Scammonden or Dean Head was a village close to

Huddersfield Huddersfield is a market town in the Kirklees district in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confluence into ...

, in the Dean Head Valley, England, before the valley was flooded to create Scammonden Reservoir in the 1960s. The

M62 motorway The M62 is a west–east trans-Pennine motorway in Northern England, connecting Liverpool and Hull via Manchester, Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield; of the route is shared with the M60 orbital motorway around Manchester. The road is part of th ...

crosses the dam wall and then passes through a cutting to the west over which

Scammonden Bridge Scammonden Bridge, also known locally as the Brown Cow Bridge (after the nearby Brown Cow Inn, now closed), spans the Deanhead cutting carrying the B6114 (the former A6025) Elland to Buckstones road over the M62 motorway in Kirklees, West York ...

carries the B6114. The Chapel of St Bartholomew still exists, as does the old vicarage, which is now home to Scammonden Sailing Club.

History

Historically in the

West Riding of Yorkshire The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county County of York, West Riding (the area under the control of West Riding County Council), abbreviated County ...

, Scammonden or Dean Head was a

township A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, C ...

covering more than 2,000 acres. In the 1870s it had a church, a Baptist chapel, a national school, a post office and 190 houses. Industry in the village included cotton-spinning and woollen manufacture and there were freestone quarries. A motorway and dam across the Dean Head Valley was proposed in the early 1960s and work began in 1964. Most buildings in the village were demolished or submerged in the reservoir when it was filled in 1969. Geologists considered the church and school would become unsafe once the dam was full. The church school closed in 1970 and is now a private residence. Below Scammonden Road is an archaeological site of a late prehistoric settlement known as Meg Dyke.

Geography

Scammonden is surrounded by the moorland of the Pennines east of Blackstone Edge. About 900 acres were enclosed in 1820 but the surrounding hills are uncultivated rough pasture. Roads from

Elland Elland is a market town in Calderdale, in the county of West Yorkshire, England. It is situated south of Halifax, by the River Calder and the Calder and Hebble Navigation. Elland was recorded as ''Elant'' in the Domesday Book of 1086. It h ...

and

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

passed through the village.

Religion

There has been a chapel in Scammonden since 1615 and the church remains active. Scammonden was a chapelry in the Huddersfield ecclesiastical parish. Its old chapel was rebuilt at a cost of £1000 in 1813. It was replaced by the church in 1865. The church roof was replaced in 2002 with the aid of grants from

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

, charities and other community fundraising activities.

References

External links

History of the Church
{{authority control Villages in West Yorkshire Geography of Kirklees Former populated places in West Yorkshire

History

Geography

Religion

See also

References

External links