Mark Liam Piggott in the Saturday Times

 Mark Liam Piggott, author of the soon to be released Out of Office had an interesting article published in the Times on Saturday. In the article Mark writes about the tragedies associated with his home town of Hebden bridge and his adolescent life there.

A combination of poverty and good luck took me to Hebden Bridge in 1970. I was 3; my mum, a Londoner barely out of her teens, was moving from one dump to another in inner-city Manchester. Then Dad bought us a house for £300 in a village called Pecket Well, high on the moors above this small, pretty Pennine town. I left in 1985, but almost 40 years later Mum remains – still an “oftcomer”, as locals call outsiders.

Mum and Dad were part of the first wave of outsiders to take advantage of the house prices in this semi-derelict but stunningly situated town. The Hebden of today is often portrayed as an idyllic bohemian town; one of the few towns to have banned plastic bags, the first to open an organic shop, the backdrop for Jamie Oliver in a recent Sainsbury’s Christmas commercial. But in 1970 it was very different: many of the houses were unfit for habitation and factories were closing. One of these was Acre Mill, a factory that manufactured asbestos products; up to 1,000 former employees have died (and are still dying) in what remains one of Britain’s worst industrial disasters. I spent hours with other kids playing on the local tip, nobody realising it was where trucks from Acre Mill dumped asbestos.

To read the article in full click here

Lucy