This week at The Archive we’re delighted to welcome one brand new newspaper title to our collection, namely Yorkshire’s Hebden Bridge Times, alongside a total of 245,806 brand new pages. Meanwhile, from Derbyshire to Dunstable, from Eastbourne to Earlestown, from Thame to Todmorden, we have updated 15 of our existing titles from across England and Scotland.

So read on to learn more about all of our new and updated titles of the week, as well as to discover more about poet laureate Ted Hughes and his connection to the Hebden Bridge area.

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Our new title this week, the Hebden Bridge Times, takes us to Yorkshire, and more specifically to the Calderdale district of West Yorkshire. Originally the Hebden Bridge Times and Calder Vale Gazette, this title was established in 1881 and was neutral in its politics.

Serving the market town of Hebden Bridge, which has since found fame for being the setting of award-winning BBC drama Happy Valley, and the ‘district of Calder Vale,’ the Hebden Bridge Times initially appeared weekly on a Wednesday at the cost of one penny. The newspaper was longer than many of its contemporaries, filling 12 pages instead of the usual 4 or 8, and its main focus was on local news.

For example, the Hebden Bridge Times printed the latest from such organisations as the Hebden Bridge Local Board, the Todmorden Board of Guardians, the Todmorden Petty Sessions, and the Sowerby Bridge Local Board. It also featured the latest from more niche groups, such as the Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd Canine and Ornithological Society.

As well as reporting the latest from local organisations, the Hebden Bridge Times dedicated its pages to detailing the news from the towns and villages in the area, such as Heptonstall, Todmorden, Midgley, Luddenden, Luddenden Foot, Sowerby, Mytholmroyd, Barkisland, Triangle, and Ripponden. The newspaper also printed some national and international news, alongside serialised fiction and notices of births, marriages and deaths.

By the 1970s the Hebden Bridge Times had switched to a Friday publication schedule and had slimmed down to 8 pages, now at the cost of 5p. The Hebden Bridge Times is published to this day, having been ‘serving the community since 1881.’

That’s it from our brand new title of the week, but we still have plenty for you to explore, with extensive updates to 15 of our existing titles. We have updated some of our newest titles this week, with over 65,000 brand new pages joining the Milton Keynes Citizen, over 47,000 brand new pages joining the Shropshire Star and over 15,000 brand new pages joining the Newton and Earlestown Guardian. Another significant update this week is to the Eastbourne Herald, to which we have added over 33,000 brand new pages, whilst we have updated one of our Scottish titles, the Galloway Gazette.

Ted Hughes and Mytholmroyd

Born just down the road from Hebden Bridge in the large village of Mytholmroyd, poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998) would win fame as one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated writers. Using pages from the Hebden Bridge Gazette, we explored the poet’s connection to his birthplace, which he moved away from at the age of 7.

Indeed, the Hebden Bridge Gazette provides ample commentary on Hughes’s career, viewing him very much as a local still, even years after he had moved away. For example, on 17 June 1977 the paper reported how ‘Mytholmroyd-born poet Mr Ted Hughes was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.’ The paper went on to describe how ‘Mr Hughes established himself as one of the best living British poets in the late 60s, winning a number of prizes and having selections of poetry published,’ having also been awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in 1974.

A few years later and local legend Ted Hughes returned to the Hebden Bridge area. The Hebden Bridge Times on 2 May 1980 wryly described his ‘return to the wasteland,’ a nod to fellow poet T.S. Eliot’s seminal work. The paper, shall we say, was not enthused by Hughes’s visit, in which he read from his own poetry collection:

Any comforting glow of optimism evaded poetry read by its creator, Ted Hughes, in Hebden Bridge on Saturday night.

The piece continued:

From an artistic slant on the gory details of sheep midwifery to the ‘death’ of a village which was once his home – Heptonstall – his subjects were universally depressing. But many Calder Valley people crowded into the Birchcliffe Centre to hear the acclaimed poet read his work in his own inimitable style…Destined for the history books or not, his poetry was still a depressing culmination to the Hebden Bridge Literary and Scientific Society’s week of 75^th anniversary celebrations.

The Hebden Bridge Times was in more of a congratulatory mood by the end of the next decade, on 24 July 1998 reporting how ‘Mytholmroyd-born Poet Laureate Ted Hughes has been shortlisted for the UK’s richest prize in verse for the poems he wrote about his turbulent marriage to Sylvia Plath.’ The veteran poet was up for the 1998 Forward Prize with its £10,000 prize pot for his work Birthday Letters, which were about ‘his doomed relationship with the feminist icon’ Sylvia Plath.

Sadly, however, Ted Hughes passed away in October 1998 ‘after a long battle with cancer.’ On 19 February 1999 the Hebden Bridge Times reported how ‘a service of thanksgiving for the life and work of Mytholmroyd-born Poet Laureate Ted Hughes will be held in Westminster Abbey on May 13.’ The piece noted how his last book, Birthday Letters, was ‘now top of the hardback best sellers list,’ having ‘stunned the literary world with its passionate and intensely personal account of Ted Hughes’s relationship with his first wife Sylvia Plath and his grief over the break-up of their marriage and her death.’

In the years after his death, the Hebden Bridge Times went on to report on various schemes to remember the locally born poet. On 15 December 2000 the paper detailed how plans for a new ‘Ted Hughes memorial centre’ at Mytholmroyd station had been approved. The plans included provision for ‘study rooms, library, and shop, with parking space for at least 25 cars,’ as well as ‘landscaping and tree planting.’

However, it appeared that Ted Hughes’s impact on the area in which he was born was not as strong as it may have been imagined. On 6 July 2001 the Hebden Bridge Times reported on the ‘Ted Hughes Discussion Forum,’ which had been convened as part of the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival.

The piece detailed how various experts were surprised that Ted Hughes was not better known in the area. For example, when local folklore expert John Billingsley ‘first came to live in Mytholmroyd he had been surprised by how few local people had been aware of Hughes.’ Likewise, Sylvia Plath expert Elaine Connell ‘echoed his surprise about Hughes being relatively unknown in the Calder Valley when she first came to live here.’ She told of an experience at Mytholmroyd Library, where she asked to borrow a copy of Hughes’s Remains of Elmet, and the ‘assistant asked, ‘Ted who?’

It was an interesting state of affairs, as Billingsley observed, for ‘while Hughes had left the valley, the Calder Valley had never left him, remaining the mainstay of his poetic inspiration for the rest of his life.’

Find out more about Ted Hughes, poets and their places, in the pages of our Archive today.

New Titles

Updated Titles

This week we have updated fifteen of our existing titles.

You can learn more about each of the titles we add to every week by clicking on their names. On each paper’s title page, you can read a free sample issue, learn more about our current holdings, and our plans for digitisation.

You can keep up to date with all the latest additions by visiting the recently added page.  You can even look ahead to see what we’re going to add tomorrow.