thrived as a bustling mill town specialising in corduroy and moleskin goods, but that prosperity ended in the 1970s when the textile industry went into decline. Hebden Bridge began to flourish again towards the end of that decade when it was transformed into a destination for creative minds and free spirits. It became well known for its strong sense of community and tolerance, in particular becoming a welcoming haven for lesbians and gay men.
Local author Paul Barker explained, ‘It was a small mill town in steep decline. There were lots of squatters who had creative skills – writing, painting or music – so it started as an arts-based thing. It’s a tolerant place, which allowed this scene to develop. People came to visit friends and realised the freedom to be able to live how they wanted.’
A strong literary connection already existed, although not a particularly happy one. The controversial poet laureate Ted Hughes was born in the village of Mytholmroyd, two miles down the road towards Halifax. His former home at Lumb Bank, two miles in the other direction, is now a residential writing centre.
Of more interest to literary pilgrims is the grave of Hughes’s first wife, Sylvia Plath, in the village church in nearby Heptonstall, where his parents lived. She immortalised the location in her bleak poem ‘November Graveyard’ that spoke of ‘skinflint trees’. The revered American poet had tragically committed suicide in London in 1963 but Hughes arranged for her to be buried in this most picturesque of locations. Many devotees of her work wishing to pay their respects stay in Hebden Bridge.
John and Imogen were drawn to the artistic nature of the town when they decided to settle there. Hebden Bridge was perfectly situated for a young and ambitious couple forging strong reputations in the world of art. They had begun promising careers in London where they were brought up in neighbouring districts south of the river – John in South Norwood and Imogen, a vivacious blonde, in Forest Hill. They were married in May 1984 at the historic Christ’s Chapel of Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift in the aptly named Gallery Road, Dulwich. He was twenty-six and she was twenty-four.
John was always a man who grasped an opportunity, impatient to make something of his life. Unsurprisingly, therefore, he had been appointed keeper of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in 1980 at the age of twenty-three. He had been taken under the wing of the gallery’s charismatic first director, Giles Waterfield, and together they transformed its fortunes from a threadbare museum with a skeletal staff and no financial support into one respected throughout the world.
Giles took a chance on his protégé’s youthful talent – as so many would with Ed in the future. When he died unexpectedly in November 2016, John wrote in appreciation of his old friend: ‘You transformed a sleepy, forgotten capsule of late Georgian taste into a world-renowned art museum with its own dynamic exhibition and education programme.’
Giles and John were a formidable partnership. In 1983, they held a life-drawing class in the permanent collection to attract visits from schools and colleges, an initiative that proved to be the start of their acclaimed learning programme. Throughout the 1980s, John seized the chance to organise major new exhibitions, including a universally admired collection of Old Masters.
While the famous paintings of great artists would bring in the crowds, he also promoted a new generation of British artists – many of whom were based in the north of England – including the distinguished landscape painter David Blackburn, who was from Huddersfield. John curated an exhibition of his work in Dulwich in 1986 and wrote the catalogue that went with it.
John brought a refreshingly intelligent and critical eye to paintings. His goal, right from those early days at the Picture Gallery, was to encourage visitors to take the time to really look at a painting – not just to take a photograph and move swiftly on. He explained, ‘When you read paintings, you start to look at people and places differently. Once you can read art, you have a gift for life.’
After seven years’ working in the world of museums, John moved on from Dulwich. He had found other opportunities with galleries in Manchester and Bradford, and he and Imogen decided to base themselves in Yorkshire. They were ambitious to become independent and had an entrepreneurial spirit that rubbed off on their younger son at an early age.
In 1990, the year before Ed was born, they set up their own company, a fine-art consultancy called Sheeran Lock, with an office in Halifax. Their new direction meant lots of travelling, particularly the well-worn path down the motorway to London – long, tedious trips that provided Ed with some of his earliest memories as he listened over and over again to his dad’s distinctly mainstream musical preferences. John Sheeran seemed to be stuck in a time warp, listening to music from the sixties and early seventies.
Even as a very young boy, Ed was displaying some of the characteristics that would serve him so well as a professional musician. He picked up words and melodies very quickly.
He would learn all the songs on classic Beatles and Bob Dylan albums and be able to sing along happily, if a little tunelessly.
One of his father’s favourites was Elton John’s 1971 album Madman Across the Water, which contained the track ‘Tiny Dancer’. Ed would memorably reference it in his own classic song ‘Castle on the Hill’ when he reminisces about driving down the country lanes near home at ninety miles an hour. Many years later Elton would become an important figure in Ed’s own story.
Despite his connection to ‘Tiny Dancer’, Ed chose another song from that album as a Desert Island Disc. He went for ‘Indian Sunset’, the elegiac orchestral number that opened side two and told the story of an Iroquois warrior contemplating defeat and death at the hands of the white man. The sensitive lyric revealed Elton’s song-writing partner, Bernie Taupin, at his most poetic.
John and Imogen envisaged Sheeran Lock as a multi-faceted concern. They saw the company setting up exhibitions and educational projects not just in Yorkshire but also around the world. They acted as consultants to a growing band of artists, whom they felt deserved a wider audience.
One of their first steps was to set up a publishing arm to promote the work of their talented friends and clients, including northern painters Mary Lord, Marie Walker Last and Katharine Holmes, the Lancashire-based Anglo-Dutch sculptor Marjan Wouda and the printmaker Adrienne Craddock. A beautifully produced book would often accompany an exhibition of the artist’s work. It was an approach that would serve their son Ed well in the future: make use of every aspect of your work.
As well as sorting out the day-to-day administration and editing the books, Imogen was a creative force not to be underestimated. These days, she is given a postscript in biographies of her famous son as a mum who dabbles in jewellery design. That sells her very short. She graduated with an MA in art history from the University of St Andrews, the same degree Kate Middleton would later obtain. After completing her studies, she worked in the press office at the National Portrait Gallery in London before moving north with John and becoming the gallery services officer at the Manchester City Galleries.
She used her artistic flair to transform the somewhat austere interior of the house in Birchcliffe Road into a magical pot-pourri of beautiful paintings and sculptures. She ditched wallpaper and emulsion in favour of a patterned fabric that she hung on the walls, like tapestry. Her little touches made the rather cold house, which used to be the local doctor’s surgery, feel far warmer, especially in winter when a roaring fire was essential.
The boys shared the attic space as a bedroom and, looking out through the window, they could see across the valley to the spire of Heptonstall Church, where Sylvia Plath is buried. Imogen knocked through the wall into the next room to create an opening with a private play area they could crawl through. It was like a giant Wendy house for boys.
Lock is Imogen’s maiden name and her family was well connected and high-achieving – particularly in the
