The Family History Group is a sub-group of the Hebden Bridge Local History Society and meets regularly at the Birchcliffe Centre to further our knowledge of the people who live and have lived in the Upper Calder Valley. We also are happy to help local people who are researching their own families in different parts of the country.

The aim of the group is to promote and assist the study of genealogy and family history, the prime interest being the study of people and where they lived. We do this by:

  • offering members an opportunity to meet like-minded people locally and to share their interests, resources and experience
  • helping people with online research sources and we welcome visitors to our drop in sessions for this purpose. We have access to genealogy and other resources. More experienced members are always needed to help at these sessions.
  • building up a database of local families and welcome any contributions to this. There are a number of surnames local to the Upper Calder valley such as Greenwood and Sutcliffe.
  • welcoming visitors from other parts of the country and from abroad, who are researching families that originated in this area.

Meetings 2023

Meetings are usually held on the Thursday afternoons between 2pm and 5pm at the Birchcliffe centre. There is a visitor's charge of £3. Numbers at each session are limited and pre-booking is essential to ensure that there is a volunteer available to help with your enquiry. If you are not able to visit on a Thursday please let us and we may be able to arrange for you to visit on another day.

You can book by using the contact form. Please also use this contact form for further information about the Family History Group.

Research enquiries

We try to answer research enquiries from people who are unable to visit us. Enquiries can be submitted via our Research Service for a small fee.

Monumental inscriptions

We have now completed transcribing the gravestones in the Heptonstall Old Churchyard which has taken several years. It was an enormous task, especially when working on the older graves. The results can be accessed on the Monumental inscriptions page. Another team has transcribed the graves in the ‘new’ churchyard and these are also accessible on the same page. All these transcriptions can also be found on the Calderdale Family History Society. We hope to continue the task in other local graveyards.