Heptonstall is really quite remarkable, very few places in the 21st Century remain as well preserved, under-rated and encapsulating as this ancient village. There, nearly 1,000ft high in the pennines it proudly sleeps on top of a steep hill on the north side of the Calder Valley, overlooking Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire.

Like many Yorkshire towns, Heptonstall once thrived on the woollen trade. However, the Industrial Revolution brought water and steam powered mills which meant that the industry needed to be located in the tributary valleys of the Calder. Hence the development of Hebden Bridge below.

The village, typical of many Yorkshire villages was a centre for hand-loom weaving and the wealth of this once great industry shows in Heptonstall. There is still a cloth hall at which the finished work was traded before Piece Hall in Halifax was established - this remains to this day, as does the old Grammar School, the skeleton of Church of St Thomas a Becket, commonly known as the 'old church'; the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, or the 'new Church' and of course the Methodest Church - which is the oldest Methodist Church to be in continual use in the world! Details of the Churches can be found Here. And if that wasn't enough there is even a dungeon. All have played their own respective roles in the great tapestry that is Heptonstall's history.

There are also two pubs in the town - The Cross Inn, believed to date from the early seventeenth century and The White Lion, - more details can be found on the Links page.

About...

Heptonstall Grammar School

The Rev. Thomas Greenwood endowed the Old Grammar School in Heptonstall in July of 1642. The school was was then maintained by rents from property at School Land Farm in Colden. The school was rebuilt in 1771, however, in 1889 the school closed becoming a branch of the Yorkshire Penny Bank in 1898. The building was then given to the council in 1954, and is now preserved as the Heptonstall Museum.