The Battle of Hebden Bridge

Feelings are running high in Hebden Bridge. Tomorrow, dozens of people will set off for a special planning meeting of Calderdale council, to protest against an innovative architectural scheme in the heart of the Yorkshire town.

Hebden Bridge has connections with a number of formidable figures, including Ted Hughes and Sir Bernard Ingham. And in four years of development, the Garden Street project has ignited characteristically forceful opposition in the shape of the Garden Street Action Group.

The scheme proposes six buildings, from three to seven storeys, in a relatively rundown part of Hebden Bridge. Award-winning architects Studio BAAD's architecture is normally hi-tech, but its Garden Street scheme is the opposite, taking creative inspiration from local materials and building types.

"We've gone back to basics," said Studio BAAD's principal, Philip Bintliff. "We've referenced the earliest buildings here, from the 14th century, and designed the scheme with gritstone paving, walls and roofs. We dread an outside developer coming in here with a pattern-book pastiche scheme."

But action group spokesman Anthony Rae said: "The planning committee needs to see how many people in Hebden Bridge are really concerned about this development." And the Battle of Hebden Bridge has gone beyond angry letters to local papers and posters in front windows. The normally sedate village atmosphere has grown tetchy.

Tim Downs, spokesman for the Garden Street scheme's local developer, David Fletcher, told The Architects' Journal he received an anonymous phone call from a man threatening to drum him out of Hebden Bridge "in a wooden box with the lid nailed down".

A reference by the developer to Josef Goebbels, in relation to the protesters, has not helped the quality of debate. Neither have the people who smashed windows in the offices of Studio BAAD, and deflated the car tyres of its staff.

The brouhaha might be seen as luridly comic. It is not. Sir Bernard, who grew up in the town and still writes a column for the Hebden Bridge Times, said yesterday: "If it is true that there have been death threats then that is deplorable but it shows how strongly people feel about this. The developers have tried to be too clever and they have come up with wobbly buildings and the work will cause two years of disruption to the town, and the town can't take that."

The action group's key objection to the scheme concerns its town centre disruption during construction, and its car parking element. They say there is no major need for more parking. Local authority surveys in 2005 and 2007 revealed an overwhelming commercial concern about lack of parking.

When Calderdale's planners decide the fate of the Garden Street scheme and its 48 houses and flats, their decision will reveal whether they want to fix Hebden Bridge in the amber of a frozen history, or whether they believe that 21st-century architecture can re-energise the Victorian mill town known as Trouser Town.

Mr Bintliff says, "We're architects, but we live here. It will add to Hebden Bridge's character." The scheme has already been agreed principle, and is supported by English Heritage and Cabe, the architecture watchdog.