Place:Hebden, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

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source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Hebden is a small village and civil parish in the Craven district of North Yorkshire, England, and one of four villages within the ecclesiastical parish of Linton (near Skipton). It lies near Grimwith Reservoir and Grassington in Wharfedale, within the Yorkshire Dales National Park. In 2001 it had a population of 216 and 133 dwellings.

The village has its recognisable roots in manorial times, but during the 19th century it became a substantial industrial village with lead mining and cotton milling as the main industries. Since then it has reverted to a small rural community.

Hebden and Linton (near Skipton) were in Staincliffe and Ewcross Wapentake. From 1894 until 1974, they were located in Skipton Rural District.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

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,

 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. 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. It broadly followed the line of the North Craven Fault avoiding the moorland peat bogs, and became a busy packhorse route for traders.

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. The moors to the north-west of the village were enclosed in 1857.^[1]

The last stretch of Hebden Beck before it reaches the River Wharfe was used to power a corn mill in the Middle Ages, and corn milling survived into the middle of the 19th century. In the 14th century Fountains Abbey had a fulling mill in the village. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. The stone-built Ibbotson Institute, now the community hall, was completed in 1903.

The coming of the Yorkshire Dales Railway to Threshfield in 1902 opened up Hebden as a destination for day visitors and holiday makers. 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. 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.

Research Tips

hebdenhistory.uk - A website containing transcriptions of historical data and images relating to Hebden, including baptisms, marriages, burials, cemetery memorials, census 1841-1921, 1939 Register, school registers, electorate lists, land tax assessments, historical descriptions, newspaper cuttings, enclosure and tithe data, old maps, and local almanacs, and articles on the history of the township.

• British History Online (Victoria County Histories) do not cover the West Riding of Yorkshire
• GENUKI has a page on all three ridings of Yorkshire and pages for each of the ecclesiastical parishes in the county. Under each parish there is a list of the settlements within it and brief description of each. The list is based on a gazetteer dated 1835 and there may have been a number of alterations to the parish setup since then. However, it is worthwhile information for the pre civil registration era. GENUKI provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and the submitter is very firm about his copyright. This should not stop anyone from reading the material.
• The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date from more recent data. The wiki has a link to English Jurisdictions 1851 which gives the registration district and wapentake for each parish, together with statistics from the 1851 census for the area.
• A Vision of Britain through Time, Yorkshire West Riding, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions. Descriptions provided are usually based on a gazetteer of 1870-72.

• Map of the West Riding divisions in 1888 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time
• Map of West Riding divisions in 1917 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. In other counties, the map for 1900 has been used, but it is not coming up in Vision of Britain's list.
• Map of West Riding divisions in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time

• The above three maps indicate the boundaries between parishes, etc., but for a more detailed view of a specific area try a map from this selection. The oldest series are very clear at the third magnification offered. Comparing the map details with the GENUKI details for the same area is well worthwhile.
• Yorkshire has a large number of family history and genealogical societies. A list of the societies will be found on the Yorkshire, England page.
• In March 2018 Ancestry announced that its file entitled "Yorkshire, England: Church of England Parish Records, 1538-1873" has been expanded to include another 94 parishes (across the three ridings) and expected it to be expanded further during the year. The entries are taken from previously printed parish registers.