Job Senior - The Rombalds Moor Hermit b 1780 - d 1857
_ The old sign over the entrance to the Hermit Inn at Woodhead carries a
picture of the eccentric Job Senior. Both Bogg and Speight in their
books about Wharfedale written a century ago mention him. In his early
days he had been a labourer, willing to do any job in Wharfedale. He
eventually made his home in a rough dwelling on Burley moor and came to
be known as the Hermit. A map of 1850 shows what is probably his “hut”
on a triangular plot of land near the Coldstone Beck, on the sharp right
bend of the Moor road above Robin Hole. It was a dilapidated dwelling.
Speight quotes an eye–witness account of Job Senior‘s antics in “his
primitive domicile”:
Here he used to hold high court, but the grand levee used to
take place on Sundays, when numbers of persons from Bradford and Leeds
used to assemble in front of his hut. There he gave them what he termed
his “Blast”, which was a composition of his own, to represent sweet
melody. The designing old man .. found that his loud chant brought him a
large store of coppers as he lay singing on his bed of dried brackens
and heather. When he made his ablutions I never heard, but there was
plenty of pure water in Coldstone Beck. He had great compass of voice
and his lowest notes were most powerful... . Going shooting on the moors
at the break of day, we have stopped to listen to old Job, who then had
no audience but was generally singing the 100th Psalm, and it was
beautifully sung, his loud voice echoing amongst the rocks above, and
sounding down far down in the valley
Speight concludes that he died in 1857 aged 77, and was buried in
Burley churchyard. The funeral was witnessed by a large crowd. “Such
like eccentrics are now of the past, and are not likely to be seen
again.”