Hebden Bridge News

More Events Announced For Anniversary Celebrations

Yet more events have been added to the programme of celebrations to mark the 500th birthday of Hebden’s packhorse bridge. The landmark bridge, originally built to smooth the progress of trade, has seen Hebden Bridge become a fair-trade town with more than its fair share of creativity and innovation.

The Book Case on Market Street has launched a Bridges Book Quiz with a prize of a £20 book token and, for children, a special HB500 family quiz with prizes for naming 10 characters from children’s fiction that features bridges. There will also be prizes for the best illustrated short story based on the packhorse bridge. Winners will be announced on June 19 and a selection of the stories published at www.bookcase.co.uk.

As well as the quizzes, Book Case literature experts have drawn up a timeline of books marking each decade from 1510 to 2010. Details and entry forms are available from the shop.

On May 3, Ed Westbrook will be reprising his hugely popular urban walk around the town. The Communications walk, which debuted with a group of 56 walkers in February, covers packhorse routes, early turnpikes, the coaching era, the Rochdale Canal, the Manchester-Leeds Railway, trams and buses and one or two less obvious aspects of communication. It starts in Bridge Gate by the old bridge at 2pm. There is a charge of £3.

From May 31 to June 5, the Pennine Spring Music Festival will be sharing its 25th birthday with the 500th anniversary in a programme of chamber, orchestral and vocal concerts, piano recitals and more.

The Handmade Parade open workshops start on June 5 and run until June 24. People of all ages are being invited make costumes, giant puppets and parade art as well as learn to stilt and play parade music ahead of the Handmade Parade on June 26. There are more details at www.hebdenbridgeparade.org.uk

On July 3, the Hepton Singers’ hold their summer festival concert, Spanning 500 years: music from 1510 to 2010, in Heptonstall Parish Church at 8pm.

The programme is a varied selection of sacred and secular music connected with the year 1510 by composers including Josquin des Pres, Clemens non Papa, and William Cornysh. The programme will also include Delius’ To be sung of a summer night on the water and the premiere of Afresh, seven times by Alison West, which sets a sequence of haiku-like poems by Donald Atkinson in a musical composition of shifting moods – reflective, witty and watery. There’s more
Information at www.heptonsingers.co.uk.

On August 27 and 28, the town will be ringing to the sounds of 11 town criers as they make ‘ale proclamations’. Before licensing laws, it was the job of the town crier to taste and check the ale in local hostelries and proclaim it fit for human consumption. Each licensee will be given a scroll to display in the bar.

There’s a full listing of HB500 events at www.hebden500.co.uk.