As a busy mother of young children, I recently found myself needing some respite for the first time. When the opportunity came up, I knew exactly where I was going to go: Hebden Bridge. I come from the North Pennines, and so the South Pennines feel like home whenever I am there. Calderdale holds a place dear to my heart, feeling like a liminal space where Yorkshire and Lancashire meet. My family come from both if you dig deep enough, so it makes sense that that border would trigger something inside me that yearns to be there.
I set off with my littlest witchling and arrived at our Airbnb, an annexe on a house in Hebden itself. Crossing the M62 on Saddleworth Moor feels like flying and making that long descent into the valley does something to the soul.
Calderdale has long been known to be one of those spaces of incredible landscape that forms inspiration for some of our greatest artists of all forms. Sylvia Plath herself is buried in the graveyard of a small church up the steep track to Heptonstall, once much more densely populated than Hebden below. Her husband Ted Hughes, himself a poet, was born in Mytholmroyd and together they were regular visitors to the dale, writing about it and visiting Ted’s parents who lived there.
Other literary connections include renowned poet Simon Armitage who hails from the Colne Valley, next one over from Calderdale, and the Brontë sisters born a stone’s throw away in Haworth, with Charlotte’s epic Wuthering Heights being set on the moors.
Into the centre of Hebden Bridge itself, and one can find a treasure trove of independent shops. Vibrant, passionate people flock to the town to sell their wares and as ‘offcumdems’ have all but invaded, the locals seem bemused but happy. Hebden Bridge has become a capital for the alternative, the witches, the hippies, and of course, the lesbians - with its LGBTQIA+ friendly atmosphere cited as the reason so many make it their home.
Off went the baby and I, down the hill into this place that feeds my soul, and we wandered. I had done my research prior; it had been a couple of years since I last visited, and a lot can change in that time. I was excited to visit the new-ish Crooked Books, a witchcraft and occult bookshop located on the busy Crown Street. Run by Rosie, who I met there alongside her mother, Crooked Books has a vast selection of witchcraft and folklore books - including a children’s section. I bought a copy of What We See in the Stars by Kelsey Oseid, for my children, honest, and a print by local linocut printmaker Vix Fay of an autumnal scene that I just had to have. I also got to visit Earth Spirit upstairs in Spirals on Market Street, a wonderful mix of prints, local art, witchy and hippie fashion, and more books, crystals, natural remedies…you name it, they can provide it. Others worth a mention are The V&A Collective, specialising in, in their words, ‘quirky items for the curious’ alongside the V&A actually standing for ‘Vegan & Awesome’ and not Victoria and Albert as one may assume with the shop being found on Albert Street. My paganism involves worship of the earth itself and my craft is as headstrong about animal rights as I am myself, so being a long term vegan means something to me spiritually as well as morally. I was excited to get to speak to these shop owners and hope to see them featured as Traders of the Month in issues soon!
Back to our room after meandering along the Rochdale Canal, I sipped copious amounts of tea and read about the area, devouring a book my hosts had provided. I continued the theme listening to podcast episodes produced by Calderdale Libraries interviewing local folklore experts.
Nowadays, Todmorden - a market town a little further along the valley - has its own Folklore Centre, but for the past thirty three years local folklorist John Billingsley has been the editor, covering everything from Calderdale folklore to UFO sightings, now branching out to have worldwide information. John is a regular interviewee on History Out Loud, the podcast referenced prior, and I heard a fascinating episode regarding coffinways through the area, the paths that folk would have used to carry their dead from place of death to place of burial in times gone by.
The Folklore Centre has a lot of fantastic events going on, and I hope to make it to some with the other PotN managers and link in with them some day.
I returned from my trip replenished with a full cup, ready to get straight back into parenting my little witchlings and resume in earnest my work both here and at the Pagan Federation. Prints on the wall and a brain filled with thoughts of the wild landscape I can’t wait to return to, Calderdale is the perfect spot for a pagan and folklore fuelled break.
By Sam Stoker
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