Warley, West Yorkshire

These days, you'll find Warley tucked away from major roads, railways, rivers, and any other main transport route. Strange then, that for over 1,000 years one of the main routes over the Pennine hills from Europe to Ireland passed this way...

Laden with goods of every kind, packhorses by the hundred picked their way along the terraces of the steep sided Calder Valley. Well above the flooded valley bottom yet below the inhospitable moor tops, small settlements such as Warley began to form. Facing south and using a precious clearing of flat land, Warley flourished. 

But drastic changes were on the way. The industrial revolution meant water was everything. The valley bottom was drained and the river neatly channeled. Roads were built, railways made, canals dug, houses built, mills built by the dozen.

No longer were the hilltop villages main throughaffairs. Warley slumbered. Shops closed, bus services were cut, people wanted to live elsewhere - closer to work in the new mills, closer to better facilities.