Best known as the birthplace of the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, arrive in Mytholmroyd by train to see Hughes' story The Iron Man portrayed in station art. The town is also home to Walkley's Clogs, one of the last UK producers to make and sell the genuine article.
The steep and winding Cragg Road leads from Mytholmroyd and is the longest incline in England, providing a major challenge to cyclists. The road wends its way up to beautiful heather-clad moorland 1,000 feet above, and wooded cloughs and babbling brooks cascade down the hillsides, beckoning the walker to explore the countryside.
The apparent tranquility of Mytholmroyd belies a more murky past involving an 18th century counterfeiting gang, the Cragg Vale Coiners.This gang's activities were said to be so damaging that they threatened to wreck Britain's currency. Led by 'King David' Hartley, who lived at a nearby farmhouse called Bell House (which is now a bed & breakfast accommodation with educational facilities) the gang clipped or filed the edges from gold coins, milling the edges back so the change was all but unnoticeable, and made counterfeit coins from the shavings. Local publicans helped to place the counterfeit coins into circulation.
Rumours of the gang's activities reached the authorities who sent an excise man, William Deighton, to investigate. One of the coiners betrayed the gang, leading to Hartley's arrest. Hartley's brother offered £100 to anybody who would kill Deighton and it is alleged that the plotters planned Deighton's murder at an Inn in Mytholmroyd called Barbary's, which is now gone, but was located on the opposite side of the road to the present day Dusty Miller.
On November 10th 1769 at Bull Close Lane near Halifax, Deighton was approached by two men, Matthew Normanton and Robert Thomas and was shot dead. The Government offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of the murderers and a pardon for anybody, bar the killers, who would turn King's Evidence. Over 30 people were arrested. Thomas was acquitted of Deighton's murder, but was later hanged for being a highwayman. Normanton initially fled the authorities, but was later caught and hanged on April 15th 1775. 'King David' Hartley was hanged at Tynburn, near York, on April 28th 1770. His body is buried at Heptonstall graveyard.
Up the other side of the Valley is the village of Luddenden. When Branwell Bronte lodged at the Lord Nelson he would no doubt have enjoyed the glorious oak woodlands and meadows that now make up Jerusalem Farm Local Nature Reserve, great nature made famous by tv's In Loving Memory.
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