Scammonden

Scammonden or Dean Head was a village close to Huddersfield, in the Dean Head Valley, England, before the valley was flooded to create Scammonden Reservoir in the 1960s. The M62 motorway crosses the dam wall and then passes through a cutting to the west over which Scammonden Bridge carries a B-road. The Chapel of St Barthelomew still exists, as does the old vicarage, now a boat club.HistoryHistorically in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Scammonden or Dean Head was a township covering more than 2,000 acres. In the 1870s it had a church, a Baptist chapel, a national school, a post office and 190 houses. Industry in the village included cotton-spinning and woollen manufacture and there were freestone quarries.A motorway and dam across the Dean Head Valley was proposed in the early 1960s and work began in 1964. Most buildings in the village were demolished or submerged in the reservoir when it was filled in 1969. Geologists considered the church and school would become unsafe once the dam was full. The church school closed in 1970 and is now a private residence.GeographyScammonden is surrounded by the moorland of the Pennines east of Blackstone Edge. About 900 acres were enclosed in 1820 but the surrounding hills are uncultivated rough pasture. Roads from Elland, Huddersfield and Manchester passed through the village.