Todmorden & Hebden Bridge Historical Almanack for 1869 (Document ID: 101015)
Frontispiece and title page of the Todmorden and Hebden Bridge Historical Almanack.
Author: W. Barker and J. Firth
Date: 1869
Location: Todmorden
Format: Almanac
Document ID: 101015
Library ID: 691-905
The Todmorden & Hebden Bridge Historical Almanack, 1869.
p1: Frontispiece with illustration of Fielden Monument, Todmorden. The picture is of the statue of "Honest" John Fielden, which was originally erected by the Town Hall in 1875, and then moved to Fielden Square in 1890. It was removed to Centre Vale Park in 1939.
p2: Title page of Almanack "containing a Record of all the important Events from the earliest period to the present time".
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 to trade. At the time the Domesday Book was collated Hebden Bridge would have been a marshland, but as the climate change, the valley bottom dried out. The villages that are mentioned 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 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.
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