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Founding
Founding of Huddersfield
town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England
- 1086
- Europe
Founding
town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Huddersfield is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district, in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confluence into the similar-sized Colne is to the south of the town centre, which then flows into the Calder in the north-eastern outskirts of the town.
The rivers around the town provided soft water required for textile treatment in large weaving sheds; this made it a prominent mill town with an economic boom in the early part of the Victorian era Industrial Revolution. The town centre has much neoclassical Victorian architecture; an example is its railway station, a Grade I listed building described by John Betjeman as "the most splendid station façade in England." It won the Europa Nostra award for architecture.
The town hosts the University of Huddersfield and three colleges: Greenhead College, Kirklees College and Huddersfield New College. It is the birthplace of rugby league with the local team, Huddersfield Giants, playing in the Super League. It also has a professional football team, Huddersfield Town, that currently competes in the EFL League One, as well as two Rugby Union clubs: Huddersfield R.U.F.C. and Huddersfield YM RUFC. Notable people include Labour former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and film star James Mason.
The town has been classed under Yorkshire, the West Riding of Yorkshire and West Yorkshire for statistics throughout its history. The town's population in 2021 was 141,692; it is in the West Yorkshire Built-up Area. The town is 14 miles (23 km) south-west of Leeds, 12 miles (19 km) west of Wakefield, 23 miles (37 km) north-west of Sheffield and 24 miles (39 km) north-east of Manchester.
Local settlement dates back over 4,000 years. Castle Hill, a major landmark, was the site of an Iron Age hill fort. The remains of a Roman fort were unearthed in the mid 18th century at Slack near Outlane, west of the town.
The earliest surviving record of the place name is in the Domesday Book of 1086, Oderesfelt. It appears as Hudresfeld in a Yorkshire charter from 1121 to 1127, and as Huderesfeld in subsidy rolls in 1297. The name meaning has not complicated with the shifts of English, remaining 'Hud(d)er's field'.
The modern name is pronounced without a word-initial /h/ in the local dialect, a trait independently shared by many Norman scribes' dialects of the Domesday Book era (see Old and modern French).
Huddersfield has been a market town since Anglo-Saxon times. The market cross is on Market Place.
The manor of Huddersfield was owned by long lease by the de Lacy family until its 1322 takeback by the Crown. In 1599, William Ramsden bought it, and the Ramsden family continued to own the manor, which was known as the Ramsden Estate, until 1920. During their ownership they supported the development of the town. Sir John Ramsden, 3rd Baronet built the Huddersfield Cloth Hall in 1766 and his son the fourth baronet was responsible for Huddersfield Broad Canal in 1780. The Ramsdens endorsed the railway in the first wave of national railway building, in the 1840s.
Huddersfield was a centre of civil unrest during the Industrial Revolution. Europe saw frequent wars during and after which, as to those most acutely affecting Britain, cloth trade slumped which could be compounded by local crops failure. Many local weavers faced starvation and losing their livelihood due to the new, mechanised weaving sheds. Luddites began destroying the mills, sheds and machinery at such times; one of the most notorious attacks was on Cartwright – a Huddersfield mill-owner who had a reputation for cruelty – and his Rawfolds Mill. Kirkpatrick Sale describes how an army platoon was stationed at Huddersfield to deal with these; at its peak, having about a thousand soldiers and ten thousand civilians. Luddites thus began to focus criminal damage on nearby towns and villages (less well-protected); their most damaging act was to destroy Foster's Mill at Horbury – a village about 10 miles (16 kilometres) east. The government campaign that crushed the movement was provoked by a murder that took place in Huddersfield. William Horsfall, a mill-owner and a passionate prosecutor of Luddites, was killed in 1812. Although the movement faded out, Parliament began to increase welfare provision for those out of work, and introduce regulations to improve conditions in the mills.
Two Prime Ministers spent part of their childhood in Huddersfield: the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who was born locally and attended Royds Hall School, and the Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. Wilson is commemorated by a statue on the forecourt to the town's station.
In 1920, the corporation bought the Ramsden Estate from that family that had owned much of the town at least as to the reversion of long leases (a minor, overarching interest) since 1599, for £1.3 million. The town became "the town that bought itself." Most of the keynote central building freeholds belong to the local authority, as in a few towns in England such as Basingstoke.
On 4 July 1981, Huddersfield held the first pride march outside of London in a move of solidarity with the Gemini Club and its harassment by the local police force and their referral to it as a "cesspit of filth". Upwards of 2,000 gay rights campaigners marched through the town from the football stadium up to Greenhead Park.
Huddersfield was incorporated as a municipal borough in the ancient West Riding of Yorkshire in 1868. The borough comprised the thus sidelined civil parishes of Almondbury, Dalton, Huddersfield, Lindley-cum-Quarmby and Lockwood, later dissolved. When the West Riding County Council was formed in 1889, Huddersfield became a county borough, exempt from its control.
A more confined Huddersfield seat than the early 20th century scope has been represented by Labour since its creation in 1983 and is, by size of majority and length of tenure, a strongly-Labour leaning seat.
Kirklees was the first part of the country to have a Green or other environmentalist party councillor – Nicholas Harvey – he was instrumental in protesting against the intended closure of the Settle and Carlisle Railway line. The council has councillors of Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties; these retained the deposit, reaching more than 5% of the vote in the last general election for an MP who serves in the House of Commons.
Huddersfield expanded in 1937, assimilating parts of the Golcar, Linthwaite, and South Crosland urban districts. The county borough was abolished in 1974 and its former area was combined with that of other districts to form the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire.
Council bids to gain support for city status were rejected by the people in a poll held by the Huddersfield Daily Examiner; the council did not apply for that status in the 2000 or 2002 competitions.
Huddersfield had a strong Liberal tradition up to the 1950s, reflected in several Liberal social clubs. The current Member of Parliament (MP) for the Huddersfield constituency is Harpreet Uppal of the Labour Party.
The town's population in 1961 had reached 130,652.
The United Kingdom Census 2001 stated that the population of the town's urban sub-area of the West Yorkshire Urban Area was 146,234 and that of the former extent of the county borough was 121,620. The wider South Kirklees had a population of 216,011.
Huddersfield lies at the confluence of the shallow valley floors of the River Colne and the River Holme, south of the town centre. It is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines, which blend into the moorlands of the South Pennines to the west of the town.
As with all of West Yorkshire, a temperate oceanic climate exists, wetter than the low plains rain shadow proper towards East Yorkshire but drier than Cumbria. It is mild for the latitude – overnight frosts are quite frequent in winter yet daytime tends to exceed such temperatures due to onshore breezes from around Britain and as the Gulf Stream moderates temperatures. Summers are usually warm, punctuated by frequent rainy and hot spells. Winters are usually cool and damp, punctuated by frequent cold spells where snow is possible, especially on higher ground. According to the Köppen climate classification, Huddersfield is certified as Cfb.
After boundary changes in 2004, Huddersfield now covers eight of the twenty-three electoral wards for Kirklees Council. Neighbouring wards in the Colne Valley, Holme Valley, and Kirkburton are often considered to be part of Huddersfield though they are predominantly semi-rural. The very centre of town forms the Newsome ward of councillors. Eight wards make up Huddersfield proper; these with populations, extent and constituent suburbs (mid-year 2005 estimates) are:
Huddersfield is within a green belt region that extends into the Kirklees borough and wider surrounding counties. It is in place to reduce urban sprawl, prevent the towns in the West Yorkshire Urban Area conurbation from further convergence, protect the identity of outlying communities, encourage brownfield reuse, and preserve nearby countryside. This is achieved by restricting inappropriate development within the designated areas, and imposing stricter conditions on permitted building.
The green belt surrounds the Huddersfield built-up area, a much-wooded buffer zone. Larger outlying communities, such as Upper Hopton, Grange Moor, Highburton, Farnley Tyas, Netherton, Honley, Outlane, Slaithwaite and Wellhouse, are exempt from this. Nearby smaller villages, hamlets and rural areas such as Thurgory, Gawthorpe Green, Bog Green, Upper Heaton, Wilberlee, South Crosland, Rushfield Bridge and Bank End see their unbuilt land included in the designation. Much semi-rural land on the fringes forms the rest. It was chiefly defined in the 1960s, and across Kirklees covers about 70%, i.e. 23,050 hectares (57,000 acres) (2017, excluding the Peak District National Park).
A subsidiary aim is to encourage play, sport and leisure, through woodland, moor, streams, green meadows, fields, small bogs. Features are:
West of Marsden, Meltham and Holmbridge, it borders the north limb of the Peak District National Park.
In 1961, Huddersfield was 2.2% non-White, with it being 1.5% (1,964) Black and 0.7% (874) Asian. As of 2021, the town of Huddersfield's population was enumerated at 141,692; its ethnic makeup was 66% White, 20.4% Asian, 5.6% Black, 5.2% Mixed, 2% Other and 1% Arab.
The town has many churches, mosques, temples and synagogues. These include Christian denominations: the Church of England, Baptists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists (sometimes as their main fusion the United Reformed Church), Methodism, Quakers, and the Roman Catholic Church. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism and Sikhism all have congregational buildings.
The town's religious makeup was 39% Christian, 37.4% No Religion, 20.4% Muslim, and has small Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Jewish communities.
Huddersfield is a manufacturing town, despite the university being the largest employer. Historically the town produced woollen textiles. This area of business, along with the chemical and engineering industries that emerged to support the manufacture of textiles, was the basis of the town's nineteenth and early twentieth century prosperity. The number of people who work in textiles has declined greatly, but the surviving companies produce large quantities of woollen products with little labour.
The town is home to textile, chemical and engineering companies, including Brook Motors Ltd founded by Ernest Brook in 1904. Against conventional wisdom, he started making alternating current electric motors, and he did this in one room with two assistants and starting capital of just £300. On its 50th anniversary in 1954, it employed more than 2,000 people and, with Ernest's sons Frank and Jack in charge, was the largest exclusive producer of AC motors in the world, with had a turnover of £4,500,000. That same year Brook Motors Ltd operated 10 factories in Huddersfield, its biggest being Empress Works on St Thomas's Road, and opened one at Barugh Green, Barnsley.
Other local manufacturers are Cummins Turbo Technologies, founded in 1952 as Holset by Messrs. Holmes and Croset. (turbochargers), David Brown Gear systems (industrial gearing), Huddersfield Fine Worsteds (textiles), Taylor & Lodge (textiles), C & J Antich (textiles), Syngenta AG (agro-chemicals), Pennine Radio Limited (electronics transformers and sheet metalworking) and a large number of niche manufacturers, such as Dual Seal Glass (maker of spandrel glass panels) and Ellis Furniture (producer of kitchen and bathroom furniture). Huddersfield is home to Andrew Jones Pies, a regional award-winning pie-maker, and Mamas and Papas, a manufacturer and retailer of prams, pushchairs and related items and specialist pneumatics supplier Shelley Automation Ltd.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Huddersfield”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.