Hebden Bridge Web

Thirty Years of
the HebWeb

By Chris Ratcliffe

In 1995, the internet was just starting to take off, and few people knew what it was. Yet, Hebden Bridge was home to many forward-thinking artists, writers, musicians, and small business owners - precisely the kind of people who could see the potential of a site like HebWeb and help it thrive.

Creating web pages in 1995 wasn't easy. There were no books on the subject, no Google, no Facebook, no Twitter, no YouTube and no-one to ask. I was emailing people in the States with questions about how to do basic html code formating.

Decline of local newpapers

As digital media continues its relentless expansion, local newspapers are continuing to close or cut back at an alarming rate. The internet has fundamentally disrupted their traditional business model, stripping away advertisers and forcing many to lay off journalists and photographers. Even the titles that remain are often shadows of their former selves. So what now? Are we to rely on social media - rife with misinformation and lacking accountability - to fill the gap left by trusted local reporting?

The Hebden Bridge website offers one solution which seems to work in the new era. It started 30 years ago in the summer of 1995, a time when very few people even knew what the Internet was. And when even fewer had access to it.

Origins

My partner, Elaine Connell and I, were working as teachers, but we were ready to explore other options. Through a desire to seek the perfect worksheet for my classes, I gradually became aware that I had a bit of a knack for IT. Soon, people would come to me to sort out their recalcitrant computers and those pesky dial-up modems. Just walking to the post office, I could be stopped several times, to be asked technical questions, or whether I would go round and help get them 'connected.'

In our spare time, Elaine and I had started a small press we called Pennine Pens. I thought if we were able to create a page on the new 'world wide web' this would have the possibility of being seen all over the world. Our books could be made available to readers internationally.

Early websites

Once I had created the website for Pennine Pens, other people were starting to approach me to create websites for them. From there, it was then a short to step start a website for our local area. The creative community of Hebden Bridge tend to be radical, forward thinking, imaginative and adventurous. Many of them, especially writers and photographers, were able to see very early on how the Internet would help them develop their work and make it available to a wider audience. Hebden Bridge was the just the kind of place where such a town website could prosper.

Of course there were those who resisted the further encroachment of IT, or who just couldn't really grasp the possibilities of the Internet. Even Elaine asked me more than once, "Can you explain to me again about this Internet. I don't understand how anyone could make money from it." In later years, we had a good laugh remembering this. Sadly, Elaine died in 2007.

First community website in UK

We purchased the domain name hebdenbridge.co.uk and in the summer of 1995, we started publishing what was the first community website in the UK. We knew it was the first because we had hoped someone else was already doing something similar and we could see how they were doing it. I searched and searched but could find nothing remotely resembling a community website..

We called it the Hebden Bridge Web, but very soon our users started referring to the HebWeb. The name stuck. Initially, I saw it as a combination of a shop window for our developing website creation services, along with giving something back to my local community. The business prospered and within a couple of years, I'd given up teaching and was working full time from home creating websites, and the HebWeb.

In small towns like Hebden Bridge the local paper had traditionally had a monopoly on the news, almost to the extent that if it isn't printed in the local paper, it didn't happen. The Internet broke this monopoly.

In Hebden Bridge, there's always something going on. One burning issue gives way to another burning issue. Floods, windfarms on peatland, parking, the trans issue, saving the Town Hall and more. Often the local press had been very slow to notice these issues, or preferred not to cover them, or to cover them in a much smaller or different way to the Hebweb.

One of my earliest memories of the Hebweb having a real impact was in the late 1990s when there was a threat to close our local cinema, the much loved Hebden Bridge Picture House. We covered this story and very soon insiders were scanning internal memos and papers and emailing their scans, which we were posting online straight away. The Hebweb news item on this was at times being updated every half hour. Today, this is not that unusual but at the time it felt both astonishing and pioneering. The Cinema is today thriving, now owned by the Town Council.

View from the Bridge

Local journalist Issy Shannon wrote a review of View from the Bridge for the Hebden Bridge Times. At the last minute, the editor pulled the article. Apparently some of John's comments about local journalists were not appreciated. Maybe comments like: "The Milltown Times has lost its way over the years. It's been allowed to drift in the doldrums of editorial neglect: a rudderless boat becalmed on a placid millpond. On how many other newspapers, for example, would a story be summarily spiked for being 'too interesting'?" View from the Bridge went on to be a great success, helped in no small part by being "Banned by the Local Press" announced by our posters all around the town.

More recently, local writer George Murphy has continued the online column tradition with over 150 episodes of Murphy's Lore - "tales pretty, gritty and witty."

Problems with the local press

Even before the growth of the Internet, Hebden Bridge's demography was changing radically but the local paper was still producing for an audience of 30 years previously.

In 1999, they failed completely to cover two major events: the highly regarded Arts Festival and the first Big Green Weekend. Organisers and I wrote to the Managing Director of Johnston Press complaining. We received an apology and a meeting with the Editor of the Hebden Bridge Times and a couple of its journalists. One result of this meeting was a Green Page edited by Alternative Technology Centre, together with the HebWeb and others. It was published in the Hebden Bridge Times and made available online by the Hebweb - an example perhaps of how the old and new media might cooperate..

It was frustrating to learn that the text we sent to the Hebden Bridge Times had, for some inexplicable reason, to be completely retyped. And they weren't au fait with using jpgs so that even when they reluctantly used our digital photos the end result was washed out. Our suggested layout was ignored.

Sometimes, the local press just covered stories really badly, eg Chainsaw Tuesday, in October 2004 when hired security men were bussed in to attack local people in a back street of our town. Developers wanted to build on a piece of wet woodland and the security were there to protect their chainsaw operators. The Hebden Bridge Times barely covered this issue. The same day, photos and video of security guards attacking local residents and trees being felled with children still in them were on the Hebweb.

In 2005, we wrote a feature entitled "Ten Years of the Hebden Bridge Web". I sent a copy to the Hebden Bridge Times. They didn't reply for a while, and then Norman, the editor at the time, phoned to explain they weren't able to use it as "we don't do websites".

Plans to build a multi-storey carpark became a major issue. The HebWeb received a phone call from a woman who had an unpublished dossier she wanted share. It had been prepared for the Calderdale Cabinet. She came round and we chatted in front of my fire. She didn't tell me her name and to this day I don't know it. All very cloak and dagger. We published the document which gave several pieces of information which weren't in the public domain including the fact that the site had been sold to the developer for £1.

Discussion

One challenge the Hebweb faced was how to promote more polite discussion. So many discussion arenas on the Internet are conducted using poor English and insults. Half a dozen noisy people could easily scare everyone else away. We didn't want that. Being an old hippie at heart, initially I wanted to have a free, open debate where anyone could post what they liked. However, the first sign that this wasn't going to work was waking up on Saturday mornings to find some clever Internet user, presumably after a few Friday night pints, had worked out that it was very easy to copy a selection from a porn site and paste it into the body of a forum message.

We're still in the nineties here. Soon, things like spambots were to come along whereby remote spammers would develop programmes which automatically post rubbish into thousands of online forms. After much thought and some experimenting we came with the system where I entered each message manually, and these messages had to follow well worked out Forum guidelines.

Otherwise decent people who I knew personally would change their personality when it came to writing messages to be posted on the Internet. We now know this is a serious problem but the HebWeb Forum started way before Facebook, Twitter and other social media. So we were having to invent ways of dealing with these insults and anger way before it was recognised as a problem of our times. Inevitably, we were accused of censorship. I had to smile when Facebook, etc started trying to deal with the same problem we had been trying to deal with for some years.

Yet as social media became more prominent, discussions on the HebWeb Forum died down a little. It still remains the case that well thought our messages are often more likely to be posted on the HebWeb than social media. Looking at the Forum today, I feel quite proud. There are thousands of messages, many of which have been penned with considerable thought and time by our correspondents.

Campaign for Broadband

Back in the early years of the new century, while the rest of the country was becoming accustomed to the new Internet superhighway, Hebden Bridge was still condemned to dial-up modems. The HebWeb led a long campaign to have broadband in our area. At one point, BT were saying that there will probably be never enough interest to make it commercially viable to go to the expense of enabling the exchange and maintaining the equipment.

Following a successful campaign of letter writing, lobbying, public meetings and the HebWeb meeting with the Yorkshire Manager of BT, in October 2003 we finally had broadband in Hebden Bridge.

In January 2004, shortly after Hebden Bridge started to receive broadband, 3-C managed to broadcast it to Mytholmroyd - from the top of the Church at Heptonstall directly to the top St. Michael's Church in Mytholmroyd. See the HebWeb report from back then.

Funding

If you go to many websites run by former local newspapers, you will be swamped by ads and pop-ups, to such an extent that their pages are extremely frustrating to read. We didn't want that for the HebWeb. So the HebWeb has relied on discreet Small Ads, a few larger ads and some Google ads. This brings in a steady income. While it is not enough to pay a proper wage, even for one person, it more than covers our other overheads. A few kind donations from users has been very welcome, but to date the HebWeb has not sought nor received any public funding. And there's an option to "buy me a coffee".

HebWeb - a source of info

Over the years the HebWeb has proved an invaluable source of information for journalists and researchers. They often contact the HebWeb when doing some things ablout our area.

If you want to know about how 1970s hippies revitalised the town, the devastating Boxing Day floods of 2015, what happened to the swimming pool or the multi-storey carpark, who won past local and national elections, the deadly legacy of Acre Mill , the unique reinvention of the Town Hall, the day the Tour de France came to Hebden Bridge it's all here. Just use the search facility or see our archive page

Plaudits

We have been lucky to receive a fair share of plaudits over the years. When he was the Guardian's northern correspondent, Martin Wainwright said of the HebWeb "the community website, the Hebweb, which is one of the best of its kind in the country. No, world."

Christine McCafferty who was the local MP from 1997 until 2010 said the HebWeb is "the best website this side of the Atlantic."

One browser wrote to us: "After months of procrastinating, we've cancelled the Hebden Bridge Times (no journalists left!) and going to rely on Hebweb - much more professional and useful!"

The future

While preparing this article, I asked ChatGPT for some quotations about the changing nature of local journalism. It came up with a few which I was particularly taken with; by a couple of writers well known to readers of The Guardian: Alan Rusbridger and Roy Greenslade.

However, when I checked in the newspaper archives to find these quotations, they were not there. I put this to ChatGPT who immediately admitted the error. While AI is undoubtedly going to be a useful tool in the hands of journalists, clearly we need that vital human touch if we are ever going to be able to trust what we read.

In March 2023, a Guardian editorial estimated that there are "are probably fewer local newspapers in Britain now than at any time since the 18th century." While local news reporting faces historic challenges, it might also present opportunities for innovation and adaptation.

The Internet is still very much in its infancy - not much older than the HebWeb. So perhaps Hebden Bridge has found the very template for the future? It's not perfect but I believe this could be a possible model for a way forward. It's definitely a solution which other areas could adapt in a way that suits their particular communities. But of course it remain "so Hebden Bridge."

By Chris Ratcliffe

Last updated: Tuesday, 9 September 2025

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See also

• Behind the pages of Pennine Pens
• More features from the HebWeb
• HebWeb Archives
• Search the HebWeb
• Donate to the HebWeb
• Or "buy me a coffee"
• Send the HebWeb an email