As you leave the village you pass the parish church, where graves include that of David Hartley, who was hanged in York in 1770 for counterfeiting gold coins as a member of the notorious Cragg Vale Coiners. Just beyond the church are the ruins of a 15th-century chapel dedicated to St Thomas à Becket, next to which stands the village's Old Grammar School of 1642.
Heptonstall lies on an old route between Halifax and Burnley. The walled lane leading out to Heptonstall Crags, Eaves Lane, was once a route for packhorses and pedestrians, passing through the South Field of a medieval two-field farming system (with the North Field lying beyond the church). Farmers were allotted strips within the fields used alternatively for growing corn and left fallow, and the terraced hummocks of the ridge-and-furrow strips are still visible in house lawns.
Heptonstall Crags are an outcrop of gritstone offering excellent views down the Calder Valley, where the stone tower visible across the valley is Stoodley Pike, erected to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo (see my Stoodley Pike walk).
Down below is Colden Water. The area around here used to be owned by the monks of Fountains Abbey, who built a number of small watermills in the valley; although later converted to steam power, much of the early water engineering remains hidden in dense woods.
Murking Lane, another walled and partly paved lane, is followed for a time from Heptonstall Crags and forms part of the Calderdale Way long-distance footpath. At the top of this lane is an intersection of five of these Pennine tracks, and the route goes through Slack where a 17th-century finger-post indicates "Burnly" (an archaic spelling of Burnley).
A green lane lined with bilberry bushes leads you to a wooded ravine, and you descend to Hebden Water. The woods of Hebden Dale are a botanist's paradise with flora including enchanter's nightshade, wood anemones, yellow pimpernel, and pink campion, while treecreepers probe tree bark for insects.
You cross Hebden Water by a footbridge beside the millpond used to serve Gibson Mill. The deserted mill is named after Abraham Gibson, a cotton spinner, and next to it is a track with a stone bridge originally built as a toll bridge. Gibson Mill now has shops including a popular summer cafe. The route from Gibson Mill (following one of my walks) heads through lush woodland down Hebden Dale towards Midgehole, where woods are home to wood ants and spring bluebells. At Midgehole you cross Hebden Water by another old toll bridge and head uphill along a track.
At the top of the track there are excellent views over the town of Hebden Bridge, where steep lanes radiate at all angles and houses are built tall and narrow to make best use of scarce valley bottom land. A further steep hill returns you to Heptonstall and the starting point of the walk.
Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.
