Further details of all these publications, including how to purchase, can be found by contacting us.
Our Library Catalogue is available to download in pdf format: LDLHS Library Booklist.pdf
There are 5 sections: Books, Essays, Magazines, Talks and everything else. The Librarians are at every meeting and very willing to help.
(250x200mm) 296 pages, 220 illustrations. £15.
There are thousands of cricket clubs in Britain. Each embodies the rich social history of its community, its influence on so many lives transcending the mere pursuit of a recreation.
Lightcliffe Cricket Club is just one of these communities. There have been triumph and tragedy, romance and regret in the century and a half since a handful of young men played a few friendly games at the westfield end of the village, half a mile up the road from the rural idyll of the present ground.
The story of this thriving village club, of the men and women who have worked behind the scenes, as well as successive generations of cricketers, is testimony to the attractions of the greatest game of all.
(250x200mm) 160 pages, 127 illustrations. £15, now reduced to £5.
The Hipperholme and Lightcliffe Memorial Stray was opened on 9 September 1923, when the granite obelisk, commemorating the 110 villagers who lost their lives in the First World War, was unveiled. The area had previously been pasture land, at one time in the possession of Ann Walker, who lived for a few years at nearby Lidgate House, before she took up residence at Shibden Hall with her lover, Anne Lister.
In 1907, having been owned by the Smithson family for nearly forty years, the fields were divided into building lots and offered for sale by auction. Why were none of these lots sold? What other memorial schemes were considered before Hipperholme Council decided to provide a public open space? How was the money raised? All these questions, and many others, are answered within the pages of this book.
Bob Horne looks closely at the management of the Stray in its first half-century, as facilities were developed with the provision of a shelter, public conveniences, the planting of trees and flower beds and the provision of swings and other playing equipment. Find out why a Park Ranger was appointed to patrol the park during summer evenings. Read about ‘Holidays at Home’ during the Second World War, the many football teams, and one cricket team, who played their matches here.
Hipperholme & Lightcliffe Memorial Stray: The First Fifty Years provides a history of these acres from the early nineteenth century to the Silver Jubilee Gala of 1977, with more than a hundred and twenty illustrations.
(250x200mm) 144 pages, 95 illustrations. £15
(270x215mm) 48 pages, 63 illustrations. £10
The Walterclough Valley, in Calderdale, separates Southowram and Hipperholme, two suburbs of Halifax. The valley is a southern continuation of the Shibden valley and has historical connections with both the Lister and Walker Families. The valley’s name derives from the historic Walterclough Hall, built by the Hemingway family in the fourteenth century on the west (Southowram) side of the Valley. The Walker family acquired the hall in the seventeenth century. They later built Crow Nest at Lightcliffe.
The eastern side of the valley was part of the Lister estate and contains Sutcliffe Wood Bottom Farm, home of the Sowden Family, who are portrayed in the television series ‘Gentleman Jack’.
The valley has always been recognised as a beauty spot and has survived mills, mines and brickworks, which have come and gone leaving the natural beauty of the valley to thrive once more.
The beauty of the valley inspired Joseph Bunce to create a pleasure garden, named Sunny Vale Gardens. Sunny Vale attracted thousands of visitors between 1880 and 1950, a seventy-year period of huge success.
(245x170mm) 102 pages, 51 illustrations. £10
The story of these two Lightcliffe churches, the large churchyard and many of the people from the village of Lightcliffe and other local villages is told here.
A church was established in Lightcliffe in 1529. A newer church, funded by William Walker of Crow Nest, was built in 1775. Only the iconic tower of this Georgian church now remains, set in the large churchyard,
The new St. Matthew’s parish church is about 400 metres further up Wakefield Road from the churchyard. It opened in 1875 and was largely funded by Major Johnston Jonas Foster of Cliffe Hill.
(245x170mm) 100 pages, 79 illustrations. Reduced to £5
The first pupils were admitted to Lightcliffe National Schools in February 1869. The buildings were generously paid for by Evan Charles Sutherland Walker of Crow Nest mansion, who also provided the land. We can look back with pride at its long history, from a time when universal elementary education was merely an aspiration, to the present day when all have the opportunity to be educated.
‘As a social historian, John Brooke recognises the fundamental part that Lightcliffe School has played in the history of our village. In Educating the Generations he conveys this with clarity and understanding.’
