Photograph - Mono (Document ID: 100729)
Heptonstall Grammar School and West Laithe, Heptonstall, West Yorkshire.
Author: Unknown
Date: 1982
Location: Heptonstall
Format: Photograph - Mono
Document ID: 100729
Library ID: 986279
Two photographs of Heptonstall in 1982:
p1: Heptonstall Grammar School, viewed from Church Lane.
p2: Rear of 13 West Laithe & 16-22 Back Lane from nearby 3/5 Hepton Drive.
The community is mentioned as Heptone in the Domesday Book and the present name is first mentioned in 1253. The road through Heptonstall, called the Buttress, was an important 17th century packhorse route from Halifax to Colne and Burnley, Lancashire.
A Cloth Hall was built between by 1548 by the Waterhouse family of Shibden Hall and called Blackwell Hall after the London market. It was in use until superseded by Halifax Piece Hall and still stands in the village; it is now a private house.
In the 12th century, the Halifax district became too large for the single parish church at Halifax, and two additional churches were established at Elland and Heptonstall. The 13th century Parish Church of St Thomas a Becket was abandoned after damage caused by a storm in 1847, and the new Parish Church of St Thomas the Apostle was built in the same churchyard in 1850-1854. The tower and roofless main body of the mediaeval church remain.
In July 1642, the will of the Rev Thomas Greenwood endowed Heptonstall Grammar School in the village. This is now a local history museum. During the Civil War, in 1643, Heptonstall was a Roundhead garrison under the command of Colonel Robert Brayshaw.
The octagonal Methodist Chapel, designed by John Wesley and built in 1764, then rebuilt in 1802, is the oldest surviving chapel still in use (a claim contested by a similar chapel at Yarm). Rudyard Kipling's grandfather was a minister at the chapel before going out to India.
The grave of David Hartley, the Cragg Vale coiner, is in the original churchyard. That of Sylvia Plath, the US poet and Ted Hughes' wife, is in the new annexe on the western side of the old graveyard.
A old inter-community ritual insult from Heptonstall against Halifax proclaims:
Halifax is built of wax
Heptonstall of stone
To which the nettled Halifax folk would respond:
There's pretty girls in Halifax
In Heptonstall, there's none.
This kind of ritual insult between neighbouring communities is called a 'blason populaire'.
