This is where Jean, 64, was born and grew up and – apart from just four years after her marriage when she moved to King Cross – has been living ever since.
She has a love and passion for the hilltop village and this has been beautifully captured in her book Growing Up In Sowerby... and more.
She has added the "and more" bit to the title because not only is the book a collection of her treasured childhood memories but it is also interwoven with a fascinating historical background of the village.
"Sowerby is a special place to me, absolutely," she says.
"And I felt that the period of time when I was growing up was a period of history that had to be recorded. It had to be written down before it was too late."
"There were characters in the village then who are now long gone, but I wanted to be able to share them with others. I also wanted to tell people about the village. There are people who come to live in Sowerby and they don't have a clue about its history and how it was shaped and so I hope if they read this book, they'll know a little more about it now."
Jean's idea to write a book began to take hold as her 60th birthday approached and she was preparing to retire from her part-time job with Tesco in Market Street, Halifax.
"People kept saying 'what will you do when you retire? Will you be bored?' And I thought to myself, 'not I, no way'," she laughs.
Jean, who also worked as a library assistant with the Courier for nine years in the 1980s, had already written a booklet about her schooldays at the former Sowerby New Road Girls Second-ary Modern, A Personal View, but she knew what she wanted to tackle next would be on a bigger scale.
"I had hand-written that and I knew that if I wanted to write a book then I needed computer skills and at the age of 60 suddenly becoming computer literate was a bit daunting," she says.
But Jean is not one to baulk at a challenge and soon she had set up a small corner of the house as a writing space, devoted herself to the keyboard and did her best to ignore "sunny weather that made me want to be outside and other things that seemed to draw me away" in a bid to concentrate on the book.
The result is a wonderful recollection of events, characters, chunks of social history and personal childhood memories which will have readers sighing with nostalgia as they are transported back into a long-forgotten bygone age.
Jean recalls early schooldays at St Peter's CE School in Miss Albrighton's class, where "a large Bakelite radio would be switched on and we would sit cross-legged on the floor for Listen With Mother, most likely nodding when the presenter inquired 'are you sitting comfortably?'"
There are lovely reminiscences of her childhood friends, including Terry Dixon and David and Stuart Hartley, who have remained friends throughout her life, as well as neighbours Milton and Ivy Smith, who were among the first to own a television set (or a "time waster" as her mother referred to it). They introduced Jean to the delights of All Your Own, hosted by Huw Weldon, Crackerjack (in those days hosted by Eamonn Andrews) and Champion The Wonderhorse.
"As I grew older, if there was anything on the television in the early evening they thought I'd be interested in watching, they would knock on the wall with a wooden spoon," she recalls.
There are carefree days of roly poly in the surrounding fields and the "delf" at the side of Haigh's old buildings, of sucking the juice from clover flowers and home-made toffee made by a villager.
Jean's love of life on the farm and, in particular, seeing calves come into the world is captured and there are anecdotes of close encounters with less than friendly bulls.
There are chapters devoted to long-gone bakeries, shops and pubs, the origins of Sowerby village, chapel days and displays courtesy of Marion Hitchen's School of Dance.
Village characters including brothers Ben and Fred Ackroyd are brought to life and fun and games such as whip and top and making tents out of the clothes horse and an old blanket are relived.
The book's foreword is written by former councillor Judy Gannon an "off-comer of 30-years plus from Essex" who describes the book as a valuable reference to Sowerby in years to come.
"Jean has a clear love and passion of Sowerby," she says.
And now that she has mastered the computer, could there me more books to follow.
"Well I do have a lot more things I'd like to share and they're all up here," she says, tapping her head.
"So who knows? Maybe."

l Growing Up in Sowerby... and more, price £9.99 by Jean Illingworth is available at Fred Wade, Halifax and The Bookcase, Hebden Bridge.