be identified. Given a policeman’s coat and presented before the ailing gamekeepers, he was not recognised and was also released.

Two of the men, Tom o’ t’ Windhill and Spenom, were brought back from Manchester, where they had fled. Together with a third poacher, Binns, they appeared at Skipton Magistrates’ Court before being sent for trial at York Assizes.

But when they appeared, in July 1859, they were acquitted – because their identities could not be proved.

Mr Moore, whose description of the battle in the Craven Herald was accompanied by a picture of the willow trees near where it was said to have happened, concluded that the group then disbanded.

Though, the report adds, they were never to be trusted: “The head gamekeeper was a native of Glusburn and nearly all the poachers came from Glusburn and Cowling, so he kept a close eye on them.”