AN appeal has launched to unearth the history of Hapton – from the infancy of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to the arrival of the collieries, chemical works and a world-renowned electrical contractors.

Parish Coun Joan Lakeland is discussing with the Heritage Lottery Fund possible funding for a project to research the development of the village.

Hapton was the first village in England to have electric street lighting, thanks to the prowess of the Simpson Brothers.

And its development can be traced through the rise and fall of heavy industry – and a quirk of fate in the early 19th Century.

Coun Lakeland said: “The canal was not even supposed to run through Hapton, it had a different route, and that is where everything really began.

“Back then everything in Hapton was really based around farming, in and around the Hapton Inn.”

The mine workings of Hapton, Thorny Bank and Huncoat were central to the lives of generations of villagers, with the quarries around Hameldon Hill.

Nineteen miners were killed and more than 20 were badly hurt in the pit disaster at the Hapton colliery in 1962.

And the forward-thinking approach of W F and J F Simpson, who founded their electrical firm in the village in 1886, was another landmark.

Coun Lakeland has enlisted support from pupils at the village’s primary school and church historians are lending a hand.

She added: “If the work goes ahead then we could produce everything from walking leaflets to an information board for the village.”

Coun Lakeland will be meeting lottery officials on August 4.