Hebden Bridge has always buzzed with female energy. As a child I remember the feisty women behind the bar at the pubs where my dad used to drink, the punk-haired cafe owner and the redoubtable librarian always up for a noisy chat when we checked out our books. That was before it became known as the lesbian capital of the UK (my gay cousin from Australia once told me she was coming to Europe: “Hebden Bridge?” I asked. “How did you know?” she gasped).
Now the lass spirit of the West Yorkshire town is on display again, this time in Sally “Happy Valley” Wainwright’s new BBC One drama Riot Women, which tells the story of a group of women in their late 50s who set up a rock band.
Like me, Wainwright grew up in Calderdale; like me, she’s 62. So she too must remember the days when Hebden Bridge was more famous for its flat-capped eccentricity than its edgy coolness. At university (and spookily, Wainwright and I were both at York, though we didn’t know one another), I would regularly boast that I lived close to where poet Ted Hughes grew up (he was born in Mytholmroyd, just along the valley) and near to where his erstwhile wife and fellow poet Sylvia Plath was buried (Heptonstall, on the hill above Hebden Bridge). But I certainly didn’t dwell on the smoky, cramped pubs or the greasy spoon cafes or the unremarkable warehouse-like unbranded store where my mum bought the groceries. The town felt deeply frumpy back then.
Things are different today. I name-drop the Nisa Local on Crown Street, where my mum buys her Guardian, because it’s where Catherine Cawood’s partner Neil worked in Happy Valley. More thrillingly, my mother’s flat is at the top of the street where Cawood (played magnificently by Sarah Lancashire) lived: the climactic final car park scene after James Norton’s character, Tommy Lee Royce, sets himself alight must have been visible from her balcony. And now the souped-up Albert, on Albert Street – one of my dad’s haunts in the 70s and 80s – has been transformed into the Duke of Wellington for Riot Women, with Lorraine Ashbourne, playing alongside Tamsin Greig and Joanna Scanlan, as the landlady.
Right now I’m having breakfast opposite the Albert, at a table in the sunshine outside Leila’s Kitchen, whose Iranian owner tells me it was the original vegetarian cafe of Hebden Bridge, set up in the 1980s. She’s run it since 2019, and her Persian breakfast – eggs, walnuts, feta cheese, salad and flatbread – is a renowned speciality, as is her noodle soup and saffron and pistachio ice-cream.
In a town with a penchant for revolving doors and pop-up shops, one of the joys of visiting Hebden Bridge regularly is that it’s never the same twice. In fact, there’s currently another top-class breakfast venue, with queues heading down Valley Road while they’ve still got buns to sell: Mother, home of just-baked croissants including the almond one I tried. “It’s a bit hefty,” the assistant said as I pointed to it; in the event, I didn’t need another meal for the rest of the day.
It’s quicker to say what has been constant rather than what’s changed since I was a child. The Town Hall, with its big green doors, is the same (though they certainly didn’t have art exhibitions and a cafe there when I was a kid). The rush of the river, fast-flowing through the town and whizzing under the packhorse bridge that gave the town its name, is a welcome constant. And the Picture House is still there: where once I watched Grease, Jaws and An Officer and a Gentleman, the BBC premiered Riot Women here last week, as a thank you to the locals who put up with weeks of filming last summer.
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The shop I remember best from my childhood is Innovation – and it’s still here, the institution that relaunched this unfashionable Yorkshire market town into one of the quirkiest, and coolest, spots in the north of England. It was back in 1972 that a local legend called David Fletcher bought a disused mill in the centre of the town and turned it into the quintessential gift shop-cum-cafe, the business all the other shops that came after wanted to emulate (in terms of its longevity and success, anyway). The Trades Club was always there, and always a trades union club – but now, still owned by the Labour party, it’s one of the funkiest live music and comedy venues in Britain. Sadly, Riot Women are a fictional band, but the October lineup included Grace Petrie (“the British folk scene’s funniest lesbian”), DJ Red Helen and Josie Long.
The police station I knew on Hope Street is now an antique shop; the newsagent’s on the square (now pedestrianised) has become The Remedy, where you sit at high-up tables and taste a flight of wines, also available to buy. My sister’s old bank is Coin brasserie, where she and I recently reminisced, while sipping a delicious and reasonably priced bottle of fizz, about the ancient art of cashing cheques in the very room where she’d done just that. The cashier’s counter from my own former bank, round the corner on Market Street, has been moved to the shop next door which is full of rhubarb and ginger cake and strawberries and cream cupcakes: but they’re not baked goods, they’re bath time treats – it’s the Yorkshire Soap Company. They make scented candles too, and for Happy Valley they created a special edition – watch this space for a flaming Riot Women.
A few doors along is Heart Gallery, in what was a rambling antiques centre when I was a kid: today, its Scandi-style interior showcases locally produced artworks. Across Market Street is Earth Spirit: it’s the essence of Hebden Bridge, a place to buy spices and jams, colourful knitted berets and weave-your-own brooch kits. For the inner sanctum, head up the small staircase at the back for the incense-infused den of crystals and tarot cards, pictures of hares and goddesses, witches’ guides to hats and flowers, books of spells and handbooks on angels and sacred animals. And when you’ve chosen your tome, head to the Hermit on Hope Street, settle into the coven-like basement, dimly lit by strings of fairy lights, and enjoy a proper Yorkshire brew.
Riot Women is on Sundays, BBC One, 9pm.