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Taken from "A Lancashire Township. The History of Briercliffe-with-Extwistle". Roger Frost
Before the Conquest, Briercliffe and Extwistle were probably part of a vast area of woodland which covered almost all of North-east Lancashire. The few heavily wooded areas that remain are as near as we can get to the natural environment, and it is here that the greatest variety of plant life can be found.
It was to this Briercliffe, with its acres of woodland, swift-flowing streams and deep cloughs that primitive man came. At first he visited and then he settled. He hunted and gathered his food here, learned to farm here, and made his home here and buried his dead here. In fact one of the oldes settlements in Briercliffe may derive its name from an ancient burial. This is Burwains and there has been a farm on this site from at least the twelth century but settlement may pre-date the Norman Conquest. The name has had many different spellings over the years: Burrones (1639), Burrons (1644), Berwain’s and Burwaynes (1700). It probably means a ‘mound or cairn of earth and stones’, which may have been a place of burial though it is possible the mound could have been a boundary marker between estates.
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