Village of the Week: Mill town Holmfirth still thriving after end of Last of the Summer Wine

What they found was the quintessential Pennine community, with its buildings of local stone and cobbled alleyways, set in a rugged landscape below the great peak of Holme Moss, one of Yorkshire’s mightiest natural landmarks.

Holmfirth is defined by its setting, captured evocatively by the much-admired artist Ashley Jackson, who established his gallery there in 1964, His paintings of the brooding moorlands above the town, exhibited and sold across the world, have also done much to bring people into the area and spread awareness of its beauty.

And that awareness is increasing. Holmfirth has a thriving tourist trade, with visitors coming to explore the surrounding countryside on foot and by bike, and finding a vibrant town centre full of independent businesses and a lively arts scene.

Tradition and a forward-looking spirit meet in Holmfirth, according to Gemma Sharp, assistant clerk of Holme Valley Parish Council. Like many another resident who has moved to Holmfirth in recent years, she was attracted by its location and closeness to Huddersfield, Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester.

She said: “Post-pandemic, for those people who aren’t having to travel every day it does present a nice place that is rural, exciting and vibrant and also you can get to where you need to be.

“Yes, there are issues with transport and parking and everywhere is very steep, so getting in and out can be occasionally tricky, but we have no big chains, it’s all independent businesses which is part of the appeal, and some of those businesses are quite trendy and there’s quite a young atmosphere to a lot of the newer places.”

Arts and folk festivals add to the sense of a town where there is a lot going on, with Holmfirth Civic and the Tech building both hubs for creative activities as well as businesses.

“The festival weekends are absolutely jam-packed, you cannot move,” said Gemma. “There are people coming to visit sometimes for a week, sometimes for a long weekend and it’s a great place to visit.

“It’s really popular for cycling as well since we had the Grand Depart of the Tour de France [in 2014]. If you go out on a Sunday morning, there will be lots of groups of cyclist about, and they go up round the hills. Electric bikes are a real game-changer round here because some of the hills are so steep.”

Holmfirth’s scenery and atmosphere helped make Last of the Summer Wine Britain’s favourite comedy show at its peak in the late 1970s and early 80s, when it attracted 18m viewers.

The town welcomed 60,000 visitors a year as a result. And they kept on coming as Last of the Summer Wine became television’s longest-running comedy series, eventually lasting for 37 years and 295 episodes from its debut in 1973 until its finale in 2010.

The series is endlessly repeated on the Freeview channel Drama and visitors still come to follow in the footsteps of the comedy’s best-loved trio of characters, scruffy rascal Compo, flat-capped philosopher Clegg and would-be leader-of-men Foggy, played by Bill Owen, Peter Sallis and Brian Wilde.

Fans explore an exhibition about the show, join tours of the filming locations and take selfies outside the cottage where battleaxe Nora Batty shooed away Compo’s lecherous advances with her sweeping brush, or visit Sid’s Café in the town centre where the trio hatched their outlandish plans, including riding a bicycle made for three and scooting down a hillside in a tin bath.

But Holmfirth was entertaining the nation long before Last of the Summer Wine, thanks to the work of Bamforth and Company, pioneers of early film-making.

Between 1898 and 1900 and 1913-1915, the firm produced a clutch of historically important films, and its head, James Bamforth, had ambitions to make the town an international centre for the new medium.

The onset of World War One dashed any hopes of that. Instead, Bamforths became famous for producing saucy seaside postcards which were the essence of end-of-the-pier humour.

Holmfirth’s pioneering role in film-making still echoes. The Picturedrome, dating from 1913, showed those early films and is hugely popular today as an award-winning music and arts venue.

And Holmfirth had an equally proud place in history as part of the great Yorkshire tradition of textiles. By the late 19th century it had grown into one of the leading wool towns of the north, its 50-plus mills and dye houses renowned for producing the highest-quality worsteds and cashmeres, which it supplied to Britain’s most exclusive tailors well into the 1960s, when cheap foreign competition forced the industry into decline.

Today, Holmfirth’s fortunes are on the up. Gemma said: “There is definitely an optimism about the town. People are not frightened to open new businesses and try new things. Several new bars and restaurants have opened in the last couple of years and they’ve done pretty well.

“People are coming in from other areas to eat and drink in Holmfirth now.”

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