Hebden Bridge, Lancashire
Historical Description
Hebden Bridge, a small town and an ecclesiastical parish in Todmorden union, W.R. Yorkshire. The town stands in a deep valley, at the influx of the Hebden to the Calder, on the Rochdale Canal and the L. & Y.R., 5 miles E of the boundary with Lancashire, and 8 W by N of Halifax; is partly in the townships of Heptonstall, Wadsworth, Erring-den, and Stansfield; and has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Manchester, a railway station, two branch banks, a mechanics' institute, a newsroom, a public library, many large cotton factories, dyeworks, iron foundries, and a sawmill. Freestone is quarried, and the manufacture of cotton twist, calicoes, fustians, ginghams, checks, and shuttles is carried on. A local board of fifteen members was formed in 1866, and the district governed by it has an area of 478 acres; population, 6365. The scenery in its neighbourhood is remarkably fine, and Hardcastle Crags, about 3 miles from it, besides being strikingly picturesque in themselves, command a panoramic view equal or superior to the best in the valleys of the Dove and the Dee. The ecclesiastical parish was constituted in 1844, and is sometimes improperly called Mytholm. Population, 5746. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Wakefield; gross value, £300 with residence. Patron, the Vicar of Halifax. The church of St James was built in 1833, and is in the Pointed style, with an embattled tower; a chancel was added in 1876. There are three Baptist and two Wesleyan chapels. A weekly newspaper is published.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Yorkshire | |
Riding | West | |
Wapentake | Morley |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
Ancestry.co.uk, in association with Lancashire Archives, have images of the Parish Registers for Lancashire online.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Hebden Bridge from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Hebden-Bridge)
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Lancashire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Hebden Bridge are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Lancashire newspapers online: