Benjamin Myers wrote his historical novel, the Gallows Pole, about the real places and people that inhabited Cragg Vale, the same part of the upper Calder Valley that HebTroCo has as its stronghold. Actually we’re based in a former chicken shed, but lets keep a bit of poetic licence going here.

In the late eighteenth century, the Cragg Vale Coiners clipped coins and used these bits to make forgeries. The Gallows Pole is the dirty true story about the characters that lived in the steep valleys of this once remote and inaccessible part of Yorkshire where the book is set. It’s a dark tale of northern ingenuity from grim times. Perhaps though, the men that faced death for their crimes were actually a kind of good pirate? Read the book and make your own mind up. Ben has recently been signed up by the Bloomsbury publishing house and they have just reissued his Walter Scott Prize winning historical novel. New works are in the pipeline as well as other reissues.

A couple of weeks ago Ben came up to our unit and we went for a walk to visit some of the places that are in in his book. He wrote some lovely words for us which you can read here.