Having watched the segment about Hockney on Countryfile, I kept watching the programme and what should appear but Holmfirth, where I used to live ... we lived about a mile out of town, towards the hills, in a hamlet called Hinchliffe Mill.
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| 4 Dam Head, Hinchliffe Mill, Holmbridge |
Looking for photos on the internet, I found that the house next door to where I used to live had been on the market. They've extended the yard into the lane - just like I did in front of no.5, back in 1976, planting blackcurrant bushes on the far side of the wall, and then making a garden in front by digging out the many stones. On the right of the photo are the study windows upstairs (and the window of the bathroom we installed when renovating what was then a condemned building) and the kitchen windows downstairs - the bedroom and living room windows are out of sight. It's an underdwelling, built into the hillside, with an overdwelling above it, entered from the lane at the back.
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| (image from here) |
This stream was once "the dam", the millpond, right across the lane, where we used to go to feed the ducks, "the nipper" in his little red wellies - and we'd walk up the hill to get the No.10 bus to Huddersfield (fare 10 pence?) on the main road. Somehwer up there is, or was, the Bareknuckle Boys pub, with its landlord who used to call everyone "flower" - "What'll it be, flower?"
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| Bottoms Mill by Chris Thomas |
Was this "our mill"? The left part of the photo looks right, but I don't remember it looking like that on the right...
The area has walks to reservoirs, up the valley towards Holme and the Pennines, and the moors are a strange but compelling landscape -
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| Holme from Moss Edge, by Neil Jacklin (image from here) |
This is nostalgic for me too as we used to live in Hebden Bridge. We had a passion for going to see places all over the area and quite often went to Holmfirth. I miss it up there quite badly still (over ten years now since we moved).
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