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Luddenden Foot, Calderdale — Mills, Canal Boats and the Old Railway
Luddenden Foot lies in the Calder Valley, west of Halifax, where Luddenden Brook meets the River Calder. Unlike the older hillside village of Luddenden, the settlement at Luddenden Foot largely developed during the Industrial Revolution, spreading along Burnley Road and around the canal and railway. The combination of water, transport links and nearby textile mills made it an important industrial community.
The Rochdale Canal, opened in stages between 1798 and 1804, brought a new route for moving goods across the Pennines. A small wharf developed at Luddenden Foot, and some local mills had canal-side loading places. The stone canal bridge remains a notable feature: its original core dates to around 1800, and it was widened in about 1882. Historic photographs preserved by Calderdale Libraries show the canal alongside Upper Foot Farm, a substantial stone farmhouse built around 1659.
The railway brought another major change. Luddenden Foot station opened around 1840–41 on the line through the Calder Valley, connecting the community with Halifax and towns further west. The station eventually closed during the 1960s, but the railway’s arrival had helped establish the settlement as a busy transport and industrial centre. By the late 19th century, Burnley Road had developed a small commercial core, with local businesses and community facilities serving the surrounding mills and workers’ housing.
Luddenden Foot’s industrial landscape has changed considerably. Many mills have disappeared or been converted to other uses, while the canal, bridges, old stone buildings and surviving traces of transport infrastructure still reveal how the settlement grew. Historic photographs help reconnect today’s valley community with the working landscape of its past.
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This was a comedy that was filmed in Luddenden in the 1970's.
It's about an Aunt (Thora Hird) and her nephew (Christopher Beeny) who run an undertaker business in Lancashire in the twenties and thirties. Thora Hird plays a religious, old fashioned over bearing and bossy woman who is always nagging at her nephew Billy. Billy is in his late twenties or early thirties and is single because he is an undertaker and that kind of occupation isn't what you would call a chick magnet so he always has trouble getting and keeping girlfriends especially with his Aunt Ivy on the prowl ready to split up any tongue action she might catch Billy doing. In fact she would rather not have him with any women PERIOD! And that is where the humour lies, Billy sneaking around behind her back and if I can remember rightly he does more than snog a few women
Outside the old Co-Op building in Luddenden
'In Loving Memory' is very similar to 'Last Of The Summer Wine' and does have that gentle approach to it but it isn't as goody goody as 'Last Of The Summer Wine'. Thora Hird is truly fantastic and funny with her wise cracking quips and the expressions she makes when Billy gets the best of her.
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