If you’ve read The Gallows Pole, by local author, Ben Myers, you’ll know that 2020 is an important anniversary, in the history of the Cragg Vale Coiners. It marks 250 years since the death of ‘King’ David Hartley, the leader of this notorious gang of counterfeiters.

When Ray Riches was teaching at Calder High School in the late 1960s, he developed and produced a play about the Cragg Coiners with some of his older pupils. The Little Theatre presented a revised version of the play, with an original musical score, in 1988, at Heptonstall Church, with an extra promenade performance at Walkley’s Clogs, then a flourishing retail outlet. More information on this production can be found in the theatre archive https://hblt.co.uk/archive-items/the-cragg-coiners-1988