Hebden Bridge
Elevated view of Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire.
Author: Unknown
Date: not dated
Location: Hebden Bridge
Format: Postcard - Colour
Document ID: 100230
Library ID: 34561244
Hebden Bridge was formed in the same way as many of the other towns along the valley bottom. The bridge was built to improve navigation and trade. At the time the Domesday Book was collated, the area around what is now known as Hebden Bridge would have been marshland, but as the climate change, the valley bottom dried out. The villages that are mentioned in Domesday Book are Heptonstall and Erringden, both of which are situated up on the hillside.
The crossing was originally a ford, with the bridge being built in the 16th century [1510]. When the packhorse roads were introduced in the 16th century, many more traders and workers came through the town. The reason many weavers' cottages were situated along the roadside was to attract passing traders.
As mechanisation increased and waterpower was relied upon, so mills and factories were built in the valley bottoms. At Hebden Bridge a fulling mill was erected in the 13th century, followed by weaving mills in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Rochdale Canal was opened in Hebden Bridge in 1794, and completed as a through route in 1804. The train line opened fifty years later in 1840.
Hebden Bridge witnessed a resurgence of interest with the hippy movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, property prices soared and it is now an affluent part of the borough of Calderdale, with good rail and road links.
