Heptonstall Parish Website

The Pennine Spring Music Festival will take place on Tuesday 28 May, Thursday 30 May and Saturday 1 June 2013.

All concerts start 7.30pm in Heptonstall Parish Church

More details at www.penninespringmusic.co.uk

A Fair Trade weekend with stalls and teas will be held at St Thomas’ Church, Heptonstall, from Friday 24 May, organised by Judith Parish.

Fair trade clothes, food and gifts from Traidcraft will be on sale along with drinks and the usual fantastic selection of home-made cakes.  The event will be open on Friday 7pm to 9pm, Saturday 10am to 5pm, Sunday 10.30am to 5pm.

An electricity generator and fuel supply has been installed by the toilets on Townfield Lane due to problems with the power supply to ten nearby houses.

After a powercut on Friday morning, workmen dug up the edge of Smithwell Lane looking for the fault, and realised the fault was in the middle of the road.

Calderdale Council has prevented them from closing the road to make the repairs because of the closure of Lee Wood Road.

The generator was installed on Friday evening as a temporary measure, so no houses are now without electricity. The electricity board are now negotiating with the council about how to proceed.

The new path from Townfield Lane to Heptonstall school is now open, saving parents and children from having to walk on the main road while the traffic is heavier than normal.

Children are enjoying getting to know the ponies. In case you were wondering, they are:

Skye, light brown with white socks.

Aran, very dark brown with a white muzzle and white socks.

Jura, dark brown with a whitish tummy.

Thanks to Rosie for the information.

The owners of the Cross Inn, WJ Turnbull and Sons, have confirmed that the pub will be re-opening in June.

Builders are starting on some repairs and the pub will open again as soon as they are complete.

A spokesperson for WJ Turnbull said they didn’t know an exact date yet but would know more as works commenced.

Repairs to Lee Wood Road, which carries traffic around the village from Hebden Bridge to Slack Bottom and beyond, are likely to take months and cost at least £1million.

The repairs were delayed by heavy snow in March and have now hit technical problems, with the council now refusing to give a date for completion.

Coun Barry Collins told the Heben Bridge Times: “We are having to excavate to a depth of 4.5m below the road level to reach stable ground to find the new wall.

“The poor ground  conditions and the depth of the excavation have reduced the length of wall which can be safely excavated to five metres at any one time as the edge of the excavation is unsafe and obviously poses a risk to workers on the site. This restricted working area has reduced the manpower that we can effectively employ at any time.

“We accept that this is obviously a problem and potentially extends the length of the project but that’s what we are facing in a technical sense.

“It is absolutely clear from the seriousness of the problems that we have uncoered on the hillside that this is going to be extremely expensive.

“I understand people’s concerns on the timescale and the disruption it is causing but given the scale of the problems we are uncovering, I’d prefer not to put a timescale on this.”

He told the HB Times that the council was awaiting the findings of a geotechnical report on Tentercroft and Hollins before it made any further decisions on additional works that may be required.

The council has conducted traffic surveys using speed guns and found that on average 93 cars passed through Heptonstall in an hour at an average speed of 12 miles per hour. The maximum speed recorded was 18 miles per hour.