The world of Calder Valley in the 1690s
Tuesday, 23 August 2022
Halifax Probate Group & Hebden Bridge Local History Society invite you to a Book Launch at Halifax Minster on Thursday 20th October at 6.30 for 7.00 pm.
It's free! You can just turn up on the night, but it would help us if you can register an interest by emailing halifaxprobate@gmail.com
Guest speaker: Peter Brears
Where there's a will, there's a way, to uncover the world of Calder Valley in the 1690s. Peter Brears is a former curator of Shibden Hall and museums in York and Leeds as well as author of numerous books about the cookery, oak furniture and pottery of the period. He will be exploring what we learn from inventories about the practicalities of life in the Calder Valley at the end of the 17th century.
The Halifax Probate Group and Hebden Bridge Local History Society are celebrating the end of the ambitious project, launched by the late Alan Petford, to transcribe and publish all the wills, inventories and other probate documents for the whole of the ancient parish of Halifax from 1688 to 1700. The 23 townships stretch from Stansfield and Heptonstall in the west to Brighouse and Rastrick in the east.
Inventories are like an archaeological dig through ink and parchment, a trip through rooms no longer inhabited, furnished with longsettles, beds and footchests, arks and hourglasses, and all the paraphernalia of the kitchen. Even more fascinating are the tools of their trades, often textiles or agriculture, but also the smith's anvil, the apothecary's limbeck and the schoolmaster's books.
Living and Dying in the Calder Valley in the 1690s - a series of books with transcriptions of all the probate records for the townships of Halifax 1688 1700.
The volumes will be on sale at a discount at the event and also through the website www.hebdenbridgehistory.org (upper valley townships) and by emailing halifaxprobate@gmail.com (lower valley townships).
Raise a glass and listen to music of the seventeenth century with the Leeds Waits Musicians