Hebden, North Yorkshire

Hebden ( ) is a village and civil parish in the Craven District of North Yorkshire, England, and one of four villages in the ecclesiastical parish of Linton. It lies near Grimwith Reservoir and Grassington, in Wharfedale in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. In 2011 it had a population of 246.

Hebden has a church, a hotel and public house, a tea room, a community hall, and is served by buses. Until 1983 it had a primary school. Hebden straddles a cross roads. The east–west B6265 road connects it with Grassington to the west, and from there south to the market town of Skipton, from Hebden. To the east, the road crosses a bridge over Hebden Gill, built in 1827, and thence over the watershed to Pateley Bridge in Nidderdale, distant.

Main Street, the village high street, continues south as Mill Lane, towards the bank of the River Wharfe and the villages of Hartlington and Burnsall, the latter being just over away. The road to the north runs to the small hamlet of Hole Bottom, from there continuing as a track onto Grassington Moor.

The layout of the village largely originates from manorial times, but during the 19th century the village grew to become a substantial industrial community with lead mining and a textile mill as the main sources of employment. Since then it has reverted to a rural community, and is a focal point for walkers and cyclists wishing to enjoy the local countryside.

History

The name ''Hebden'' may be derived from either ''heope'', Old English for a rose-hip or ''heopa'', Old English for a bramble, and ''dene'', Old English for a valley, or from the Scandinavian ''Hebban'', a topographical description of a ridge forming an elevated site above a small valley. Two Bronze Age stone circles and remnants of huts on the moors above the village show that the area has been settled since earliest times,
Joy (2002), pp. 14–15. and a hoard of 33 silver dinari dating from 30 to 170 AD found in a local field indicates that the Romans had a presence.
The hoard is now on display at the Craven Museum & Gallery. An Iron Age or Romano-British settlement has been tentatively identified on the banks of Gate Up Gill on the moors to the north-west of the village.
Place names such as ''Scale Haw'' indicate the Norse left their influence.Joy (2002), p. 16. There is no documentary record of the area until a mention in the ''Domesday Book'' of 1086, in which the settlement was referred to as ''Hebedene'' held by Osbern d'Arques, of Thorpe Arch. At the time of the Conquest the land was held by ''Dreng'', which is a Nordic name.

During medieval times, an important east–west droving route used to move sheep between winter pastures around Fountains Abbey and summer pastures around Malham, crossed the Hebden Beck at Hebden.Raistrick (1976), p. 5. It broadly followed the line of the North Craven Fault avoiding the moorland peat bogs, and became a busy packhorse route for traders.Joy (2002), pp. 7,20–21.

Although no property in the village is older than the early 17th century, its layout reflects its development in medieval times as a planned village. Eight toft compartments are discernible to the west of Main Street, and the outline of the four surrounding common fields, now divided, may be identified from the pattern of dry stone walls. The fields were largely arable, providing the village with most of its food requirements, but are now farmed exclusively for pasture and hay. The village manor house was on land now occupied by Hebden Hall at the south end of Main Street.Joy (2002), pp. 18–26. The moors to the north-west of the village were enclosed in 1857.

The last stretch of Hebden Beck before it reaches the River Wharfe was used to power a corn mill in the Middle Ages,Joy (2002), p. 19. and corn milling survived into the middle of the 19th century.Joy (2002), p. 46. In the 14th century Fountains Abbey had a fulling mill in the village.Raistrick (1976), p. 15 In 1791 a three-storey textile mill was built a little way above the corn mill. It housed 54 spinning frames and was productive until 1870 when it was driven out of business by the more efficient stream-driven machinery of the industrial revolution. At its peak, the mill employed more than 70 men, women, and children. The building was used for other purposes including a roller skating rink until it was demolished in 1967.Joy (2002), pp. 46–50.

Lead mining on Grassington Moor became important in the 18th century, and as a result of the mines' success, a number of the mine owners promoted the provision of the Grassington to Pateley Bridge turnpike road, which was begun in 1760 and provided an all-weather route across the moors for wagons.Raistrick (1973), p. 102.Joy (2002), pp. 38–39. From the early 19th century Hebden was a dormitory village for some miners, contributing to the population rising to more than 500 in the 1830s.Joy (2002), p. 50. In the early 1850s profitable mines were established in the parish to the north of the village on veins associated with Grassington Moor, which helped sustain the population. Although activity continued sporadically into the last decade of the century, the accessible ore was largely exhausted by 1865, and the population declined to a low of 199 in 1901.

As the Hebden Trust Lords shared the mineral royalties, the mines brought prosperity which gave rise to the remodelling and redevelopment of much of the village. Green Terrace, which includes the old post office, was built in the 1870s, and Main Street was transformed from a back lane into the high street.Joy (2002), pp. 69–70. The village school, with working clock and bell tower, was built in 1874, and the Methodist Chapel was rebuilt in 1876 to front onto Main Street.Joy (2002), p.70. The stone-built Ibbotson Institute, now the community hall, was completed in 1903.Joy (2002), p. 80.

The coming of the Yorkshire Dales Railway to Threshfield in 1902 opened up Hebden as a destination for day visitors and holiday makers. p. 112. A purpose-built timber guest house was opened in 1909 at the south end of the village by the Co-operative Holiday Association, founded by Thomas Arthur Leonard. It passed into private hands in 1960, and continued as a holiday centre until 1990, mainly catering for school parties.Joy (2002), p. 83. It was demolished in 2016 and replaced with a private residence.

The village stores and post office shut at the end of 2013 after 100 years of trading. The gold painted George V Type E wall post box was removed from the outside wall of the post office (now an exhibit in the Postal Museum), and replaced with a modern gold painted lamp box a few metres away; and the K6 Tudor Crown phone box was decommissioned, and set up at the cross-roads as a street ornament.

Although it now has a number of second homes, holiday cottages and commuters,
with eight working farms, a fish farm, coach and haulage companies, Hebden remains a working and thriving community.

Governance

Hebden was a township in the parish of Linton, part of the east division of the wapentake of Staincliffe and Ewcross in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. It became a separate civil parish in Skipton Rural District in 1866 as a result of the enactment of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1866

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