Green Edge and Cold Edge are two distinctive yet different moorland localities within the upper section of Warley Township in the Parish of Halifax. It is within this particular geographical context that much of this socially based account takes place. For the most part it is against the backdrop of the industrial revolution in the manufacturing of textiles that the life and times of ordinary working families is recorded. It is in focusing upon six generations of one family - principally the life of John Holgate (1791-1860) - that the story of human experience unfolds.