How Happy Valley creator Sally Wainwright blazed a trail that has put Calderdale on the TV map

Few screenwriters can boast a back catalogue as dazzling and daring as Calderdale's finest.

Without Sally Wainwright, not only would there be no Happy Valley, Gentleman Jack or Last Tango In Halifax but nor would there have been the deluge of TV shows and films that have been filmed in the borough since.

"Successful TV shows have their own flavour and atmosphere and I think that part of that is your location, where you choose to shoot it," Sally says.

"Shows that reflect a particular part of the world really well help to create that atmosphere and makes a show very special.

"It was less successful with Last Tango because that was half-shot in Lancashire, because the production company was in Manchester.

"Happy Valley was the same production company for a while but then it became a London production company and they didn't have that attachment to Manchester, so we became much more orientated to shooting in Yorkshire.”

What the Piece Hall has done for Calderdale in music, Sally Wainwright has done for the borough in television.

Ackley Bridge, The Gallows Pole, The Secret Invasion, The Moorside, A Gentleman In Moscow, Fool Me Once, Boat Story; the list goes on and on.

"I think there are a number of reasons for that," Sally said. "I think the TV industry generally has expanded so massively in the last ten, 15 years.

"I think people have also got switched on to filming outside London, because it's expensive, and they've also got switched on to how beautiful and unique it is there.

"They were filming that Marvel film in The Piece Hall because The Piece Hall is a unique building, it's an extraordinary and unique building.

"I think it's the nature of the TV industry, that it has expanded and, inevitably, people want to film in beautiful places.

"I was talking to Holly Lynch, who is the MP for Halifax, a couple of months ago, and she was saying it's great to be an MP for a constituency that people have actually heard of because of Happy Valley!

"I think Happy Valley got mentioned in the House of Commons at one point for something to do with the police.

"It's nice to know my show might have put Halifax on the map in other ways as well."

Sally, who was born in Huddersfield to parents Harry and Dorothy, lived in Elland until she was seven before moving to Kebroyd.

"I have very happy memories of the area," she said.

"When I was little I was always fascinated by stories from my mum, my dad and my granny. I used to really enjoy listening to them telling stories and anecdotes about all sorts of stuff, going right back to the First World War.

"I think that's when I first started being fascinated by stories.

"When I was a teenager and getting old enough to go to university, I just wanted to leave the area completely.

"It was discovering Anne Lister that made me fall in love with Halifax and the area.

"As a teenager I wanted to get away and explore the world a bit more widely.

"I've always been fascinated by Shibden Hall, I visited it a lot as a young person.

"I was often taken there at a weekend, as you often are when you grow up in Halifax.

"But it was only when Jill Liddington's book came out in 1998 - I'd always been interested in Anne Lister but I could never find anything out about her and when that book came out it really made me fall completely in love with Halifax.

"That's where my passion began, realising who she was and how fabulous she was.

"I always felt a weird attachment to Shibden Hall, even when I was tiny.

"I used to get taken there as a very small child by my mum and dad - my dad was a very keen historian.

"We always used to get taken round Shibden Hall and I always felt a real fondness and attachment for the place.

"So when we ended up filming there it was really quite emotional for me.

"I think I've ended up writing things almost by default. It was never a conscious decision.

"When I wrote The Braithwaites, I was going to set that in Manchester and I was working for Yorkshire Television, and I thought 'this is a bit crazy, why don't I set it in Leeds?' and everything I've written subsequently, I've just written it in my own vernacular and the language I've grown up in, because I think it's more humorous than southern.

"I suppose it is what you know to some degree but I feel the language is richer and it's an accent I'm most familar with.

"It was never a plan to write things set in Yorkshire, it's just the way things have fallen."

Calderdale will be eternally grateful.

Even if it has been by accident rather than design, there's no doubt Sally has helped put Calderdale on the tourism map.

"It would appear so. I'm always a bit overwhelmed when I've been given Freedom of the Borough and an OBE and things like that," she said.

"I live in Oxfordshire but I'm often up at my second house in Ripponden, and ocassionally I see literature at railway stations about the Calderdale television trail or Happy Valley tours and I open it up and it's all about me!

"That's a bit like 'oh my god!'

"So I am aware of it, I think it's wonderful if it's brought people to the area.”