Lane Head Farm Directions

Article from our news letter "The Wittering Witch"
First-time visitors to the ancient village of Heptonstall usually head for the 13th century church where, in the graveyard, can be seen the headstone of David Hartley, 'the Cragg Vale coiner', who was hanged at York in 1780. Hartley headed a gang who squashed coins in order to increase the diameter then remove the surplus metal from the edge. However, the more pleasant but overgrown churchyard behind the new church is where the grave of poetess and writer Sylvia Plath is to be found. Sylvia Plath, who tragically committed suicide in 1963 at the early age of 31, was later described as the finest female poet and writer of her generation. Her 'Collected Poems' published in 1981 won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Originating from Boston USA, her 8 year marriage to Poet Laureate Ted Hughes was spent mainly among the bleak moors surrounding Heptonstall and to this day many devotees of her work lay blame for her untimely end with Hughes, some of who have attempted to remove the name Hughes from her headstone. Two more places worth a visit are the octagonal Methodist Chapel which was built in 1764 and is one of the oldest places of Methodist worship still in use, and the old Grammar School which dates back to 1642 and is now the village museum. Although the Walkley Clog factory at Mytholmroyd is to be developed as swanky apartments, there is still a nearby unit where you can see clogs being made in the traditional manner. The most popular walk in the area is Hardcastle Crags. Nature trails and stepping stones are just some of the delights of this wooded valley
The tranquillity of Heptonstall has not always been so. In the early 20th century the upper Calder Valley was transformed into a scene from the Wild West, when hordes of navvies were engaged in building 3 huge reservoirs on remote moorland above Hebden Bridge. A 5 mile railway from the reservoirs to the depot at Heptonstall brought hundreds of men and their families to a hutted township, without running water or sanitation (and plagued by typhus), dubbed 'Dawson City' after its famous Klondyke predecessor. Earning themselves a reputation for lawlessness and immorality, they were tough, hard-living people who spent their wages on drinking and gambling, and much brawling and fighting were commonplace. Two of the settlement's most outrageous characters - Mrs Adams and Mrs Nolan - a pair of female cooks who, dubbed the Queens of Dawson City, ran lodging houses for the single navvies. It is sufficient to say 'their antics became legendary'.