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Hebden Bridge is a market town in the Calderdale district of West Yorkshire, England. It is in the Upper Calder Valley, west of Halifax and 14 miles (21 km) north-east of Rochdale, at the confluence of the River Calder and the Hebden Water. The town is the largest settlement in the civil parish of Hebden Royd.
In 2015, the Calder ward, covering Hebden Bridge, Old Town, and part of Todmorden, had a population of 12,167. The town had a population of 4,500.
Steep hills with fast-flowing streams and access to major wool markets meant that Hebden Bridge was ideal for water-powered and the town developed during the 19th and 20th centuries; it is said that at one time Hebden was known as "Trouser Town" because of the large amount of clothing manufacturing. Watercolour artist Thomas Frederick Worrall, who lived in nearby Pecket Well, depicted the mills in around 1900. Includes a copy of a Worrall painting of Hebden Bridge. Drainage of the marshland, which covered much of the Upper Calder Valley before the Industrial Revolution, enabled construction of the road which runs through the valley. Before it was built, travel was only possible via the ancient packhorse route which ran along the hilltop, dropping into the valleys wherever necessary. The wool trade was served by the Rochdale Canal (running from Sowerby Bridge to Manchester) and the Manchester & Leeds Railway (later the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway) (running from Leeds to Manchester and Burnley).
Hebden Bridge also grew to include a Picture House (seating 500), which remains open to present day, and offices for Hebden Bridge Urban District Council. Hebden Bridge has no swimming pool, although for some years there was a small training pool for children in the adult education centre on Pitt Street. Hebden Bridge had its own cooperative but, during the 1960s, it was fraud and went bankrupt. The old Co-op building became a hotel and was later converted into flats. The Co-op returned in the 1980s with a supermarket on Market Street, on the site of an old mill.
During the Second World War Hebden Bridge was designated a "reception area" and took in evacuees from industrial cities.
During the 1970s and 1980s the town saw an influx of artists, writers, photographers, musicians, alternative practitioners, teachers, Green and New Age activists and more recently, wealthier 'yuppie' types .Evidenced by the drastic increase in temporary holiday accommodation and monopolised rental market which means local residents struggle to find reasonably priced housing in the area. This in turn saw a boom in tourism to the area. During the 1990s Hebden Bridge became a dormitory town, because of its proximity to major towns and cities both sides of the Pennines and its excellent rail links to Manchester, Bradford and Leeds.
On 6 July 2003, Hebden Bridge was granted Fairtrade Zone status. On 6 July 2014, Stage 2 of the 2014 Tour de France, from York to Sheffield, passed through the town.
Hebden Bridge Urban District was established in 1894. In 1937, the council merged with Mytholmroyd Urban District to become Hebden Royd Urban District. Hebden Bridge Urban District was administered as part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. These were abolished in the reforms introduced in the Local Government Act 1972. They were replaced by West Yorkshire, the metropolitan borough of Calderdale and Hebden Royd Town Parish. The town council is a parish council. Recently, it has attracted praise for its commitment to eco-friendly policies, Sunday Telegraph 22 July 2007, p.C12. following the example of Modbury in effectively banning all plastic shopping bags, thus becoming the largest community in Europe to do so. The ban is not legally enforceable, but rather a voluntary agreement between local shop owners and the community at large.
Hebden Bridge Town Hall and adjoining fire station is a Grade II listed building, built in 1898. The building was transferred from Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council to Hebden Bridge Community Association on a 40-year lease (now extended to 125 years) on 1 April 2010, along with funds for basic maintenance work. Substantial volunteer time was put into renovation works and fundraising to secure the building's future. The £3.7 million raised was used to create a small enterprise centre and new community facilities on land adjacent. More than 450 local people signed up as "Friends of the Town Hall" and became able to vote for the trustees.
Population changes in the 1990s led to a demand for more houses. This has proved to be extremely controversial for a number of reasons. The limited availability of houses has meant that prices have risen sharply (for example, a house valued at £54,000 in 1998 was valued at nearly £150,000 in 2004). Demand for new houses is also a contentious issue as many of the sites for proposed development are areas such as fields or woodland that some local residents feel should be left as they are.
Hebden Bridge has attracted artists, and has developed a small New Age community. In the 1980s and 1990s, a prominent lesbian intentional community grew up in nearby Todmorden, and subsequently Hebden Bridge, "promoting forms of queer intimacy outside of the nuclear family unit", with "a close-knit community of care" and mutual support, sharing childcare and community events, such as a "famous Todmorden Women’s Disco" held monthly. The nature of that community has changed with evolving queer politics, away from lesbian feminism and towards "homonormativity assimilation". Hebden Bridge had the highest number of lesbians per head in the UK.
In April 2005, Hebden Bridge was named the fourth quirkiest place in the world by High Life (the British Airways flight magazine) and was described as "modern and stylish in an unconventional and stylish way".
The town was documented in the 2009 film Shed Your Tears And Walk Away, which made controversial claims about the levels of drug and alcohol abuse in the town, and consequent deaths among young people.
Walkley's Clog Mill is one of the country's leading English clogs manufacturers. It moved from its original home at Falling Royd to a site on Midgley Road in Mytholmroyd.
Acre Mill was an asbestos factory in the hilltop settlement of Old Town, owned by Cape plc. It was opened in 1939 to meet the demand for gas mask filters made from blue asbestos during the Second World War, and diversified into the production of other asbestos products, including rope, pipe lagging and textile, after the war. In 1970, the company closed the mill and moved to Westmorland. The mill was the subject of a 1971 World in Action investigation entitled " The Dust at Acre Mill" which revealed how the factory broke the law regarding asbestos-dust control between 1940 and 1970. By 1979, 12% of a total of 2,200 former employees had asbestos-related disease. The mill was demolished in 1979. Cape Insulation also operated a second factory at Hangingroyd Mill.
Hebden Bridge has built a reputation for "great little shops" and has an unusually high density of independent shops for a UK town of its size with more than 20 cafes and tea rooms, and about 20 pubs, micro pubs and restaurants. In a national survey by the New Economics Foundation in 2010 Hebden Bridge was ranked sixth on a diversity scale and was praised for its independent shops and unique shopping experience. The Fox and Goose, West Yorkshire's first Co-Operative pub, is owned by 262 residents of Hebden Bridge. It was established in March 2014.
In February 2016, Hebden Bridge won as the "Best Small Outdoor Market" in the Great British Market Awards run by the National Association of British Market Authorities (NABMA). In December 2016, Hebden Bridge won the "Great British High Street Award" in the "Small Market Town" category, after most shops, cafes and businesses had bounced back better and more flood resilient than before the Boxing Day floods 2015; Hebden Bridge also won a second award as the People's Choice.
The Stubbing Wharf is an 18th-century inn located alongside the Rochdale Canal, in which the poet Ted Hughes set his poem "Stubbing Wharfe". Hughes was born in neighbouring Mytholmroyd, and his former home Lumb Bank on the outskirts of Hebden Bridge is run as a creative writing centre by the Arvon Trust.
The video for the Talk Talk song "My Foolish Friend" was filmed in and around Hebden Bridge in 1983. The band The Dream Academy filmed the first video for their hit single "Life in a Northern Town" in Hebden Bridge in 1984. The singer Haddaway also filmed a music video in the town in 1995 for his single "Lover Be Thy Name".
The BBC One crime drama series Happy Valley, written by Huddersfield-born Sally Wainwright, broadcast in 2014-2023, was filmed and set in and around the town. Its ironic title refers to the drug users and providers in the area. Local landmarks, such as the graveyard at St Thomas the Apostle Church, the canal and the landscapes provided a backdrop to the narrative. The show received critical acclaim and was expected to lead to a noticeable increase in local tourism. A second series was filmed in 2015 and broadcast during 2016.
In 2020, Steve Coogan's "From the Oasthouse" podcast featured his character Alan Partridge stating that his daughter Denise lived in Hebden Bridge, which Partridge says explains her reluctance to have children.
Until 2014, the town hosted the Hebden Bridge Blues Festival during the Spring Bank Holiday at the end of May. Established in 2011, the festival was voted the Best British Blues Festival in the 2012 and 2013 British Blues Awards.
The indie rock band Bogshed were formed in Hebden Bridge in 1984, originally as the 'Amazing Roy North Penis Band'.
In 2017, the Hebden Bridge Community Association received The Queen's Award for Voluntary Service, the MBE for voluntary groups.
The town's local radio stations are BBC Radio Leeds and community station Calder Valley Radio. The area's commercial stations, which include daytime West Yorkshire news and travel, are Hits Radio West Yorkshire, Greatest Hits Radio West Yorkshire, Heart Yorkshire and Capital Yorkshire.
The Hebden Bridge Times is the town's local newspaper.
Bus services in the town are operated by three companies. First West Yorkshire operate the 12-minute frequency 592 service between Halifax and Todmorden, with services extending to Burnley (592) and Rochdale (590) in evenings and at weekends. Keighley Bus Company connect Hebden Bridge with Haworth, Oxenhope and Keighley with its hourly BrontëBus service. The "Hebden Bridger" is a local bus network operated by TLC Travel, that operates across seven services to local towns and hilltop villages. TLC Travel also operate the hourly 900 and 901 services between Hebden Bridge and Huddersfield.
Leeds Bradford is the nearest airport, accessible by bus and train.
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