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Why Calderdale could be the birthplace of the world's first industrial revolution
THE network of public footpaths that criss-cross Calderdale can give walkers a real insight into how the area has developed over the centuries.
They are a route for discovering how Calderdale has influenced the way the entire country has changed and prospered, and gone on to influence lives worldwide.
"The biggest mills, the first trans-Pennine canals and railways, the longest tunnels of their day were all found here.
"Our story is a history of effort, enterprise and entrepreneurship with Pennine communities always at the forefront of progress.
"This story must be told," according to David Fletcher, who is leading a project that has no lesser aim than to turn Calderdale's heritage into a world beater.
The project has already been given a boost with 50,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund that could pave the way for a consortium of voluntary groups to bid for awards worth 1.2 million.
That would enable them to set up the UK's most ambitious industrial heritage project since the famous Ironbridge Gorge was made a World Heritage site in 1986.
"This year, the Ironbridge Gorge Museum is marking 300 years of the world's first iron bridge," said Mr Fletcher.
"The second was in Sowerby Bridge – and with respect to Ironbridge, the real roots of industrial society go back many hundreds of years before that – right back to the struggling inhabitants of our Pennine hillsides, almost 1,000 years ago, who supplemented their income by the domestic manufacture of cloth and clothing.
"They gradually built a dual economy based on part-time farming and part-time cloth-making.
"Developing local skills and enterprise, merchant clothiers in the 16th and 17th centuries built billion-pound industries in today's money, exporting all over Europe and beyond – all based on people and horse power."
The key for Calderdale was the way water power and steam power boosted the enterprise culture.
"But it started here in the South Pennines – the birthplace of a mindset that fired a revolution to change the entire world, the birthplace of industrial society – with all that went with it – non-conformism, radicalism, co-operatives, penny banks and building societies, public utilities, and so much more," he says.
Works is well advanced on the first group of inheritance trails, centred initially in and around the Calder valley.
Each is being carefully designed to link with bus and rail services and to inform people about the development of such things as work and religion, art and culture, the impact of the textile industry, power in the landscape and the work of local philanthropists.
It will also be possible to study the influence of authors such as Ted Hughes and the Brontes, the development of roads, railways and canals by following trails covering such things as the ancient Erringden Deer Park and the Sowerby Ramble.
Mr Fletcher said that within 18 months the Calderdale Inheritance Project would have put in place the final details of its the scheme to put the South Pennines firmly on the map as the birthplace of the world's first industrial revolution.
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Thursday 23 February 2012
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