Of The Stubbing Wharf
There has been a settlement at Stubbing, originally in the parish of Sowerby, in Calderdale, for over a thousand years; the name is an Anglo-Saxon word for a clearing where the tree stumps have been left. The hamlet remained unimportant until the upper Calder valley became a major cloth manufacturing centre with the birth of the industrial revolution in the latter half of the eighteenth century.
The Rochdale canal was built to serve the many mills in the valley, the section passing through Hebden Bridge was opened in 1789. Very soon afterwards, the influential Foster family of Erringden built the Stubbing Wharf Hotel and by 1810 it was serving the needs of travellers on both the canal and the turnpike road (now the A646).
The Hotel remained in the hands of the Fosters throughout the nineteenth century; several of the more important family members are commemorated in the stained glass windows of the parish church of St Thomas in Heptonstall.
