Life in the REAL Happy Valley has all the light and shade you see in the TV ... trends now
Welcome to the thunderous Pennines, to the wheeling West Yorkshire skies and to the town that is uniting light and dark, good and evil and more than eight million television viewers in a mighty showdown: the series finale of BBC One’s Happy Valley tomorrow night.
This is Hebden Bridge in the Calder Valley, my home for the past decade. It is a beautiful place wound around a confluence of moors and rivers — but it is a dark place, too, pounded by the weather, half-hidden from the sun in winter and carrying its own hard histories.
We moved here from Verona, Italy, for family reasons. The contrast between one of the brighter parts of Europe and the strikingly wet valley was comic. In bleak weather, it was savage.
‘By ‘eck, you’ve come a way!’ was our new neighbour’s verdict.
Hebden — ’Ebden, in local — half-way between Leeds and Manchester, has long been famous for its rugged beauty, its strong and diverse community and its history of creativity. (The poet Ted Hughes came from the area, and the grave of his wife, Sylvia Plath, overlooks the town.)
More than eight million television viewers are set to watch the mighty showdown of the series finale of BBC One’s Happy Valley tomorrow night
But at the moment, thanks to the BBC’s extraordinary northern noir, we are principally famous for the upcoming confrontation between Sergeant Catherine Cawood and Tommy Lee Royce, which is set — and filmed — around here.
Catherine (Sarah Lancashire) is Happy Valley’s battered and pithy heroine — often desperate, ever capable. Her nemesis is the abominable villain and charismatic murderer Royce, unforgettably played by James Norton. The show has pulled off one of those special moments of British television, when actors, script, setting and direction combine to make something for the ages.
The performances and dialogue — the latter the work of Huddersfield-born writer Sally Wainwright — are eerily truthful, and the effects on Hebden Bridge and our valley have been dramatic.
‘At 10pm for the past two Sundays, I’ve been too scared to go out of the house in case I see Tommy Lee Royce!’ Cathy Shaw, owner of the Banyan Tree, a massage and therapeutic business in the town centre, tells me.
Cathy says she has ‘banned’ Royce from the Banyan. Rumour has it he is also barred from the Trades Club, Hebden’s renowned music venue.
We residents have been fielding calls and messages from friends all over the country telling us to look out for Royce, who is at large in the world of Happy Valley.
I’ve been asked if that was ‘my’ Nisa supermarket (it was), and did I just see your beautiful train station (you did) and where was that bicycle sequence by the reservoir shot? (Widdop, and it’s a lovely walk from town).
This is Hebden Bridge in the Calder Valley, my home for the past decade
Fans have also arrived in large numbers.
Local Labour party candidate Josh Fenton-Glynn says: ‘Cycling friends from London tested me about the route Tommy Lee Royce was on. Colleagues in Manchester ask for cafe recommendations.’
Taxi driver Naz Ali picked up a woman who lived in Liverpool — two hours away — who had come to see the real Hebden Bridge after watching the show.
‘Lots of people are coming now,’ he says. ‘Most of them don’t know where Hebden is. You can live in a different valley around the corner and not know where it is.’
This combination of celebrity and obscurity has long been part of the real Hebden Bridge, which has a story every bit as dark and bright as the television version.
The name comes from the Anglo-Saxon ‘Heopa Denu’, meaning bramble or wild-rose valley. Originally a tangle of marsh and briar where the river Calder met two becks, Colden Clough and Hebden Water, it was navigated and circumvented by pack-horse trails and bridges we still use.
In the 18th century, the area became notorious for an organised crime gang, the Cragg Vale Coiners. They were so successful that their coin-clipping — shaving off small pieces of coinage, then melting them down to mint counterfeit cash —threatened to destabilise the national currency.
Their ringleader, ‘King’ David Hartley, was hanged in 1774. Walking by his grave last week, we noticed people still scatter coins on it: a salute to a brigand who defied the Crown.
It is hard to imagine anyone but Tommy Lee Royce’s poor conflicted son Ryan (Rhys Connah), leaving anything on his grave, in the event Sally Wainwright sends him there. (Sunday’s climax is subject to much speculation, including rumours —denied by Connah — that multiple endings were filmed.)
It is a beautiful place wound around a confluence of moors and rivers — but it is a dark place, too, pounded by the weather, half-hidden from the sun in winter and carrying its own hard histories
Nina Oaken, a writer and artist, grew up in Happy Valley. ‘I feel the light and dark here in equal measure,’ she says. ‘The fiercely proud and independent thinking from the time of The Coiners onwards intrigues me. I do feel Sally Wainwright “boxed” many of the intrinsic contrasts, through observation of place and people.’
I had to ask what ‘boxed’ means in local slang: she said it means ‘captured exactly’.
‘During my teens, my closest friends were the children of the Hebden
