Birdsedge

Birdsedge (or Birds Edge) is a small village in the borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England, on the edge of Yorkshire's Pennine hills, standing just below one thousand feet above sea level. It is located on the A629 about nine miles south of Huddersfield and about four miles north of Penistone. It is situated between the villages of Shepley and Upper Cumberworth and is linked with the neighbouring hamlet of High Flatts, a former Quaker settlement (and still home to a Friends' Meeting House).

Though originally an area of upland farms, woollen weaving and stone quarries, it is now a dormitory village for nearby towns and cities of Huddersfield, Barnsley, Sheffield, Wakefield and Leeds. Although the village has no shops and no pubs it has a thriving school (Birdsedge First School) and a Wesleyan Reform Union church (Birdsedge Wesleyan Reform Church) and a small commumity hall, (Birdsedge Village Hall). There is still a working mill in the village, though this is part of the Z Hinchliffe mill complex located in the nearby village of Denby Dale.

Name

There is some controversy about the name of the village. Long-term residents spell it Birdsedge while Kirklees local authority insists on calling it 'Birds Edge'. Until the 1980s the road sign at the north end of the village proclaimed "Birds Edge", while approaching from the south, although there was no village sign, the road sign on the A629 proclaimed "Birdsedge". In the Post Office's guide: 'Postal Addresses and Index to Postcode Directories' of May 1983, it is listed as Birdsedge. Whichever spelling is used, the mail gets through.

History

Historically the village was little more than a collection of isolated farms until the 1600s when a group of local Quakers founded a Meeting in High Flatts, renovating a pre-existing barn for their Meeting House and building several houses in the immediate vicinity. The Dickinson family prospered and the community developed under the guiding hand of the diligent Quakers for the next 200 years. The last of the Dickinsons died without heirs in 1875, by that time, the mill at Birdsedge was a major employer in the area and the majority of the stone cottages - erected in the 1800s - were housing workers who had moved from outlying areas such as Fulstone to find employment. At this time there were also several shops, including a post office, and two or three pubs. The school (then in the building that is now the village hall) was founded in the 1870s by members of the Quaker community. It was replaced by the new council school (now the First School) in 1911.

Today the village has about 170 houses and a population of 350, and has an active community based around the Village Hall and the Church.

Culture

Birdsedge hosts a successful (and disproportionately large) annual festival on the first Saturday in July featuring a broad range of family entertainment plus music and dance performers from the national and international folk scene. It also hosts a series of folk concerts in the Village Hall which have been successfully bringing in national and international guests since 1983 and continuing to the present day (written in autumn 2005). The folk connection comes via the vocal harmony trio, Artisan (1984 to 2005) and more information can be found at www.artisan-harmony.com - [http://www.artisan-harmony.com] ) Artisan disbanded in November 2005 after a twenty year history which included over thirty tours to the USA and Canada as well as concerts and festivals all over the UK and Europe and the two Birdsedge-resident members continue in The Brian Bedford Band (www.brianbedfordband.co.uk) [http://brianbedfordband.co.uk]

External links

* [http://www.birdsedge.co.uk Community website]