People will be able to benefit from all that detective work this year as the Local History Society holds a series of lectures, hosts re-enactments and publishes a new booklet about the town's past and its all-important bridge.
According to Colin Spencer's The History of Hebden Bridge, the word 'Hepden' made its first appearance in a 1334 document and is a reference to the stream in the valley.
Den, dene or dean means a valley – as in Colden, Erringden and so on. Hep means wild or dog rose. So, Hepden was Rose Valley.
The addition of the word 'bridge' was first recorded in 1399, when the name Heptenbryge appears, but a poll tax return of 20 years earlier records an Emma Brigge, which seems to imply there was already a bridge in the valley.
Hebden's position in the Calder Valley was one of the main factors in the growth and development of the town.
Never reaching a height of more than 600 feet above sea level, the Calder Valley was the most convenient route across the Pennines to link the industrial areas of Lancashire and Yorkshire.
Until the 15th century, the slowly growing population had been wholly employed in growing food.
But there came a time when no further land was available and there were idle hands and empty stomachs.
The new way of earning a living was in woollen textiles, probably based originally on local wool and certainly depending on the plentiful supplies of soft water.
Signs of prosperity in the early 16th centurywere the building of new churches such as Cross Stone, Luddenden, Sowerby and Sowerby Bridge, and the rebuilding of old wooden bridges in stone.
Building bridges, or helping to repair them, was seen as a form of charity, and the Old Bridge in Hebden Bridge received several mentions in wills soon after the year 1500.
The bridge would have been a convenient place for travellers to take a well-earned rest and the earliest buildings may well have been inns, placed as near to the bridge as possible and the forerunners of the two inns which now guard the entrances to the bridge.