I know about this particular article, although I haven't seen it - had some correspondence through a third party - and the person didn't seem very knowledgeable. They insisted it had to be Halifax because there were only a few possible towns with big rivers in, but the description of Spinner's End sounds more like a very small river. And the person in question actually didn't know that there are cotton mills in Derbyshire - even though a Google on "cotton mills derbyshire" brings up 22,500 entries, including an exam question on the Industrial Revolution asking students to explain the domination of the cotton-industry by Debryshire and Lancashire!

It would be kind-of nice if it was Halifax, because of that wonderful song "From Hull and Hell and Halifax//Good Lord deliver me" - but I don't believe it is. Halifax is too big and too modern. The Halifax Town Centre guide, for example, describes the city as "a thriving industrial, commercial and retail centre" and the main woollen mill as now "a bsiness and office centre" - and I doubt if *all* of this renovation has happened since 1997. Also, given the size and pre-eminence of Halifax it's unlikely that there wouldn't have been pureblood wizards living there at some point, which throws into question Bella's comment that she and Cissy must be the first of their kind to visit it.

Also, the river which runs through Halifax is the same one that runs through Hebden Bridge. I can testify that that river was crystal clear when I was in Hebden Bridge in the mid 80's, and already by that point the coal industry had so far died out in the north that it seems unlikely that industrial activity in Halifax could have made that river run black only a few miles down stream.

It may well be that JK had an old photo' of Halifax in mind when she invented Spinner's End - but it doesn't fit the reality of 1997.

Yorkshire would be kind-of nice from a cultural pespective - but the reason I think it's very unlikely to be Yorkshire is that the textile industry had largely failed by the mid 20th C, so there hasn't been a *working* mill at Spinner's End for 30 or 40 years by HBP. The little streets have been decaying and the river silting up for that long.

Yorkshire is a popular tourist destination, and land there is at a premium. It is unlikely I think that a little town like that would still be lying neglected and almost empty in 1997 - the little houses would all have been sold to Yuppies or turned into holiday homes, and the picturesque cobbled streets would be being used by film companies, if this were Yorkshire.

On the other hand, there's a whole string of miserable, decaying, nearly empty little towns, all of them based around water-powered cotton-mills, all strung along a line between Derby and Manchester - and I reckon this is one of them.

Author's Response: This person found a picture of a street and the chimney of a mill in Halifax- where she said there was a tradition of woollen milling- that matched the description JKR gives in HBP.