Guzzling the last of the summer wine in Holmfirth (Proxam's Hometown Write Off)
Written: Oct 26 '03 (Updated Oct 27 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good food and shopping - great for a stroll and a great walking base.
Cons: Not particularly exciting - can be done in a few hours.
The Bottom Line: If you're passing then its worth dropping by.
Excellent hiking possibilities.
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| cr01's Full Review: Holmfirth |
In common with many towns in Britain, my home town of Huddersfield is really a town centre surrounded by satellite villages. Over the years these villages have joined up to form one large population mass, controlled for ease as one community.
Some of these outlying villages are actually older than Huddersfield itself. The village of Almondbury for example, but a couple of miles from the centre of town was founded as an Iron Age hill fort and is mentioned as a community in the Doomsday book over 900 years ago. Huddersfield on the other hand was founded in the early years of the Industrial Revolution and quickly found its niche in the area of cloth production, in particular with quality wool suiting. Indeed so successful and profitable this industry was, for a short spell in the early 1900’s, Huddersfield had the largest number of millionaires per head of population in the world. Sadly times are tougher today, although those rotting old stone mills are currently being snapped up and converted into apartment lofts.
For Proxam’s Hometown Write Off held to celebrate the two year anniversary of my fellow Celt here at Epinions, I could linger a while upon the “wrong” side of Huddersfield where I have lived for the past two decades. I could dwell upon my towns heavy industry; factories of valves and chemicals, lines of stone built terraces, Victorian graveyards and crumbling public housing estates.
Definitely of more interest to the casual visitor, however is the “other side of the street”. I will thus move my spotlight onto an old village on the other side of town; a village which in England at least is far more famous than Huddersfield itself thanks to the power of Sunday night television and the dear old British Broadcasting Corporation.
Holmfirth is where the heart is!
I’m not sure about television around the globe, but in the UK on Sunday evenings as our thoughts inevitably move towards the toils of the working week ahead the broadcasting companies appear keen to offer the public jolly heart warming tales of joy, tears and slush. While I could quite happily see the introduction of an axe wielding maniac to liven up these soppy tales of community living, a good proportion of the public appear to lap up these storylines as eagerly as a manic depressive pops down Prozac.
Perhaps I shouldn’t complain too loudly as these film makers often choose the area around Huddersfield, with its beautiful rolling countryside and moor land, and Yorkshire’s undeserved reputation for family and community in which to set these tales of mush. While I do occasionally get frustrated at living in the middle of a film set (I was particularly annoyed to be held up in a queue of traffic one morning for 45 minutes while they blocked the main road off to film a funeral scene for Where The Heart Is), the film industry does pay well and also generates a healthy tourist industry for the area.
Holmfirth in particular is famous in the UK for Last of the Summer Wine, a series that has been produced each season for over thirty years. If you stretch the definition of the word “comedy” then Last of the Summer Wine, is one of the longest running comedy programs in the world. The story is simple – three old men with too much time on their hands invariably end up travelling down a beautiful but steep country road in a motorised bathtub. I think the word is “slapstick”.
The program has been running for so long that two of the three original old men have died, replaced by slightly younger old men going through that oh so familiar script. The cast list reads like a line of semi retired British comedy actors – like some kind of superannuated pension scheme.
Holmfirth – just follow the tour guide!
My journey began with the 20 minute bus ride from Huddersfield into the centre of Holmfirth. I always marvel at the wonders of television because Holmfirth always appears like a town in a time warp on TV, whereas the first thing that confronts you in reality is the exceptionally busy road that cuts through the middle of the village, and a rather large and ugly concrete built abandoned shop.
In summertime you will always see a tour group pass by, hunting out those spots made famous by that odorous comedy. A queue of people wanting to take photos outside Sid’s Cafe forms early on sunny summer mornings. The “Wrinkled Stocking” tearooms soon runs out of currant tea cakes, situated as it is next door to Nora Batty’s TV home.
In reality, much of Last of the Summer Wine is actually filmed out of the town, up on the moors that surround the area, where filming can take place free of visitors. It takes only a few days worth of filming in Holmfirth to get the scenes around town in the can.
Behind Sid’s Café and the old parish church is a small maze of tiny cobbled streets, and steep steps much like the picture heading this review. The houses are small, and piled on top of one another on this steep patch of hillside. You get a good view of the stone roof tiles which indicate that the houses were all built before about 1830; I would imagine some date from the 1600’s. Gardens are almost non existent, but homeowners make good use of the slopes and steps with private benches and flower pots. While the area is worth wandering around, it won’t take you much more than five minutes, and you can never truly escape the roar of heavy vehicles and motorbikes on the main road below. Beware of the slippery cobbles if it is wet!
Wandering around you do gain a sense of how poor this place must have been once – hard mill workers slogging their hearts out just to earn enough to feed their children. The black soot on the stonework provides another telling legacy of the hard industrial lives of the people that were here. These days despite the tourists and the filming, the houses in this area are amongst the most expensive to buy.
From the side of the hill, I looked out over the valley and immediately remembered the real charm of this place – stone houses nestle amongst the autumn leaves of gold and russet and brown. Closer by, three, four and five story houses with rows of small mullioned windows stand; these are the fore runners to the industrial mills. Families would build an extra floor to their homes with as many windows as possible built in so they could manufacture cloth on handlooms – the extra height of the buildings and numerous windows providing light for as long as possible during the day.
Back down on the main road is a sobering site, a memorial looking like an old preacher’s corner, stands – erected in 1801 to the brief peace of Amies. Above head height scratched onto this post is a mark and a plaque to indicate the height of the food waters that thundered down the Holme Valley in 1851 when the Bilberry Dam upriver collapsed. Eighty one villagers died.
On the bridge across the river Holme is another plaque to commemorate the flood of 1944 when two story houses collapsed into the torrent and three people died.
In 1777 a thunder cloud storm made the parish church collapse – the current church was rebuilt from the ruins.
Holmfirth – early rival of Hollywood!!
Just over the bridge stands the Picturedrome, and Postcard museum. The Picturedrome was owned by the enterprising Bamforth family who were pioneers of silent film. They produced a number of movies before the First World War, and Holmfirth was one of the centres of the burgeoning film industry. Sadly, the war meant that film supplies became scarce and the family moved to producing post cards, in particular, those cartoon postcards that used to be described as “saucy”. As one wanders through the town you can see signposts to places like “Norridge Bottom”, so I guess they had no shortage of inspiration for the humour in the cards!
Unfortunately, the building was being maintained during my last stop, so it was closed. However, from memory the post card museum is small, but with a lot of postcard exhibits.
Down by the river
Another great place for a wander is to follow the path a while alongside the river. While the river could be cleaner and tidier, the walk is pleasant and you can spend some time with a piece of bread to feed the ducks that always seem to linger. The river itself is normally not much more than a trickle and some of the houses in the village are built over bridges above it. It is certainly difficult to imagine the force of the river in full flood.
Unfortunately, Holmfirth also suffers from graffiti and vandalism. Alongside the river walk is a small and pretty park, with winter flowering pansies formally planted in beds, alongside paths formed from old gravestones. A local saw me admiring the scene:
“Aye lad, it’s pretty enough now, but just wait ‘til the vandals come”
Further along the main road, I spotted a car park with a sign attached that read that anyone caught skateboarding in the car park would be prosecuted! Now, that would make an interesting court case – for what would these kids be charged? Found guilty of being in possession of a skateboard, perhaps!
While I would never condone the trashing of a public flowerbed, perhaps hard handed attitudes like this do little to help. I would rather see a car park used for a healthy bit of skateboarding, than see a piece of wanton vandalism because the kids have nothing to do.
Tourist Information
Holmfirth has a fairly large and well stocked tourist information office just on the main Huddersfield Road. As well as discovering what you can visit (and whether they are open); there are any number of cheap walking books to be purchased.
Walking
This is the main attraction of the area around Holmfirth – its walking routes across moor and farmland. Some of my personal favourites are routes around the beautiful village of Hepworth, and its excellent pub, The Butchers Arms (try to fit in a meal here, if you can), and up through the deserted village of Hades, near Hades Edge. Hades was abandoned in the 1920’s because it didn’t have an electricity or water supply and was situated atop a windy moor. The ruins of this community always stir me; along with the name (I believe it was named because they didn’t have a church in the village). A final walk of choice is up to the series of reservoirs including the rebuilt ill fated Bilberry on the moors above town. Maps and routes can be tracked down in the Tourist Information Centre.
Shopping, Eating and Drinking
Of course, wherever you carry the tourist pound, you will also encounter enterprising folk attempting to relieve you of it. Holmfirth is no different, and a series of exclusive art, craft and fashion boutiques have sprung up in recent years. One shop of note is the art shop owned by water colourist Ashley Jackson. Mr Jackson has become something of a UK day time TV star in his own right, with his learning to paint series.
While his local scenes and wildly dramatic weather conditions are a little too clichéd and over the top for my tastes, I could see the man himself animatedly waving his arms around and laughing with couple of potential punters through the shop window as I passed by.
There are no shortages of places to eat to accommodate any budget; from cheap pub grub, to exclusive bistro. One of my personal favourites is Poppa Piccolino's, a cheerful Italian restaurant – it gets very hot and busy, but the food is excellent; book ahead.
My favourite pub is known to locals as “The Nook”, situated in a back alley in the middle of town. You might take a while to locate it as you can’t spot it from the main road and its proper name is “The Rose and Crown”.
The Nook is an old fashioned traditional pub of the first order. Inside, a choice of real ales await, including mine and Madonna’s (honest!) favourite tipple, Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. Timothy Taylor’s brewery is around 20 miles up the road. While I was at the bar, two old boys were discussing the merits of Gold Label, a strong barley wine. They were bemoaning the fact that it wasn’t as strong as it used to be. I’m not sure, but I think its still about twice the strength of my favourite tipple!
Inside the pub, old wooden tables and pews beckon within the gloom. The pub is at the bottom of the hill, surrounded by other houses, and so external light is limited. Although most of the drinking snugs have been removed to offer more room the interior of the pub certainly harks back in time.
Conclusions
Holmfirth probably isn’t worth a special trip in itself. The North York Moor towns of Haworth and Grassington will offer more of that old world (think James Herriott) Yorkshire Dales charm.
However, if you are passing by, adore that TV series, or live close by, then it is certainly worth dropping in. To that extent, I would rate Holmfirth as three stars.
Where Holmfirth really comes into its own and gains extra points is with the surrounding hills and villages and the wonderful endless walking possibilities. If you are a serious hiker, then this is a great place to make as a base to explore the region.
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To see more hometown entries to Proxams great Hometown write off, go and visit:
Proxam’s invitation
Again, much respect, hugs and best wishes must be extended to Di (SurgRN911), who despite recent surgery was still kind enough to create a home for my latest ramblings.
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cr01 asserts his right to be associated as the author of this review – 2003-
Recommended:
Yes
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
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cr01
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Member: Chris
Location: Yorkshire, England
Reviews written: 437
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In snowy Yorkshire. Dusting down the Sledge.
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