This Pennine village is 328 metres above sea level at its highest point (near the millennium stone).

At that date, the place was called 'Slipcoat' (or Slippery Coat) Hill.

The first record of the name 'Scapegoat Hill' occurs in an Enclosure notice placed in the Leeds Mercury in 1820.

The village grew up around the woollen trade, and, in spite of having no mill, continued to grow in size throughout the nineteenth century.

[2] Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, the village was a very strong centre of baptism [3] opening a church as a daughter of the Pole Moor Church 1871 and moving to its present building in 1900.