Huddersfield Local History Society: Journal 28 (2017) by various

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Huddersfield Local History SM! Society

Journal

2017/2018

ISSUE 28

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HUDDERSFIELD LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY was formed in 1977. It was established to create a means by which peoples of all levels of experience could share their common interests in the history of Huddersfield and district. We recognise that Huddersfield enjoys a rich historical heritage. It is the home town of prime ministers and Hollywood stars; the birthplace of Rugby League and famous Olympic athletes; it has more buildings than Bath listed for historical or architectural interest; it had the first municipal trams and some of the first council housing; its radical heritage includes the Luddites, suffragettes, pacifists and other campaigners for change.

MEMBERSHIP of the Society runs from 1° September until 31° August and the present subscriptions (2017/18) per year are:

Individual membership £10 Double membership £15

Group membership £15

Double membership consists of 2 named persons using a single address and receiving one copy of the Society’s Journal. Cheques should be made payable to Huddersfield Local History Society and sent to the Membership Secretary (address inside back cover) or submitted at a Society meeting. Payment by annual Standing Order is encouraged and a form may be downloaded from our website, which also allows online payment.

MEETINGS: The Society organises a full programme of meetings each year and the programme for 2017/18 is published in this Journal (page 6). Our Monday evening meetings commence at 7.30pm. Visitors are welcome at a charge of £2 per meeting.

PUBLICATIONS: The Huddersfield Local History Society Journal is produced on an annual basis, free to members and at a cost of £4.00 to non-members. In addition, the Society publishes books which are listed separately in this Journal (pages 7-8), together with details of prices and how they may be purchased.

Front and Back Cover Photos © Andy Hemingway (Castle Hill at Sunset, Buckstones and Pule Hill); © Dave Pattern (Cloth Hall Tower and Ravensknowle Park with Tolson Museum); © Kirklees Image Archive (Lockwood Viaduct and Huddersfield c. 1960); © Piggale on Flickr (Harold Wilson Statue & Huddersfield Railway Station)

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HUDDERSFIELD LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY

JOURNAL

2017/18 Issue 28

—_ aan oe atl uu SH ae se se ie ae

eee ae toe ae ao

KOC

The construction site of the new Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, regarded as one of the most modern healthcare institutions of its time. Photo courtesy of the Huddersfield Daily Examiner.

A hospital is a major asset for any city or town, bringing in numerous economic benefits as well as saving lives and improving people’s health. It was, therefore, a major achievement for Huddersfield when a new 600-bed hospital, built in Lindley at a cost of £5.5 million, was officially opened by Harold Wilson in January 1967.

Would you like to submit an article for inclusion in the Journal? The Society welcomes photographs, letters, original articles, diary extracts, and other research items no longer than 3000 words on any aspects of local history.

Please send items for publication to the editor, Frank Grombir, at: editor@huddersfieldhistory.org.uk. The deadline for submission of copy for the 2018/19 Journal, Issue 29, will be Wednesday, 31° December 2017. A ‘Style Guide’ is available for Members wishing to produce articles and the Society offers help for those less confident in using a computer. The ‘Style Guide’ can be found on the Society’s website www.hudderfieldhistory.org.uk.

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Huddersfield Local History Society Journal

Published by Huddersfield Local History Society www.huddersfieldhistory.org.uk

Printed by Charlesworth Press Flanshaw Way, Wakefield WF2 9LP, UK www.charlesworth.com

ISSN 2049-8403

© Huddersfield Local History Society 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the Editor.

The content of this publication does not reflect the official opinion of the Huddersfield Local History Society. Responsibility for the information and views expressed in the Huddersfield Local History Society Journal therein lies entirely with the author(s).

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Huddersfield Local History Society Journal

CONTENTS EDITORIAL From Cambodunum to Jeremy Lane Mosque Frank GroOmbir 4 NEWS AND EVENTS The Society’s Programme of Events, 2017-2018 6 The Society’s PUb]CAtTIONS 7 Discover Huddersfield Update David Griffiths 9 Kirklees Heritage Forum Bill RODErtS 10 ARTICLES Huddersfield and the Quest for Camelot AlaN BrOOKe 12 Who Were the Colne Valley Scapegoats? SHAW 20 Farnley Tyas and the Dartmouth Estate in the 1800s and Early 1900s CarOliN€ PAG 27

Saint Valentine’s Day Catastrophe: The Colne Bridge Cotton Mill Fire and the Story of a Brave Little Girl Who Survived

Richard Hath 35 The War from the Home Front: One Man and His Experiences in the Great War Bria Haigh 44

The Great War and the Vicar of Huddersfield: Huddersfield’s Parish Church and the War Effort RODert OA 52 ‘Oh, Just Think of Huddersfield, That’s Christmas Enough!’: The Sex Pistols at lvanhoe’s, 25 December 1977

Martyn 61 Part Two: Here To Stay - At the Crossroads WASCOM RiQZ 67 South Asian Food and Song: Yesterday’s Practices Repeated in Lockwood Today RAZIA 75 Kirklees Curiosities — ‘I’ve Never Seen ‘Owt Like It!’ Carl Hardy 81 ‘Did They Tell You About the Dancing?’ CYL] PEACE 86 BOOK REVIEWS Keith Brockhill and Brian Haigh 89 95

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Huddersfield Local History Society Journal

EDITORIAL

From Cambodunum to Jeremy Lane Mosque Dear fellow members,

It is a pleasure for me to introduce the 2017/18 issue of the Huddersfield Local History Society Journal which I have edited for the first time. My aim has been to build on John Rawlinson’s great work of encouraging wide-ranging contributions from local history enthusiasts of all backgrounds. As the title of the editorial suggests, this year’s articles cover a wide time span with articles divided into three thematic sections.

Starting with Slack, or Cambodunum (as it was termed in the Roman times), Alan Brooke draws on his extensive knowledge of archaeology and local history to provide an alternative reading of the recently widely publicised case about the existence of King Arthur’s Camelot in the Huddersfield area. In the following article, Mike Shaw sets himself the task of tracing the origins of the name of Scapegoat Hill where he moved in 2008 and quickly became fascinated with its history. Going back to the first half of the 17° century, Mike shows the way in which religious dissent made Scapegoat Hill inhabitants different from their neighbours. Covering a roughly similar period is Caroline Page, who is looking at an episode in the history of Farnley Tyas. Using rich archival material, Caroline demonstrates that during the tenure of the Earls of Dartmouth the manor enjoyed a steady economic and social growth.

Our interest in local history often stems from personal memories of a place, event or encounter. Richard Heath’s research was inspired during his childhood in the early 1960s, when he lived and played near the site of the Colne Bridge Mill which was completely consumed by flames in February 1818, together with 17 innocent girls working there on a night shift. Though a well-known story to many, its 200" anniversary next year invites a reflection on how far the circumstances which produced this tragedy have been eradicated. Moving 100 years on, there are two contributions marking the centenary celebrations of the First World War, both providing essential context to local events and national politics as well as supplying relevant biographical information. Brian Haigh ventures on a less-well-trodden path when looking at the experience of the Home Front from the perspective of one man’s diary. Robert Piggott complements this with his analysis of war events as seen through the eyes of Huddersfield’s two successive wartime Vicars. This section is concluded with Martyn Richardson’s account of the Sex Pistols’ last two UK

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Huddersfield Local History Society Journal

performances on Christmas Day 1977 which took place in Huddersfield, one of the few places that did not turn down what was then deemed to be a very controversial Punk band.

In the previous issue, Waseem Riaz talked about the journeys made by former British-Indian Army personnel to Britain and especially focusing on their settlement in Heckmondwike, employment in local industries and the formation of the local Pakistani community. Following on from last year, Waseem tells the history of the growth and consolidation of the community from the late 1970s to 1990s while concentrating on community worship and generational issues. Razia Parveen introduces us to the world of South Asian food and songs brought to Lockwood by migrant Pakistani women in the 1960s.

Carol Hardy’s article brings to life various objects which can be spotted in this area but are quickly disappearing and their meaning is often hidden or lost to a casual onlooker. This year’s round of articles is wrapped up by Cyril Pearce who reflects on his 30 seconds of fame on the recently shown BBC programme Our Dancing Town.

My thanks go to all the authors for their great effort put into researching and writing articles for the current issue. I am also grateful to the members of the Committee for their useful comments and suggestions which have helped to shape this Journal. I have enjoyed working with everyone on this 2017/18 issue which I am convinced our readers will find both engaging and informative. I also hope that it will inspire others to start new research and produce fresh contributions by tapping into the rich pool of Huddersfield histories. So, if you have an interesting story to share, do not hesitate to contact me or any other member of the Committee!

Frank Grombir, Editor

26 April 2017

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Huddersfield Local History Society Journal

Huddersfield Local 1 History Society

PROGRAMME OF EVENTS, 2017-2018

25 September 2017 Dr Pat Cullum English clergy on the Eve of the Reformation

30 October 2017 AGM Professor Mike Page

Huddersfield’s Chemical Industry

18 November 2017 STUDY DAY Cyril Pearce, David Griffiths

Huddersfield Borough 150 Professor Brendan Evans Professor David Taylor

27 November 2017 Rod Dimbleby

A Yorkshire Dialect Treasure Trove

29 January 2018 Peter Thornborrow

Heraldry in 17" century West Yorkshire houses as a sign of status

26 February 2018 David Scrimgeour

Stanley Royd — West Riding Asylum

26 March 2018 Hazel Seidel

Marsden wills 30 April 2018 LUDDITE MEMORIAL LECTURE Dr Mike Sanders Religion and working class radicalism 21 May 2018 Teresa Nixon

West Yorkshire Archive Service

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Huddersfield Local History Society Journal

HLHS PUBLICATIONS - AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

As well as our annual Journal, the Society has a range of booklets in print, as follows:

“Yours for Eternity” A Romance of the Great War Edited by John H Rumsby (ISBN 978 9509134 9 0)

£5.00 plus postage and packing

Joseph Brook of Greenhead

Joseph Brook of Greenhead ‘Father of the Town’ By David Griffiths (ISBN 978 9509134 8 3)

£6.00 plus postage and packing

Liberty or Death: Radicals, Republicans and Luddites, 1793-1823 By Alan Brooke and Lesley Kipling (ISBN 978 9509134 7 6)

£8.00 plus postage and packing

Liberty or Death

Pi cornet’ Lo

Huddersfield in the 1820s By Edward J Law (ISBN 978 950913 4 5 2)

£6.00 plus postage and packing

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Huddersfield Local History Society Journal

Pioneers or Partisans? Cot PARTISANS? I Governing Huddersfield, 1820-48 i By David Griffiths (ISBN 978 9509134 4 5)

pe pl a

ev

£5.00 plus postage and packing

JOSEPH KAYE

BUILDER OF HUDDERSFIELD Joseph Kaye,

o.1778 to

Builder of Huddersfield, c. 1779-1858 By Edward J Law (ISBN 9509134 1 3)

HUDDERSFIELD LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY

£2.50 plus postage and packing

John Benson Pritchett: First Medical Officer of Health for Huddersfield ae By J B Eagles

FIBST

(ISBN 95091350 5)

£1.50 plus postage and packing

Queen Street Chapel PETES TA) and Mission Huddersfield

AND MISSHON

La Ea

By Edward Royle (ISBN 9509134 2 1)

£4.00 plus postage and packing

All the above are available from HLHS, 24 Sunnybank Rd, Huddersfield, HD3 3DE, with a cheque payable to Huddersfield Local History Society, or via our website, www.huddersfieldhistory.org.uk, with secure on-line payment by PayPal. PLEASE ADD POSTAGE AND PACKING AS FOLLOWS: £1.50 for one item, £2.25 for two items, £3.00 for three or more items. Look out for the Society’s bookstall, at our meetings and other local events, which also carries a wide range of local history materials from other publishers.

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DISCOVER HUDDERSFIELD UPDATE

The Discover Huddersfield partnership continues to go from strength to strength. During the last year, new Music and Caribbean Heritage titles brought the range of printed town trails up to a dozen, with Geology, University and Irish trails now in the pipeline. Well over 500 people attended guided walks during the 2016 season, which is set to expand further in 2017 with 16 walks scheduled — the programme is circulated with this Journal.

As last year, two of the DH walks — a transport trail and a lion hunt — will be offered free as part of Heritage Open Days in September (other walks are £3). Last year’s Heritage Open Days in Huddersfield, co-ordinated by Discover Huddersfield, offered a record 29 openings and events, and this year DH partners are working with the Holme Valley and Spen Valley civic societies on a Kirklees-wide programme. A bid for ‘blue plaques’ that went forward under DH auspices, to complement the HLHS/Huddersfield Civic Society Town Centre Heritage Trail, was sadly unsuccessful, but a third heritage information board is now in hand for the Piazza, to complement those in St George’s Square and the Market Place.

The expanded DH walks programme is constantly in need of volunteers to support the walk leaders, collect money, ensure nobody gets lost, and so forth — and perhaps in due course to lead walks themselves. Anybody interested in helping in this way is welcome to contact the volunteer co-ordinator, Maureen Mitchell, via info@discoverhuddersfield.com.

David Griffiths, HLHS rep to Discover Huddersfield

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Huddersfield Local History Society Journal

KIRKLEES HERITAGE FORUM

Kirklees Heritage Forum is an informal body which aims to list what has been written about the minority ethnic and religious groups which have resided or settled in Kirklees and to encourage further research and writing about their histories. An audit of what has been done so far can be found on the Migrations page on the Society’s website, www.huddersfieldhistory.org.uk.

Huddersfield Local History Society continues to encourage the objectives of the Forum. The 2016/017 Journal referred to several forthcoming events on the Society’s Evening Programme. In February, a talk by Natalie Pinnock-Hamilton covered the history of the African-Caribbean Community in Huddersfield. She has just contributed to a new Discover Huddersfield walk, the Caribbean Heritage Trail. Later in the year Dr Anne Brook described the history of Huddersfield’s Jewish Community.

These additions to the record are very encouraging. However, there is still much to be done to identify and preserve the records of the various groups which have made their homes in this area. Many of the first arrivals have passed away; their memories and the records of their arrival are being lost. Now it is time to look at the achievements of their descendants.

Anyone interested in supporting the objectives of the Forum please contact Bill Roberts at bill@robertsO4.plus.com.

Community Cohesion

On 23 November 2016 members of the Huddersfield Local History Society committee visited the Anwaar-E-Madina Jamia Mosque in Ravensthorpe. The visit had been arranged by Waseem Riaz, whose article ‘Here to Stay’ appears in this edition of the Journal.

We were met by Mr Asan Hussain, the General Secretary of the mosque. We were given the rare opportunity of observing the late evening prayers and various aspects of the building and its ceremonies were explained to us.

We then went upstairs to see the exhibition ‘Our Shared History, Our Shared Heritage’, a photographic record of the participation of Sikh and Muslim soldiers of the British-Indian army in the First World War. The exhibition had been developed by Waseem Riaz on behalf of the Kirklees Faith Network initiative working with the West Yorkshire Police and the Dewsbury Reporter.

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The involvement of the British-Indian army in the First World War is a striking example of two communities sharing a common history, an association which has been nearly forgotten over the last hundred years. The exhibition drew attention to the local connection with Heckmondwike of two First World War heroes, Private Khuda’dhad Khan and Subedhar (Warrant Officer) Shah Ahmad Khan, both of whom were awarded the Victoria Cross for conspicuous bravery.

HLHS on the visit to Anwaar-E-Madina Jamia Mosque in Ravensthorpe in November 2016.

We were then offered refreshments and had an interesting conversation with two young men, both British-born, English-speaking third-generation Imams, Imam Moalana-Hafiz Ansar Hussain and Imam Moalana-Hafiz Hasan Basri. They and Mr Asan Hussein represented a significant change in the leadership of the local Muslim community, a sign of how young Muslims are being encouraged to take a more central role in their Mosques.

Bill Roberts, Kirklees Heritage Forum Coordinator

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HUDDERSFIELD AND THE QUEST FOR CAMELOT

Alan Brooke

I was brought up, and still live, if not actually in the shadow of Castle Hill, only a short walk from it - although that walk is up a steep valley side which seems to get steeper every year. The romance and mystery of the hill no doubt influenced my interest in archaeology and in 1969 I went to watch W. J. Varley’s excavation. The received wisdom then (though I’m not sure just where I personally received it from) was that the site was a Brigantian hill fort, and probably the Camulodunum of the Romans. As such it was associated with Queen Cartimandua and the story of her betrayal of Caratacus and war with her husband Venutius, who led the Brigantes last stand against the Romans at Stanwick.

Aerial View of Castle Hill, Huddersfield, 1965. Photo courtesy of Kirklees Image Archive.

Varley’s work in the early 1970s produced radio carbon dates which forced a radical rethink of this colourful history. They pointed to an Iron Age occupation which ended in the late 5th century BC with the burning of the ramparts.” Consequently, there was no evidence of occupation at the time of the Roman invasion. The story of

*W. J. Varley, ‘A Summary of the Excavations at Castle Hill, Almondbury, 1939-1972’, in D. Harding (ed.), Hillforts - Later Prehistoric Earthworks in Britain and Ireland (London: 1976)

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Cartimandua also went up in smoke, along with any claim that the site was of sufficient importance to be Camulodunum.

Despite this, the association with Camulodunum persisted and in 1983 the Huddersfield Examiner printed an account of the hill claiming that Camulodunum was the site of King Arthur’s Camelot, and that the Anglian name of Huddersfield, Uther’s Field, was derived from Uther Pendragon, the father of Arthur.” The speculation about Uther was current at least by the late 19th century, when D F E Sykes alluded to it in his monumental History of Huddersfield and its Vicinity.” The Examiner's fabulous excursion into local history was dismissed by John H Rumsby (then curator of Tolson Museum) in his chapter on Castle Hill in Huddersfield: a Most Handsome Town published in 1992, where, regarding this and other local legends generated by the site, he concluded: ‘It is not surprising that Castle Hill has had the power to inspire Some of this fantasy resurfaced during the bitter arguments about the future of the monument following the unauthorised demolition of the pub in 2002 which had stood there since the mid-19th century.

In 2005 in Huddersfield — a History & Celebration, I wrote what I thought was the 21st epitaph on the fanciful story of the hill, declaring as unequivocally as possible, ‘Archaeological excavations have failed to reveal any occupation by Britons at the time of the Roman or the Anglian invasions — both Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes and King Arthur have been dethroned.’” By now, with both the academic evidence freely available on the internet and the notice it had received in two widely read local histories, one would have thought that the stranger flights of fevered imaginations had been exorcised for good.

Then came 2016 when two new claims for Camulodunum as the Camelot of Arthur appeared within months of each other, the last one apparently oblivious of the first. This time, however, it was not Castle Hill which was endowed with the honour, but the Roman fort and associated civilian ‘vicus’ at Slack, near the village of Outlane.

Camelot Found? On 2 April 2016, the Huddersfield Examiner splashed the sensational story over the

front page under the flippant banner headline ‘King Arthur & t’Knights of Outlane? That’s the stunning verdict of a new book entitled Pennine Dragon: The Real King

* Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 28 January 1983 * D. F. E. Sykes, History of Huddersfield and its Vicinity (Huddersfield: 1898), p. 28 * John H. Rumsby, ‘A Castle Well Guarded: the Archaeology and History of Castle Hill, Almondbury’, in Hilary Haigh (ed.), Huddersfield: a Most Handsome Town (Huddersfield: 1992), pp. 1-16 > L. Kipling & A. Brooke, Huddersfield — a History & Celebration (Salisbury: 2005), p. 12

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Arthur of the The author, Simon Keegan, ‘believes that the old village of Slack, which was home to the structure where Outlane Golf Club and its car park now stand, used to be called Camulod in Roman times.’’ Perhaps, since the body of Richard II| had been found under a car park, the Examiner considered it quite feasible that King Arthur, or at least his des res, may lie under one.

OS six-inch map of Outlane surveyed in 1851. It points out the existence of Roman remains as well as suggesting the location of Cambodunum. Image courtesy of Huddersfield Local Studies Library.

Mr Keegan’s book is indeed packed with ‘facts’ and, as he showed on his brave visit to a public meeting of Huddersfield Civic Society on 3 May 2016, he is an enthusiastic devotee who genuinely wants to discover the real Arthur. However, he presents the ‘facts’ of his case in a disjointed, unstructured way, based on assertions rather than critical analysis. Nor is the ‘evidence’ backed up by any detailed referencing or bibliography. His style is exemplified by this extract available on the internet:

‘The settlement at Slack, near Huddersfield, may have its origins in the impressive Iron Age hillfort of Almondbury, only five miles away. Like modern Colchester, the Romans established a small military fort there

° Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 2 April 2016; Simon Keegan, Pennine Dragon: The Real King Arthur of the North (New Haven Publishing, 2016) ” Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 2 April 2016

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and named it Camulodunum after the ancient Celtic War-God, Camulos... Within the real King Arthur’s kingdom was a fortress called Camulodunum -— surely proof that we have identified King Arthur of Camelot... Until recently Slack was thought to be a fairly minor Roman fort abandoned in the third century but new evidence has come to light that it was once a magnificent fortress, with giant amphitheatre and water spring, and was occupied until Arthur’s

This short passage alone contains a series of factual errors and non-sequiturs which reveal that the foundations of Mr Keegan’s Camelot are built on something less substantial even than sand.

1. There is no evidence that Castle Hill was ever called Camulodunum. 2. There is no evidence for a small Roman fort there.

3. Even if there was, this does not mean that the Slack fort was also called Camulodunum.

4. The ‘real Arthur’s kingdom’ is just an unproven hypothesis which he uses to sustain another unproven hypothesis.

5. Even if there was a place called Camulodunum it does not constitute ‘proof’ of Arthur’s Camelot.

6. There is no evidence for ‘a magnificent fortress’ at Slack, nor a ‘giant amphitheatre’. The archaeology shows a standard auxiliary cohort fort with an external circular structure for equestrian training and displays.

7. There is no evidence that Slack was a major settlement after the fort lost its importance in the 2nd century, although people may have lived there until the 4th century, nor any evidence that Slack was occupied until ‘Arthur’s times’, which Mr Keegan places around 500 AD.

In his talk at Huddersfield Mr Keegan conceded that the evidence was not cut and dried, but it has apparently not encouraged him to revise his views. When an even more tenuous claim that Slack was Camelot surfaced in December 2016, he hailed it as further proof of his own conclusions.

® Paul Harrison, ‘Pennine Dragon — extract from Simon Keegan’s Book’, South Manchester News (undated), Available [online] at: <https://southmanchesternews.co.uk/books/pennine-dragon-extract-from-simon- keegans-book/> [Accessed 5 January 2017]

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Again, it was the Huddersfield Examiner which announced the revelation, ‘in a lecture at Bangor University, Professor Peter Field appeared to solve a mystery dating back almost 1,500 years when he located King Arthur’s mythic base at the old village of Slack, near Outlane, in a parcel of land close to the M62 motorway’. The national dailies then picked up on the story, one of the more sensible, the Independent Online, reporting Professor Field as saying ‘the more I think of this at Slack, the more advantages I think it has got. It really seems to be the right place. It just stands out... it was quite by chance. I was looking at some maps, and suddenly all the ducks lined up... I believe I may have solved a 1,400-year-old mystery. The Romans called the fort at Slack ‘Camulodunum’, which means ‘the fort of the god Camul’ and could be where the name Camelot comes from.’””

Camelot Lost!

Whereas Mr Keegan claims to be no more than an Arthurian enthusiast, Professor Field, in the strangely few internet references to him, is referred to as ‘an expert in Arthurian literature’ and a retired Emeritus Professor of Bangor University. The fact that someone who claims to be a lifelong ‘expert’ in Arthurian literature has only in 2016 come to look at Roman place name evidence is astounding - then, having ‘found’ Camulodunum, has not looked at the mass of literature on the subject since William Camden, or gone back to the ancient sources. When, confronted with the archaeological evidence following a press release by the Huddersfield and District Archaeological Society his response was patronising and dismissive:

‘| took the trouble to find out what the archaeology was while I was working up my paper, and I’m not at all surprised... When I say ‘Camelot’, I don’t mean something off a film set, with a castle or a city or both, with battlements and moats and drawbridges. I just mean a real place called Camelot that was associated with a probably real war- leader called Arthur. What might have been there comes later, and I very much hope the archaeologists will try to work it out. He might have kept a detachment there, who could have been living in tents, which the Roman army made out of leather. Their successors may

9 Independent Online, 21 December 2016, Available [online] at: <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/king-arthur-camelot-castle-huddersfield- discovered-retired-professor-peter-field-a7489176.html> [Accessed 21 December 2016] *° Ibid. ‘t Nor is the identification of Camulodunum with Slack only to be found in an hitherto undiscovered map, painstakingly unearthed from some obscure archive - since it appears on the latest edition of the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain! The evidence for the OS’ designation of the Slack site as ‘Camulodunum’ has been examined in detail by Mike Haken, ‘Cambodunum a Reappraisal’, in Roman Yorkshire: The Newsletter of the Roman Antiquities Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Vol. 2, Aril 2012 (sic - it appears to be 2013), pp. 8-15

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have, too. How much would that leave for archaeologists to discover?’

Not only does he imply that local archaeologists were stupid enough to think he meant a mediaeval Castle, but also that it is up to them to ‘try to work it out’, not for him to prove his theory. In the same breath he back-pedals so far that Arthur’s Camelot, once of such fame that it survived in memory and folk lore for over 600 years until rediscovered by Chretien de Troyes in the 12th century, is reduced to a few tents in a field!

His retreat continued in the North Wales Chronicle,

‘Lam not arguing for a Disney-like city and castle with battlements, just for an extemporized base in the ruins of an abandoned Roman fort...The evidence is not enough to be certain of anything and it does not mean Arthur was born there or buried there but it means the people who told the old stories, looking back nostalgically, to older tales, saw that it was his place. Legends of Arthur have been linked to sO many areas, from Edinburgh, to Wales, to

Not only are Professor Field’s ducks dead in the water but also his Camelot has proved to be a castle in the air, which has dissolved before the first breeze of archaeological criticism. However, the national newspapers which carried the original story about the Yorkshire Arthur don’t appear to have carried this semi-retraction and so the seeds of modern mythmaking have been planted in the popular imagination. Does it matter? Does a bit of speculation do any harm?

Archaeology and history rely for their evolution, and occasional revolution, on people formulating theories which can then be tested by further research. A good theory leads to fruitful research and the emergence of new theories. A bad theory leads only to a dead end where nothing new is discovered and no new conclusions arrived at. A theory should be based on evidence as it is understood at the time. If it flies in the face of evidence, or claims evidence where none exists, it is not a theory, but merely a folly, if not a fraud. The fact is that there is currently no evidence for identifying Slack as Camelot, or believing that such evidence will come to light in the future.

Glyn Daniel, for 30 years the editor of the journal Antiquity, made a practice of sniffing out and dissecting what he dubbed, ‘frauds, fakes, forgeries and follies’ in

"2 Huddersfield Examiner, 29 December 2016 Dale Spridgeon, ‘Ee-bah gum — Arthur was from up north’, North West Chronicle, 23 December 2016, Available [online] at: <http://www.northwaleschronicle.co.uk/news/170603/ee-bah-gum-arthur-was- from-up-north.aspx> [Accessed 9 January 2017]

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archaeology. He defrocked modern day druids and their spurious links with Stonehenge and ridiculed ley liners. He delved into Piltdown, and tenaciously queried the authenticity of the mysterious finds from Glozel, the Kensington (Minnesota) rune stone and some of the cave paintings of Rouffignac. He concluded that self- delusion was a powerful factor in the promotion of, and adherence to, crackpot theories, whether of the more outlandish Von Daniken kind, or more down to earth archaeological impostures. It sedated people with the ‘comforts of unreason’, simple answers, that sustained their own narrow view.

eo ak os

aC eee = i ed De ee Pee a ‘2

Roman Fort, Slack, trench west of Principia. Photo courtesy of Kirklees Image Archive.

Should we, like Glyn Daniel, combat such follies, or should we just leave people to enjoy them? I have no objections to latter day Druids and Pagans indulging in whatever rites and ceremonies they want — so long as they make clear that these are their modern beliefs and don’t claim that they are authentically representing the religions and practices of the past. I have nothing against Arthurians who speculate

“ Daniel Glyn, Writing for Antiquity (Thames & Hudson, 1992), p. 171, the ‘comfort of unreason’ pp. 41, 61, 65,71. Daniel tells us elsewhere, The Idea of Prehistory (London: 1962), p.91, that he took the concept from R. Crawshay Williams, The Comfort of Unreason (1947)

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about the whereabouts of the Holy Grail and Camelot. But when they claim to have found such things it is a different matter. Their subjective opinions take on the strength of objective facts, especially when the claim is widely disseminated by the mass media, with the potential to mislead thousands of people. Then a harmless folly becomes a fake since, as Glyn Daniel pointed out, a fake only becomes a fake when it is claimed as genuine. Planting a false meme in the narrative of archaeology is as bad as planting a fabricated artefact in an excavation.

The point of archaeology and history is to try and arrive at an understanding of how human societies and cultures have evolved to create what we have today. The evidence is such that our understanding will always be limited to some degree or other. Misinformation that provides a diversion from the actual evidence only makes the task of understanding historical processes more difficult. One of the most obscure periods in our history is that formerly known as the Dark Ages - the disintegration of the institutions of the Roman Empire and the emergence of new cultures and societies resulting from the movement of people across the British Isles. The identification of Slack with Camelot does nothing to add to our knowledge or understanding of that period. If Mr Keegan and Prof Field had come up with suggestions of how to test their theory by excavation it would be a different matter.

The dispute about the ‘northern Camulodunum’ and whether this was in fact Cambodunum, and if so what was its location, has exercised antiquarians, historians and archaeologists since Camden’s time. It has driven and continues to drive research, even though the question is no nearer resolution. In West Yorkshire, Greetland, Cleckheaton and Adel, as well as Slack, have all been proposed as the site of Cambodunum/Camulodunum. But short of the discovery of a milestone inscribed ‘Camboduno X miles’, or similar explicit evidence, it is unlikely that the question will ever be resolved.”

Biography

Alan Brooke studied archaeology and ancient history at Manchester University and worked on excavations at sites of various periods (including Roman), in Britain and abroad. He is better known for his research into working-class social and political history.

> Some of the evidence for Cambodunum/Slack has been examined by David Cockman in ‘Cambodunum — still an Enigma’, in Huddersfield and District Archaeological Society Newsletter, 28, Spring 2015. The case for Adel, tentatively proposed by Mike Haken, op. cit. above, has also been made by Pete Wilson in ‘The Roman Period Name for Adel’, in Britannia Volume 47, 2016, pp. 280-285, but at the time of writing I have not been able to see this paper.

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WHO WERE THE COLNE VALLEY SCAPEGOATS?

Mike Shaw

Place names provide a window into the past but their meaning is often lost or hidden to a contemporary observer. Some names are self-explanatory such as Marsh, Oakes and Paddock while others intrigue. Scapegoat Hill, the village west of Huddersfield, can claim to belong to the latter category. Who were the scapegoats and for what were they taking the blame? This village, however, has not always carried the same name.

Early Dissenters from Untamed Moorland

To explore the ‘scapegoats’, we first go back to consider the beginnings of the village. Its original name was Slipcote Hill which is evident from an entry in the Huddersfield Parish church records for 30 May 1638 showing the death of an unnamed infant whose father’s name was William Aneley.”

Fe ere Rl Rl Spe EF

National Library of Scotland, View Yorkshire 246 — Ordnance Survey Six-inch England and Wales, 1853.

* Huddersfield Parish records commenced in 1563, at which date entries only give the township, but within a year more detail is entered. The names of most, if not all, surrounding places, Leymoor, Heath House, Nettleton etc. occur in these records before 1638 so supporting the supposition that Aneley was one of the first residents at Slipcote Hill. However, there is no record of Aneley’s death, showing that records are incomplete and raising the possibility that there may have been earlier residents.

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By 1664, there were at least four families living at Slipcote Hill which suggests that there must have been births and deaths recorded in the following period. Indeed, several baptisms appear in Slaithwaite parish records before 1721, but evidence for births and baptisms for the period of up to 1794 is missing. The only local churches at that date where the registration could have taken place, including Slaithwaite, Salendine Nook, Huddersfield or even Almondbury and Scammonden, do not carry any mention of Slipcote Hill residents. Furthermore, it is difficult to understand why people chose to settle at the top of a hill, fully exposed to the elements and compounded by the fact that there was no stream and untamed moorland. The context of religious turbulence of the first half of the 17" century may throw some light on these conundrums.

In 1604, following the Hampton Court Conference, James I had declared that Puritans could either conform or ‘be harried out of the land’. During this time around 20 thousand of them had sailed across the Atlantic to escape religious persecution and make a fresh start in New England. It would be eminently reasonable to assume that others undertook shorter migrations — into the English wilderness. Scapegoat Hill, therefore, was a place from which a dissenter could less likely be ‘harried out’.

The Act of Uniformity of 1662 ejected from their parishes any clergy who would not give their ‘unfeigned consent and assent’ to everything in the Anglican Prayer Book. Two thousand clergy, most of whom had secured parishes under Cromwell, were expelled. The Conventicle Act of the Clarendon Code made illegal any meeting for worship in which a family was joined by more than five people. In addition, The Five Mile Act drove ejected clergy this distance from any corporate town. The nearest corporate town to Scapegoat Hill was Halifax at this time but it did fall into the 5-mile rule.” A remote location, such as Scapegoat Hill, would have met the requirements of the Acts for any clergyman ejected from their church and the chances of detection of illegal worship in such a place would have been minimal. A.G. Matthew lists clergy removed under this code.” He gives no details of where the clergy went after ejection but, intriguingly, also records that John Hyde (or Hide) of Slaithwaite, was expelled. This supports the hypothesis that there were dissenters in the vicinity.

A move to ‘family religion’ was one response to the Clarendon Code as described by Cambers and Wolfe.’ The two forms of dissent permitted were ‘domestic piety’ and ‘Shared text’. Cambers and Wolfe, referring to the diary of John Rastrick of

* Norman Davies, The Isles: A History, Electronic edition (Papermac, 2008) * Huddersfield was less than 5 miles but the town was not incorporated until 1868. See for instance Huddersfield Local History Society, ‘Huddersfield History’, Available [online] at: <http://www.huddersfieldhistory.org.uk/huddersfields-history/> [Accessed 2 February 2017] * A. G. Matthews, Calamy Revised (Oxford Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1934) >A. Cambers & M. Wolfe, ‘Reading, Family Religion, and Evangelical Identity in Late Stuart England’, The Historical Journal, 47:4, 2004, pp. 875 - 896

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Lincolnshire, show that the term ‘family worship’ was not confined to kinship. Additionally, they also show that ‘family worship’ often did not involve a priest. Hence, if one of the early settlers was a literate dissenter, their abode would be a natural focus for others of a similar religious persuasion. The restriction on numbers for family worship may have been no significant deterrent to a remote community.”

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An excerpt from Reverend Meeke’s Diary courtesy of West Yorkshire Archive Service in Wakefield.

The Reverend Robert Meeke, curate at Slaithwaite, kept a diary between 1689 and 1704 containing meticulous records of his visits.’ The area of Scapegoat Hill seems to have been served from Slaithwaite as Meeke recorded going to Golcar to collect part of his stipend. He visited Wellhouse, Crimble, Stainland and Slack and noted when these visits were to carry out baptisms. Nevertheless, Meeke never mentioned Scapegoat Hill, which leads to an assumption he did not baptise anyone from there. His attitude to dissenters went through a marked change over time. Whereas earlier on Meeke talked about Quakerism as ‘a sin’, following the Act of Toleration in 1689 which legalised non-Anglican worship, he befriended a nonconformist minister as well as expressing his wishes for church reunification. Meeke never wrote about dissent in his parish. It is intriguing that the first baptism from Scapegoat Hill at Slaithwaite took place three years after the final entry in Meeke's diary.

Slipcote Misfits A potentially significant event occurred in 1788 when Pole Moor Baptist Chapel was

founded, growing out of the congregation at Salendine Nook, one of the very first non-conformist churches to be licensed opening in 1689. There is no definitive

° Launds Inn Museum in Golcar, which holds graveyard records pre-dating the establishment of Pole Moor Baptist Church, claims that worship took place there in cottages. This suggested that family worship was taking place nearby. West Yorkshire Archive Services, ‘Clergyman Robert Meeke, Slaithwaite, Transcript of Diary (1689-1704)’, KX367

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evidence that any of the founders of Pole Moor Baptist Church lived at Scapegoat Hill; only two of the founders share a surname with a resident of Scapegoat Hill given in the 1841 census. Further, there are very few records of people from Scapegoat Hill in the births and deaths recorded at Pole Moor until 1808, but then births occur almost annually. It appears that most residents of the village did not become members of the Pole Moor congregation until around that date.

According to Heather Wheeler, the first years of Pole Moor Baptist Church were ones of turbulence. In 1808 a new pastor, Reverend Webster, took up his post and shortly after a considerable number of members were expelled.” This date appears to coincide with large numbers of residents of Scapegoat Hill joining the congregation, evidenced by the marked increase in recorded baptisms. Wheeler has further argued that Webster moved to Pole Moor as a strong Calvinist but then modified his views. He was replaced in 1818 by Lawrence Shaw, unreservedly a High Calvinist whose incumbency commenced with five years of increased turbulence. No-one from Scapegoat Hill was expelled during this time.”

If the community had grown as a centre of ‘family worship’ then presumably it had reasons not to align with the early Baptist Church at Salendine Nook. The establishment of High Calvinism at Pole Moor, firstly under Webster and then reinforced by Shaw may have led to the religious leaders at Scapegoat Hill joining a formal church. A search for the records of births at all local churches failed to identify details of any of the people listed in the 1841 Census as being the head of a household at Scapegoat Hill. Whilst this is not a definitive proof of religious allegiance of these people as some could have moved to Scapegoat Hill at some point during their life, it indicates that the community had no strong attachment to any church or chapel around the start of the nineteenth century.

The Making of Scapegoats

The first manorial appearance of ‘Scape Goat’ was published in the Leeds Mercury on 21 October 1820, referring to the Golcar It is less clear, however, why the Saviles chose to adopt the new term. Was it because they wished to reflect the name which had by now become commonly used? The manorial records are consistent in using Scape Goat Hill after 1820, indicating that the Saviles were fully intent on the new name. This contrasts with Pole Moor chapel attended by most Scapegoat Hill residents which used different variants of ‘Slip Coat’ up to 1844 when the term was replaced by its present name. Yet the first use of ‘Scapegoat Hill’ dates

® Heather Wheeler, ‘Pole Moor Baptist Chapel, Scammonden, Huddersfield: Reflections on the early history’, Baptist Quarterly, 37:3, 1997, pp. 108 - 130 ” Ibid. ° Leeds Mercury, 21 October 1820

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back to 1799 when it appeared in the Pole Moor graveyard records compiled by the Broadbents who were not members of the Baptist church at Pole Moor but had a contract for grave-digging. Hence, their records are not the official records of deaths but an unofficial log of those buried, probably maintained for personal use.”

According to Shorter Oxford Dictionary, the word ‘scapegoat’ was brought into being by William Tyndale as a mistranslation from the Greek ‘azazel’ in the Book of Leviticus for his bible of Biblical scholars argue that Tyndale misread ‘azazel' as ‘ez ozel', literally ‘the goat that departs’ or ‘the goote on which the lotte fell to scape. The Talmud states that ‘azazel' means ‘rugged mountain’ but in modern Hebrew the word has changed meaning to that of ‘go to

Nevertheless, the reference to the ‘scapegoat’ and ‘wilderness’ in Leviticus is pertinent:

‘And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord's lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness’.

This Bible passage is the one which probably led Calvin to his doctrine of predestination. E.P. Thompson refers to the ‘Calvinist self-righteousness of the persecuted sect’ and later says ‘the persecuted sect only too easily makes a virtue of its own exclusiveness, and this in turn reinforced the hardest tenets of Calvinist dogma’.”” Both Haigh and Crawshaw make frequent reference to the extremely strong thread of Calvinism running through the Baptist Churches at Scapegoat Hill and Pole Moor respectively.” It has already been shown that there were High

Calvinists at Pole Moor between the years 1808 and 1823, the very time of the

The graveyard records for Pole Moor are not currently available to the public but a transcription is available through the Launds Inn Museum website: http://www.laundsinnmuseum.co.uk/ * William Little, H. H. Fowler, Jessie Coulson & C. T. Onions (eds.), The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (OUP, Oxford: 1978) ’ The William Davidson Talmud, Yoma 67b: 8-9, Available [online] at: <http://www.sefaria.org/Yoma.67b?lang=bi> [Accessed 31 March 2017]; Andrei A. Orlov, Divine Scapegoats: Demonic Mimesis in Early Jewish Mysticism (State University of New York Press, Albany, NY: 2015), p. 225 “* King James 2000 Bible, Leviticus 16:8-10, Available [online] at: <http://biblehub.com/kj2000/leviticus/16.htm> [Accessed 31 March 2017] * Edward Palmer Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Pantheon Books, New York, NY: 1964), pp. 27 - 29 ‘© Nathan Haigh, A Short History of the Baptist Church, Scapegoat Hill: Jubilee Souvenir 1871 — 1921 (B. Riley & Co., Huddersfield: 1921)

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recorded change of name. Thompson’s statements virtually define ‘scapegoat’ lending much weight to the argument that the change of name originated in the chapel community. If the hypothesis on the establishment of the village, resulting from the persecution of dissenters in the seventeenth century has substance, the term ‘scapegoat’ underpins that narrative.

= _ HAP]

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Scapegoat Hill Chapel erected in 1899. Photo by Tim Green (Flickr).

Therefore, a possible explanation could be that the first user of ‘Scapegoat’ would have been someone who saw the community as being cast out, probably in a religious sense. One candidate would be the congregation at Salendine Nook Baptist Church. That congregation may well have questioned a community continuing with what they viewed as an outmoded form of worship, and whilst Scapegoat Hill residents never formed more than a very small element of the Salendine Nook congregation, there must have been an invitation to join, which was rejected — hence, a casting-out. Alternatively, a preacher may have described his congregation as ‘scapegoats’ when preaching to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. There is a common definition linking ‘slip’ and ‘scape’ when the latter is an archaic form of escape. One might envisage a pastor taking his text as Leviticus XVI, and using this common meaning to portray ‘Slipcoaters’ as scapegoats. Villagers may even have applied the term to themselves out of a sense of inverted pride.

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In fact, we come frustratingly close to knowing the reasons behind the change of name. In 1921, Scapegoat Hill Baptist Chapel celebrated its golden jubilee. Amongst those attending this event was a past minister, Reverend Harrison. Recording the event, Nathan Haigh, a stalwart of the chapel at the time, reported Harrison referring to first visiting the village in 1877 and remarking upon the unusual name.” Haigh’s account goes no further but it would be reasonable to draw two conclusions; firstly, Harrison was provided with an answer and, secondly, in 1921, Haigh assumed that the explanation was common knowledge. I have met with Haigh’s grand-daughter, herself an active historian, who recalls visiting the village as a child and meeting with Haigh. She could not recall her grandfather saying anything on that matter. Equally, no present resident offered any explanation of the name. This reinforces the message that what we think of today as being trivial may well have importance for future generations.

Biography

Michael Shaw was born in Leeds. After a career in secondary education he retired to Scapegoat Hill in 2008. He runs a smallholding there, is a member of two local amateur orchestras and is a volunteer and trustee for DASH (Destitute Asylum Seekers Huddersfield). Further information on the history of Scapegoat Hill can be found at: www.scapegoathillhistory.com. The author may be contacted at mshw1951@live.com.

*” Haigh, A Short History of the Baptist Church, pp. 1 - 3 26

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FARNLEY TYAS AND THE DARTMOUTH ESTATE IN THE 1800s AND EARLY 1900s°

Caroline Page

There has been a settlement at Farnley Tyas for over a thousand years and the various landowners and lords of the manor over this time have had an impact on its history and development. The life and work of the villagers reflects the changing demands of landowners and the availability of local resources. The village is a typical small English settlement and its history illustrates village life through the centuries.

The village lies 5 km south east of Huddersfield, in the shadow of Castle Hill and close to Honley and Thurstonland. The name of Farnley Tyas is derived from a Saxon place- name — Farnley, coupled with the family name of the occupiers — Tyas (from Teutonicus).”

The Dartmouth Estate

Except for a very small number of privately owned properties the whole of Farnley Tyas, and much of the area surrounding it, was once part of the Earl of Dartmouth’s 3 estate.

The third Earl of Dartmouth succeeded to the title in 1801 and became dissatisfied with the management of his Yorkshire estates. He dismissed the agent William Emsall, whose family had managed the Estate since it had come into Dartmouth ownership in 1726, and appointed Kent, Pearce and Kent as his London agents in 1804 with instructions to increase the rents of Slaithwaite, Farnley Tyas and Morley estates:

‘Nothing harsh is intended to be done towards them (the tenants), that all their rents will be viewed and a fair rent put on them...and that they will have the first offer...where buildings have been done by the

* This article is a summary of ‘The Dartmouth Estate’ in Caroline Page, Farnley Tyas: A History (Honley Civic Society: 2015) * A possible explanation for the origins of the name ‘Farnley Tyas’ are either ‘lea of the ferns’ or ‘the far lea’. Fearn is Old English for fern and leah is a lea or meadow. Possibly Farnley describes a clearing overgrown with ferns. There are several villages in Yorkshire called Farnley and to avoid confusion with them the local village acquired the distinguishing affix Tyas. * Lord Dartmouth’s Yorkshire Estates originally included Farnley Tyas, part of Thurstonland, Brockholes, Honley, Meltham, Almondbury, Lepton, Kirkburton, Slaithwaite and Morley. In 1968 the ninth Earl, Gerald, sold the whole of the two thousand acre Farnley Estate to a local family. This land has since been known as Farnley Estates.

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tenants a due consideration will be paid to that circumstance ...we wish them not to be alarmed at the measure...that it is only a new arrangement of the Rental that is intended’.

Based on Ordnance Survey Map 18s I

Royd House Wood

Farnley I Hunter Nab

Bonk

Lumb Roud Trough

/ M elt L ane Netherton Sandstone : Quarry Fasrntey vine OP gna Sandstone Quarry wrt Tannery yt we Sandstone. Rs ord @uarry Sandstone oo of Quarry. y < Early Crofts ‘ pe 2 Moor Side : 3 I 4 ye «, m Tk = O Sandstone \ Storthes Hall L \ Moor Wood wd Led i ss rons bane \ Farnley Moor Royd Runtet Bnd

Map of Farnley Tyas based on the 1854 Ordnance Survey.

Rent Audits were held at the George Inn in Huddersfield from 22 September until 18 October 1804. Lord Dartmouth intended to look at each tenant’s holdings to be able to offer them their respective tenements at a revised rent. He was informed by his new agents that ‘the tenants at Farnley have all agreed with me with the exception of Mr. Scott who has requested time to decide. I must confess that I am sorry that he should be so singular. It is fortunate that the other tenants are not led by his example

5 however...’.

*“ West Yorkshire Archive Service (WYAS), KC161, Copy of The Dartmouth Estate and Its Management, 1985 by D. M. Beaumont > WYAS K1059, Selected extracts and estate maps from the 1805 Terrier of the Dartmouth Estate; The map also itemizes the rents before and after the increase and lists each building on the holding. The mills and collieries are listed with detailed information on each. The script is in a beautiful copperplate hand and there are delightful illustrations. 28

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The agents prepared ‘a register’ giving detailed information about the whole of the Estates. In their Survey of 1805 each holding is dealt with separately, giving the name of the building or farm, the name of the tenant, the name of each field and its number on the key map and its type of cultivation, i.e. meadow, pasture or Although many landowners at this time abused their power, Pat Hudson has shown that ‘Lord Dartmouth was a rare example in the West Riding of a prominent, active, improving landlord’.’ The 1805 Survey highlights the way in which Lord Dartmouth and his tenants jointly financed the improvements of both farming and commercial premises: ‘If tenants advanced money themselves for rebuilding, conversion or extension of premises, a lease was often granted at an artificially low ‘reserved rent’ which acted as an incentive for such improvements’.” This can be seen at Farnley Mill where the ‘reserved rent’ was £5 Os Od.”

Local trade and industry

The 1805 Survey also names the leaseholders of the buildings and demonstrates the variety of occupations and buildings in the village. There were six groups of clothiers’ premises in the village which were leased at a rent of £128.10s. Jon Eastwood had ‘a house’ and ‘other buildings and a cottage’; George Eastwood had a ‘farm house and other out building; and John Schofield had a farmhouse with several outbuildings and a saddler’s shop and a range of tenements at Ludwell. Joseph Smith was a butcher; he had a ‘house, butcher’s shop and outhouses’.

A notable activity in the village was tanning, which is the process of treating animal skins to produce leather using tannin from oak or fir trees. The skins would first be soaked in water to clean and soften them so a ‘tan yard’ would always have pits for this purpose. The 1805 Survey and the 1854 OS map show several tanneries in Farnley Tyas.”

The tanning operation did sometimes cause annoyance to those who were living in the vicinity as is seen from a note in the Farnley Tyas Local Board Minute Book for 1888: ‘The clerk was instructed to give notice to Messrs. Kaye and Son that they were Causing a nuisance injurious to health by boiling flesh etc. at the Tanyard with their

° Ibid. ” Pat Hudson, A Study of the West Riding wool textile industry, 1750 — 1850 (CUP, Cambridge: 2002), p. 88 * Ibid. ” Other examples of this can be seen in the Survey: at Runnett End, William Harping paid a rent of £13.10s for a house and shop. Lord Dartmouth had ‘advanced money for buildings’; at Top of Town, the Wood, John, Charles, and George Shaw are described as ‘being poor people, holding their tenements at rack rents, no alteration was made in their rent’. “° WYAS, KC161

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apparatus in its present inefficient state... if it occurs again proceedings will be initiated against them without further

Mr J. Shaw samples spring water from Woodland View at the bottom of Manor Road. The spring used to feed the pits of a tanyard where the tanning was carried out. The tanyard pits still existed in 1954. Photo Huddersfield Daily Examiner.

In the early 1800s there was an increased demand for coal for the development of steam power in the textile industry, particularly at Farnley Mill, as well as for domestic use.” The Yorkshire Rental for 1651, when the Estate was owned by the Kayes, shows coal mines between Shaw Head and Woodroyd, Honley. Most of Farnley Tyas coal came from Brockholes where the tenant in 1805 was Joseph Haigh. Increased demand led to higher prices which encouraged prospectors to open new collieries and seams. The 1805 Survey states that new terms were made with the colliers; it was stipulated that they should sell a certain measure for a certain price. Previously the public had been ‘grossly imposed upon’, having to put up with short measures and varying prices. Lord Dartmouth’s agents also had to achieve a fair rent for the Lord’s share of the mine.

Mining coal in this area was a difficult business and demanded hard physical labour. The last colliery to be worked at Farnley Tyas was the Woodsome colliery at Fenay Bridge which stopped working around 1939. Perhaps it was not competitive with the neighbouring collieries which had much deeper seams.

WYAS, Dartmouth Estate. Farnley Tyas Minutes of the Local Board and U.D.C. 1878 - 1925 2 Page, Farnley Tyas: A History

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Another important activity contributing to the local village economy was stone quarrying. There is evidence on maps and in entries in Local Board Minute Books of numerous small stone quarries around Farnley Tyas; their remains can still be seen today. Most of the cottages in the village were built in local stone from these quarries, enabling them to be built at a low cost. During the 19" century stone would have been needed for road making, walls, drains, houses, farm buildings, roof slates and flagstone for floors.

Looking after woodland was an important part of Dartmouth Estate management which required the planting, thinning, fencing and general upkeep of woodlands. ~ The third Earl of Dartmouth required the agents to plant ‘further plantations at 10 acres per year’ such as the half-moon plantations which can still be seen up Field Lane. Under the heading ‘Thinning of plantations’, there is a note from the agent in the Letter Book reminding Jonathan, the steward, that ‘I wish the thinning of plantations to be about £150 every year — very little more or less. Also, to plant 1 or 2000 ash 2 feet in the last Fall in the Carr — and also to fill up the Slang at the top of Farnley Mills

Sometimes trees were chopped down unlawfully and this unauthorised chopping was dealt with harshly. In October 1809, the agents recorded that ‘two of Scott’s men, having been fined by the Magistrates 40s each for cutting hazels in Carr Wood — gave the £4 this day to the poor of Farnley to celebrate the Jubilee [George III]’.

The 1828 Survey of the Dartmouth Estate followed on from that of 1805 and showed an increase in the size of the holdings and a greater range of activities in which the tenants were involved. In the village, there were 24 farmhouses with farm buildings and 36 cottages, a blacksmith’s shop, a butcher’s shop, and the public house, the Golden Cock.’ Richard Roberts had a house of 14 rooms, barn, stable, cowhouse, cropping shop and chamber. George Shaw had a house, buildings and dyehouse; John Roberts had a house, barn stable, cowhouse, cartshed, a drying room, leather shop and large cattle shed. In 1845 Lord Dartmouth was informed by his agent:

‘| find a letter here from Mr. Roberts, the tanner of Farnley, who from continued ill health is about giving up that business and planting his son on the premises as a brewer and converting them into a Brewery for which, from the supply of water, they are very well adapted’.

* WYAS, Earls of Dartmouth (West Riding) family and estate archive (Farnley Tyas, Honley and Meltham - Agents letter and memoranda book 1804-1810) 14 Ibid. * WYAS, KC161

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Lord Dartmouth consented to this conversion and the premises were known for many years as ‘the old brewery’.

Mr. William Nowell of The Wood had a house of six rooms, farm buildings, a house of three rooms used as a wool warehouse, a large warehouse, dyehouse and shop. James and George Sykes of Hunter’s Nab had a house, two cottages, buildings and a dyehouse built in 1824. At Roydhouse there was a tan yard occupied by John Kay who, in addition to his house and farm buildings, had a mill, cartshed and half a building used as a leather shop. Joseph Leigh of Roydhouse had the other half of the building, also used as a leather shop. Redfearn of Woodsome Mill had a corn mill.

Social Life and Woodsome Hall

The Dartmouths did not always live at Woodsome Hall and were often based in Staffordshire. However, Farnley Tyas residents did enjoy the social life which their proximity to Woodsome Hall gave them. In 1842, the Hall was occupied by the Earl’s land agent and for several years the Rev. Cutfield Wardroper lived at the Hall before the Parsonage was built. However, in the 1850s the fifth Earl, William Walter, took up residence at Woodsome and the Hall was refurbished. This had a significant effect on the social life in the area. The Hall was used for shooting parties and the Game Book shows evidence of good seasons with Carr Wood and the surrounding Farnley Estate providing sport.”

The Earl’s personality and benevolence seems to have contributed a great deal to ‘social harmony’ on his Estate. For example, Mr. Gilbert Wilson looked after the game and lived at Keeper’s Cottage rent free. On 23 April 1864, it was reported in the Huddersfield Chronicle that ‘the noble Earl’ authorised Gilbert Wilson to kill game on the estate and distribute it to tenants, especially to the poor and sick, amounting to 182 families. Over a period of six years 2000 head of game were distributed in the Farnley Estate and poaching became almost unknown. Rabbits were numerous on parts of the Farnley Estate; farmers complained to Gilbert Wilson ‘about rabbits doing damage to crops near the Moor’. However, ‘no expense of labour had been spared to utterly destroy them’ and Gilbert Wilson reported in 1864 that very few were on the estate.

Before this, in September 1856 the fifth Earl of Dartmouth and the Countess visited Woodsome, the reports of which further demonstrate the goodwill between village tenants and their landowner. The Farnley Tyas people presented an address, signed by the tenantry of the village, in front of the Hall ‘amidst a numerous assemblage of

16 Ibid. 7 ALE, Holroyd, Woodsome: The Place and its People (Woodsome Hall Golf Club, 1992)

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the inhabitants generally, including the scholars and teachers of Farnley Tyas and Almondbury schools... the Reverend Cutfield Wardroper, the incumbent of Farnley Tyas, read the address’. Lord Dartmouth rejoiced at the opportunity of meeting his tenants again and thanked them for the kind feelings they had shown. He hoped that in future he and the Countess would be able to make frequent visits to the Woodsome and Farnley Tyas area. When he was absent he felt that he was well represented by his agent, Mr Thynne, who was much respected by them. The patriarchal relationship between a Lord and his tenants in the 19"" century is clearly expressed: ‘Mr. Thynne...faithfully made known to him the feelings and wishes of his tenants’. He was “always glad to receive any application...reserving always to himself the right to refuse it if he saw good reason for doing so, after giving the application

18 his best consideration’.

Farnley Shoot c 1900. Left to right: Jimmy Roberts (Farnley Brewery), Henry Sykes, anon, John Shaw, Joseph Wilson, Birkett. Photo courtesy of Farnley Estates.

Another example of the good rapport between the landowner and his tenants was that Lord Dartmouth built a reading room for the young men of the village.” After the death of William Walter in 1891 the Hall was used as a Dower house for the Countess and her daughters, Frances, Georgina and Elizabeth. The Dartmouth ladies

““WYAS, K1059 * This single storey, two-roomed building is still there in the centre of the village, at the bend in the road. It was the headquarters of the Home Guard during the Second World War and was used as a ‘radio listening centre’.

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were leaders in religious and social activities in the village during the Victorian and Edwardian era. The sisters wanted to help the women of the village so they set up the ‘Mothers’ Home’ which was a large wooden hut on land down Manor Road where the ladies could meet for social functions. The hut was lent rent free to the caretaker.”

In 1902, there was a grand celebration at Woodsome Hall on the occasion of the 21° birthday of the sixth Earl’s eldest son. All the tenants on the Yorkshire estates were invited and brought by special train from Slaithwaite and Morley to the station at Fenay Bridge.

So, 200 years after the Dartmouths acquired the extensive estates from the Kayes, the sixth Earl continued the tradition of benevolence to the village. In 1927, he gave land on Butts Road of just under five acres to Thurstonland and Farnley Tyas Urban District Council as a recreation ground which is still in use today.

Biography

Caroline Page lived in Highburton before studying English Literature and History at university. Returning to the area several years later she was librarian at Huddersfield New College and Kirklees College and now lives in Honley.

*° During the Second World War, it was used for whist drives, social evenings and money raising efforts for the war. After the war, it was sold but some villagers still remember going to dances there. See C. H. Mallinson and G. M. Warwick, Aspects of Farnley Tyas Yesterday and Today (1900) *" There is a plaque on the wall near the entrance to the recreation ground which states that it was ‘to be used as a public pleasure ground and for the purposes of cricket, football or other games or recreations, or as the site of buildings in connection therewith and so that the same should be used for no other purpose’.

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SAINT VALENTINE’S DAY CATASTROPHE: THE COLNE BRIDGE COTTON MILL FIRE AND THE STORY OF A BRAVE LITTLE GIRL WHO SURVIVED*

Richard Heath

When the three young daughters of William and Rachel Moody — Sarah (11), Mary (16) and Elizabeth (18) — left their Kirkheaton home on the eve of St Valentine’s Day in 1818, little could that family have foreseen the horror that would befall them the following morning. William and Rachel would never see their two eldest daughters again. Only their youngest, Sarah, would return home. Her elder sisters were counted amongst the 17 young girls aged from 9 to 18 who perished when a misplaced candle started a blaze that destroyed their workplace during the hours of darkness.

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Child workers in front of an early textile mill in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Etching from George Walker’s Costume of Yorkshire (1814). Photo courtesy of Kirklees Image Archive.

* My research into the Colne Bridge mill fire of 1818 was inspired during my childhood days whilst living near to the village itself. This was back in the early 1960s. I recall standing on the towpath of the Sir John Ramsden Canal aside the gates of lock No. 2 which is adjacent to the site once occupied by Thomas Atkinson’s cotton manufactory. At the time, I would be about nine years old; the same age as the three youngest of the seventeen girls who perished in the raging inferno on 14 February of that year. My interest in the disaster never waned and in the succeeding years I devoted a great deal of time to a detailed study in the hope of ascertaining the cause and the events surrounding it. My work has resulted in several articles and I have conducted several talks.

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Wednesday 14 February 2018 is the 200th anniversary of the devastating Colne Bridge cotton mill fire. It will be a time of sombre reflection in which the tragedy enables us to comprehend the conditions and the dangers that workers in this country were subject to at that time. The victims were just ordinary young girls from poor backgrounds. Had they lived in a more prosperous age we can imagine their lives being very different. Rather than long hours of hard labour they would have a school to go to, the opportunity of a much brighter future and ‘have stars shining upon them.’

Sadly, on that wintry night two centuries ago, the only stars shining upon these young mill girls would have been the ones piercing the pitch-black skies above Heaton Moor as they trudged their way to Thomas Atkinson’s cotton factory at Colne Bridge. Children from poor families had no schooling, their lives revolved around earning enough money to put food on the table. From a cold bleak windswept ridge overlooking the valley, Sarah, Mary and Elizabeth had to negotiate their way down the rugged and winding path to the foot of Colne Bank where they would see the ghostly outline of Atkinson’s factory looming out of the darkness. Inside it was dimly lit with lamps and candles and offered little comfort to the adults and children facing 10 to 12 hours of labour.

The factory stood adjacent to the John Ramsden Canal. It had four floors connected by a single wooden stairway and machinery powered by water that had been channelled down a long stream from the swirling River Colne. The production line kept a total of 80 people in employment out of which 26 of them were assigned to work on that ominous night of Friday the 13th. Taking charge were foremen/overseers, William Smith (60) and James Sugden (20). The two men directed the nightshift to work the machines on the upper floor spinning rooms.” Only a short distance from that workplace, surrounded by trees and a picturesque landscaped garden, stood Colne Bridge House, the grand, opulent residence of factory boss Thomas Atkinson.

Besides being in the cotton spinning business, Atkinson was Captain Commandant in the Huddersfield Yeoman Cavalry. His active role against the Luddites was a cause celebre amongst local mill owners who hailed him as the ‘principal agent’ in the conviction of several men following the shooting dead of a fellow mill owner, William Horsfall, at Crosland Moor.° That fateful night Atkinson retired to bed oblivious to what was about to unfold on his doorstep. Within a few hours, he would be shaken

* Wright’s Leeds Intelligencer, 16 February 1818; Leeds Mercury, 21 February 1818 * So respected was he that he was presented with an engraved dress sword by the Ladies of Huddersfield in honour of his services. The artefact is in the possession of the Tolson Memorial Museum. F. G. Atkinson, The Atkinson Saga: The Story of the Atkinson Family of Cumberland, England and their Descendants, 17"- 20" Century (Unpublished Book, 1979); Available at Huddersfield Local Studies Library, pp. 68 - 70

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from his slumber; roused perhaps by his servants or possibly by the rumble of collapsing masonry and the desperate cries of those trying to escape the burning factory. Whatever the imagined scenario nothing could have prepared him for what he would have to face at the break of day - the loss of his mill along with a substantial number of his workforce.

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Colne Bridge House, Bradley. Photo courtesy of Kirklees Image Archive.

The tragedy sent shockwaves around the nation and in that same week the House of Commons would fall into a deathly silence as Sir Robert Peel (the elder) tabled the second reading of his Factory Act, vowing that it was his intention to prevent a reoccurrence of tragedies such as the one at Colne Bridge.”

In the days immediately following the horrific fire a tidal wave of grief swept over the town and an appeal was soon launched for donations to pay for a memorial dedicated to the lost children. Three years later a handsome stone obelisk was completed. Erected in 1821 it stands near the Kirk Stile gate in Kirkheaton churchyard opposite the Beaumont Arms. The four beautifully inscribed stone panels (renovated in 1969 by the Huddersfield Trades Council) reflect on what happened at Mr Atkinson’s Factory.” One of the panels bears a list of the victims’ names and their ages, whilst another has a poetic lament and a timely reminder about ‘the uncertainty of life and the vanity of human attainment’. Lying horizontally in its shadow is the headstone of 1818 which marks the communal grave where the children’s remains were laid to rest. Letters inscribed in Old English spell out each of

* HC Deb 23 February 1818, vol. 37, c 582; W. R. Croft, The History of the Factory Movement, or, Oastler and His Times (George Whitehead and Sons, Huddersfield: 1888), pp. 17 - 19 > Huddersfield Examiner, 10 May 1969

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the girls’ names alongside those of their parents. Written above is a chilling reminder of what brought about their dreadful fate. It states: ‘This melancholy catastrophe was occasioned in consequence of a foreman sending a boy into the lower room with a naked light’.°

The boy in question was 11-year-old Jim Thornton. At about 5am, whilst it was still dark, he was ordered by foreman, James Sugden to go downstairs to the ground floor to collect rovings (combed cotton twisted into strands). The lower level was not in operation that night and was therefore unmanned and in total darkness. Disaster was only a moment away but history itself would have taken a very different course had Jim been given a proper glass lamp with a protected flame instead of a naked candle.’ In the flickering shadows of that dungeon like basement floor, the flame had accidently brushed against some loose strands of cotton. One report stated that it was ‘more like an explosion’ in which ‘a number of carded laps were instantly ablaze’. Then, in what must have been a truly emotive scene, the young boy desperately tried to beat out the flames. Jim would no doubt have feared the foreman’s wrath just as much as the fire that now confronted him.

Directly above, the rest of the workforce, including the three Moody sisters, Mary, Elizabeth and Sarah, continued to operate the spinning frames oblivious to what was happening just a few feet below them. All that changed, however, when Sarah - whilst she was kneeling down to clean the machinery - suddenly spotted the flames through what she would later describe as ‘chinks’ (slits) between the wooden beams of the mill floor.’ Sarah immediately informed her workmate and the two of them ran across the room to alert Sugden to the blaze. The irate foreman, however, flew into a fit of rage and ordered the girls to return to work. Sarah refused and with the general alert now given, she hastened down the short stairway which led immediately to the outer door.

Several others managed to escape with her: they included Dolly Bolton (35), Mary Smith (20), Mary Hey (20), Esther Brook (18), and a 10-year-old boy called David who had the same surname as the foreman. Unfortunately, Sarah’s workmate was fearful of Sugden’s threats and returned to her machine. She would never be seen again.” Sugden himself had immediately raced down to the ground floor to find a petrified Jim Thornton amidst the intensifying crisis. It appears that the foreman then began a futile battle against a fire already out of control. It proved to be a catastrophic

° The grave where the children were interred is between the memorial and the church gate ” Leeds Mercury, 21 Feb 1818 * Ibid. Croft, The History of the Factory Movement, p. 17 *° The only known list of survivors is to be found in the footnote of the article published in the Leeds Mercury, 21 February 1818

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mistake because in doing so he wasted vital time in which the entire workforce might have been evacuated.

Further analysis suggests that out of the two foremen, most of the blame can be apportioned to Smith. According to the Wakefield and Halifax Journal, it transpired that Smith had gone to the rescue of his daughter Mary (20), got her out of the building then returned to help save his master’s property. If this was the case we must conclude that there was no one left in charge in the spinning rooms that might have been able to lead the 17 stranded girls to safety.

In a very short space of time, the beleaguered factory overseers found themselves beaten back by the flames and in realising that all hope of saving the building was lost, Sugden and, Smith quickly made good their escape. They would later claim that they had tried to get the remaining children down from what they described as the ‘landing’. This, however, seems highly unlikely given the reported speed of the conflagration and their apparent preoccupation with the fire. But even if their story is remotely true, it would have been too little, too late — the girls had rushed in terror to the far end of the spinning room where, in their final moments, they had huddled together (a fact that would be confirmed later by the recovery of their remains). ~

Miraculously, one other person would manage to escape a terrible fate. It was Jim Thornton who had misplaced the candle. The young boy had made it but only just in time for, in the next instant, the stairs collapsed and the inferno spread into the upper level with a ferocity so intense it would consume everything - mill, machinery and stock within 30 minutes.

By the first light of dawn the building had been nothing more than a blackened shell. Only the counting house and warehouse had survived, both being protected by a main wall. Many had flocked from their homes clinging to a desperate hope that their loved ones had survived. For most of them hope could only give way to despair and in their grief their attention would have to be turned towards the recovery of their children’s remains from the rubble of Atkinson’s mill. Fifteen had been pulled out of the ruins in the late afternoon but none were identifiable. Two of the girls would never be accounted for; they were probably the youngest and likely to be the smallest. Besides the greatest of sorrows that day the remainder of the workforce had now lost their employment.

‘ Wakefield and Halifax Journal, 20 February 1818 * Ibid.; Leeds Mercury, 21 February 1818 * Ibid.

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Atkinson himself had remained in the yard throughout the day to supervise the operation.” One of his concerns was the apparent negligence of Sugden and Smith. Could the failure of both of his foremen to evacuate the girls reflect badly on his own reputation once the newspapers got hold of the story? After all here was a mill owner fast asleep in bed whilst less than 400 yards away his workforce perished in a blaze. Fortunately for Atkinson, Edward Baines, the Editor of the most influential regional newspaper of the day, The Leeds Mercury, was on friendly terms with manufacturers and had a tendency not to publish anything that might have put them in a defamatory light. This was more than evident when the report on the mill fire went to press. It appeared on the inside pages as an incidental story wedged between two columns which reported on less important matters. Its rival newspaper, The Leeds Intelligencer did no better, paying only scant attention to the events of 14 February. Neither newspaper made any kind of investigative follow up.

_ MARY DuTTon _ SARAH SHEARD MARY ee 3 NANCY CAR’ oe ELIZABETH MOODY” SARAH NoRTH =

Memorial stone outside St. John’s Church, Kirkheaton, showing names of the 17 girls who died in the Colne Bridge Mill fire. Photo by Frank Grombir.

Further obfuscation came in the form of a rumour that was circulated throughout the town that the mill’s outer door had been locked and that the key had been misplaced, but there is no contemporary evidence that supports this.’ The rumour appears to have been passed on by word of mouth and holds the hallmarks of a convenient subterfuge neatly woven into the fabric of the story in order cover up the irresponsibility of those in charge that night. Seeing that the two foremen escaped

“ Evidence of mill fire survivor Sarah Moody in Croft, The History of the Factory Movement, p. 17 * Ibid.; Atkinson, The Atkinson Saga, p. 68

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without difficulty along with seven other survivors, this account holds very little credibility whatsoever.

As for the victims’ families, no explanation could have alleviated their suffering. Three of the girls were aged only nine. They were Elizabeth Drake, the daughter of Charles and Rebecca; Martha Hey, daughter of John and Esther; and Mary Hey, the daughter of John and Lydia. One year older was Abigail Bottom, the daughter of Job and Harriet, a little girl taken only weeks before her eleventh birthday. ° In total, 17 mothers and fathers had been left grieving for their children in the aftermath of an awful tragedy.

A black cloud had now descended over Colne Bridge pending the investigation. In those days, it was common for inquests to be held in local Inns and public houses so it is quite possible that the chosen location might well have been the Spinners Arms which stood only a few hundred yards from the disaster scene. The hearing took place before one James Wigglesworth, a local solicitor and landowner. What is quite perturbing is that, following his summing up, the jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

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Burial register entries for the 17 girls interred in Kirkheaton in 1818. Image courtesy of Huddersfield

Exposed (https://huddersfield.exposed/).

‘© The names of parents and their daughters is inscribed on the gravestone in Kirkheaton churchyard. For more info about the memorial see Huddersfield Exposed, ‘Colne Bridge Tragedy of 1818’, Available [online] at: <https://huddersfield.exposed/wiki/Colne Bridge Tragedy of 1818> [Accessed 18 March

2017]

” Wakefield and Halifax Journal, 20 February 1818

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The Wakefield and Halifax Journal reported that ‘Following (the inquest) 11 coffins were brought to the place into which the remains of all 15 girls were put and taken in three hearses to the place of interment in Kirkheaton churchyard where they were buried in one grave. The mournful procession, preceded by solemn music passed the houses of everyone who had lost a child or ‘... a relative and at each of which it halted a psalm was sung’. ** The service had drawn 4000 people from all over Huddersfield. The funeral was being held in the very place where the children had

been baptised only a few years earlier.”

Back at Colne Bridge, and with his factory in ruins, Atkinson’s cotton spinning days were numbered. Even though the factory was rebuilt following an insurance payout, his business took a downturn and within two years he was declared Yet, despite this fall in fortunes, the enriched factory boss had retained much of his wealth and with it, his prominent standing within the genteel circles in and around Huddersfield. The hand of fate, however, struck in 1838 bringing about his untimely demise at the age of 59. Atkinson’s obituary in the Leeds Times reflected the profound shock felt amongst friends and fellow businessmen.”

Sarah Moody, the little mill girl survivor, was by now a grown woman and had become the wife of William Wood, a woollen weaver from Fleminghouse Lane Almondbury. The couple had married at Kirkheaton Church in 1826 and moved in to a cottage at the top of Heaton Moor virtually opposite the Blacksmiths Here they raised four children, Ann, Amelia, Ruth and Sam.”

Today, many of Sarah’s descendants live in Huddersfield including her great-great- granddaughter, Kathy Butterworth, of Crosland Moor, whose mother Joyce researched the family’s history in the 1980s. Joyce appeared in the Huddersfield Examiner in 1986 following a visit to the Local History Library where she had made an astonishing genealogical discovery. After finding a shortlist of the mill fire survivors she came across the name Sarah Moody, an ancestor of whom she was a direct descendant. For Joyce, it was a deeply sobering moment as it began to sink in that her very existence had hinged on her great-grandmother’s escape from a burning mill.

The story of the Colne Bridge mill fire has stirred the emotions of people for many generations - and it continues to do so right up to the present day. Reflecting back on

Ibid. * Vivien Teasdale, ‘Colne Bridge Mill Fire’, in: Vivien Teasdale, Yorkshire Disasters: A Social and Family History (Wharncliffe Books, Barnsley: 2008), p. 9 *° Leeds Mercury, 21 July 1838 *! The Leeds Times, 24 March 1838; The Bradford Observer, 29 March 1838 Kirkheaton Parish Records, Marriage Certificate 9 May 1825; Census Records for Moor Top Kirkheaton Ibid.

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two centuries, it is obvious that Sarah had carried the memory of her tragic sisters and her workmates for the rest of her life. Almost 70 years after the disaster she spoke with Huddersfield historian W. R. Croft. What she told Croft left him in no doubt as to whom she thought was responsible for their deaths. The ageing grandmother, whilst still living in her Moor Top cottage, revealed how she lost her mate when the brute overseer, James Sugden, ordered them back to work after they had alerted him to the outbreak of fire. She also described how, in the aftermath that same morning, she witnessed ‘Mr Atkinson upbraiding the foreman in the mill yard in the forenoon of the day for trying to save the bales of cotton rather than the In essence, this statement reveals the shocking truth about the negligence and disregard that resulted in the Colne Bridge Disaster.

Sarah died in 1893 aged 86.°° She was interred in the grounds of Kirkheaton Church, near to the poignant memorial that bears the names of her beloved sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, and all the other young girls who lost their lives on that tragic St Valentine’s Day morning in the year 1818.

Biography

Richard Heath is a Senior Community Care Officer for Kirklees Council and works within the South West Yorkshire Mental Health Trust (SWYMHT). Born in 1954, in Bradley, Huddersfield, he attended Deighton County Secondary School and later studied at Bradford and Ilkley College where he achieved a BA (Hons) in Community Studies. The story of the Colne Bridge mill fire is part of his wider interest in 19" century social and economic history.

*“ Croft, The History of the Factory Movement, p. 17 25 pp: Kirkheaton Parish records

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THE WAR FROM THE HOME FRONT: ONE MAN AND HIS EXPERIENCES IN THE GREAT WAR

Brian Haigh

‘August 3rd, Bank Holiday - War declared with Germany walked to the top of Holme Moss in the afternoon. Very fine breeze’.

Forty-year-old Thomas Hinchliffe's journal entry shows little sign of alarm at the situation. Perhaps, like many others, he believed that the war would be over by Christmas. In any case, there was nothing he could do about it. Life would go on and, after visiting family members in Holme, he walked to the top of the moss, something he had done on many previous occasions, and something he would repeat in all winds and weathers.

Thomas was born at Holme in 1874. Earlier in the century, the Hinchliffes had described themselves as clothiers. By 1861, all but the youngest members of the extended family of fifteen members were involved the domestic woollen trade as handloom weavers, spinners and winders. But the traditional way of life was fast disappearing. By 1881, Thomas’s grandfather, 74-year-old Joseph, who headed a household of only five, was described as a labourer, whilst his mother, Jane and cousin Mary Ann worked in a local woollen mill.? Initially, Thomas also started working in the mill, but he had ambitions to do better for himself. After attending classes at the WHuddersfield Technical School, he was able to get a job as a bookkeeper in 1893. He noted: ‘Liked fairly well, even the first day’. In 1901, he managed to secure a post in the Borough Treasurer's

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Thomas Haigh (1874 — 1958) in the 1920s. Photo courtesy of Clive Swindell.

* Richard Carl Swindell & William Clive Swindell (eds.), Thomas Hinchliffe — the Diary of an Edwardian Gentleman, 1874-1958 (2013). The diary forms the basis of this article and is quoted with the kind permission of the editors, descendants of Ann Hinchliffe, one of Thomas’s aunts. Direct quotations from the diary are in italics. Local newspapers give further details of events which Thomas attended and often record speakers verbatim. References to these are noted at the ends of paragraphs. * Information derived from Census Returns and Registration data, accessed via Ancestry.co.uk.

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department where he was to remain until his retirement.” By 1914, Thomas was living with his mother at 51, Somerset Road, Huddersfield.”

Sporadically from 1887 until 1951, Thomas kept a Diary of Events in my life from my native village, Holme and mostly from living in Huddersfield. The entries are brief and Thomas rarely expresses any opinion or emotion. Like many diarists, Thomas Hinchliffe is probably not typical, but the record he has left tells us what one man was doing during a period of great social change. Grandmother Lydia came from Cartworth, but most of Thomas's forebears had not strayed far from Holme. Thomas learnt about the wider world from the many lectures he attended, from books and newspapers, from his own travels and to a lesser extent from films. Until the arrival of public radio broadcasting in 1922, news travelled much more slowly and, certainly in the case of the First World War, was much more subject to government control.

Official Attitudes to War

Speeches from the public platform were a far more important way of disseminating information and canvassing opinion in the first half of the 20th century. Thomas Hinchliffe attended some of the first town hall meetings in August and early September after war was declared. Speakers from across the political spectrum, including Huddersfield's Liberal M.P. Arthur J. Sherwell, Lord Robert Cecil, the deeply religious and pacifist son of the former Conservative premier, Lord Salisbury and Labour M.P. Will Crookes appealed for recruits as well as for funds to support the families of serving men and ‘those suffering from industrial distress’; they all spoke with a united voice.”

The war was being fought in the interests of Christian morality and European civilisation against those of barbarism. England stood for freedom and justice; Germany for the pre-eminence of force. It was that force which had led to the destruction of towns and villages in neutral Belgium and the slaughter of women and children. The German military machine would not stop at Paris. ‘Did [the young men| feel inclined to come under the dominion of the Prussian drill instructor?’ asked army veteran F.V. Harcourt. Rather Britain should be wiped off the face of the earth than submit to the military dictatorship of Germany. ‘They were fighting’, intoned Labour

* Holmfirth Express, 28 June 1958 * It was to be his home for over 40 years, though he never forgot his connection with his native village of Holme, to which he would retire. He had been a teacher at the Holme Sunday School and became secretary of the Holme Liberal Club, later to become the Holme Village Institute and president of the Holme Silver Band. ° Huddersfield Examiner (HDE), 4 September 1914

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M.P. Will Crookes, ‘so that our children might have a better chance in the world than we ourselves had had’.”

“The Song of the Kaiser.”

A satirical cartoon of the German Kaiser. HDE, 21 August 1914.

Deputy Mayor, Cllr. George Thomson, confided that he had a constitutional horror of war and that it had taken him some time before being reconciled to the justice of the war but that he had come to feel that it was in the interests of posterity. In seeking funds to alleviate distress, there was said to be no need for panic. Local manufacturers were doing splendidly, making great efforts supported by local banks, whilst workpeople were meeting the crisis magnificently. At this meeting on 14 August, which opened with the singing of, ‘Oh God Our Help in Ages Past’, Alderman Wheatley expressed his sadness and pain, to see the nation in such a humiliated condition in only a fortnight.

Whilst many, no doubt, shared these sentiments, others had yet to make up their minds. The town hall meetings were over-subscribed requiring overflow meetings in the drill hall. This, it was argued, ‘spoke well of the enthusiasm of people for justice and righteousness’. Recruiting proceeded apace and patriotism was the order of the day, meetings concluding with patriotic songs and the National Anthem.’

° Paraphrased and with direct quotes from HDE, 4 September 1914 ’ HWE, 15 August 1914; HDE, 2 September 1914; HDE, 4 September 1914

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Thomas Hinchliffe attended a concert featuring the Brand Lane Orchestra, conducted by Sir Henry Wood, at Manchester's Free Trade Hall on 7 November which concluded with the French, Belgian and Russian anthems. Huddersfield Town Hall was the venue for a Grand Patriotic Concert, which raised £500 towards the cost of the open air military hospital at Royds Wood. Though the programme was largely made up of English music and included the communal singing of lvor Novello's Till the Boys Come Home, as well as Russian and Irish folk songs, the organisers, not wishing to be narrow-minded, included Siegfried's /dy//, which was well received. In the summer, Greenhead Park was the setting for regular recitals by military bands which were greatly appreciated. Rapturous applause followed the performances of the great Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye, Ukrainian pianist Vladimir Pachman and Australian diva Elsa Stralia at the town hall on 15 November 1915. Even Thomas was inspired to comment: 'A very fine concert’.

Local Fundraising Campaigns

Thomas does not express any opinion about the war or its conduct in his diary, but working in the town hall, he would have been aware of the initiatives to raise funds for general relief, to assist the Belgian refugees who found new homes in Huddersfield and the valleys, and to provide comforts for serving soldiers and seamen.

Huddersfield T A N K W EE K.

for National War Bonds

are received by all the

"HUDDERSFIELD BANKS

bod ans ‘subscribers ate invited to make their applications I through any : of the Banks, and thus re‘ieve the pressure at the ‘ * TANK.”

All applications received by the Banks will be ingluded in the total.

A fundraising advert from the Huddersfield Daily Examiner 21 February 1918.

° HWE, 24 July 1915; HWE, 22 July 1916; HDE, 17 October 1915 47

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From the beginning of the war, the YMCA had been providing support to the armed forces and new recruits. In Huddersfield, a fund was set up to raise funds for a Y.M.C.A. hut for the men at the front, but raised enough money for two. On 2 April 1917, Thomas attended a talk at the town hall on the wartime work of the Y.M.C.A. which had 350 huts in France, where soldiers could go for rest and refreshment and where stationery was provided for them to write letters home. Gypsy Smith, a former member of the Salvation Army, who had spent much time at the front, gave ‘a fine moving picture of humour, eloquence and pathos’. He spoke of the association's hope that after the war, they would be able to set up a ‘hut’ in every community in the country.”

One of the military camps Thomas visited on his travels through the Yorkshire Dales in August 1915.

On Sunday 13 February 1916, Thomas went to the railway station to view the hospital train which the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Co. had built for the War Office for use in France. Thomas was one of 6000 local people who paid a shilling (5 pence) to inspect the well-equipped and designed carriages which could carry over 400 men from the front to base hospitals. There is no mention in the journal of Nelson, the tank which was displayed in St George's Square in 1918 and raised £2 million for the war effort, but as a frequent train passenger, Thomas could not have failed to miss this latest addition to the military arsenal. He witnessed the increased military presence in the country on his annual holidays, noting large encampments in the Yorkshire Dales and North Wales, and as he went about the town, he would also

° HDE 15 February 1916; HDE 3 April 1917 48

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have been aware of the presence of men in uniform and later the arrival of the injured for treatment in the hurriedly opened local war hospitals”.

Local war industry and the role of women

As the war progressed, Thomas could not have failed to notice the huge changes that were taking place in the town and the whole country as ‘total war’ mobilised an entire population and placed the economy on a war footing. Roles once occupied exclusively by men were now taken up by women. The manufacture of fine worsteds, dyestuffs and engineering gave way to production for the war effort. Huddersfield's contribution was recognised in a morale boosting visit by George V and Queen Mary on 30 May 1918 to local mills and factories. Thomas witnessed the royal progress through Aspley as the party headed towards British Dyes.”

Despite being a centre for munitions, military engineering and khaki manufacture, lighting restrictions were not introduced to Huddersfield until 1916, but Thomas had found that no street lamps were lit in Harrogate, which he visited at the start of his annual holiday in August 1915. ‘Remember the country is at war’, he noted. He would also have remembered the shelling of Scarborough and the east coast at the end of the previous year and the Zeppelin raids on King's Lynn and Yarmouth in January 1915.

The entry in Thomas Hinchliffe's diary for Saturday 20 May 1916 reads, ‘Daylight Saving Act came into operation today. Clocks moved forward one hour’. This was introduced to make it easier for people to live with the blackout and to help to save coal. Food shortages, partly occasioned by the German blockades, led to the introduction of rationing which goes unnoticed in the diaries.

It was, perhaps, Thomas's mother, Jane, who ran the Somerset Road household, who had most dealings with rationing. War changed the role of women. Leading suffragette Annie Kenney, who came from Saddleworth, addressed a town hall recruiting meeting in February 1915 which Thomas attended. They had set aside their struggle for the sake of the nation's struggle and the colours of the Women's Social & Political Union hung alongside the national flags of the allies. In the past, it had been said that men must work and women must weep; now it would probably be, ‘men must fight and women must work’. Women would make fine soldiers if given the opportunity, but they were taking up new roles, replacing the men who had gone to war. Thomas would have found himself working alongside women, though he was not unfamiliar with such a situation, having started his working life in

‘© HDE 14 December 1916 ‘t HDE 31 May 1918

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a Holme Valley mill. For the first time, he would have encountered women as 12 conductors on the corporation trams.

Planned Reforms and War’s End

The great social changes which the war had brought about would impact on life after the victory had been won. Even at the darkest moments of the conflict, consideration was being given to what should happen after hostilities had ceased. Thomas Hinchliffe attended a series of lectures in 1917-18 which explored the future of the nation. Lord Haldane, former Liberal Lord Chancellor, later to join Labour, spoke of the desirability of reform of the education system to guarantee a race of happy and contented men and women, of the consequent breaking down of class barriers and the delivery of the population from squalor and misery. Industrialist Lord Leverhulme's proposals were more specific and more radical. He favoured compulsory higher grade education between the ages 14-18, followed by compulsory technical and university education for 18-24 year olds and national service until the age of 30. Not only that but he advocated six hour working days as a way to increase productivity, increase wealth and pay off war debt. H.A.L. Fisher, Liberal President of the Board of Education in the Coalition Government, was concerned about the impact of poor physical health on elementary education and the reduced progress resulting from the half time system. The 1918 Education Act proved to be less ambitious raising the school leaving age to 14 years and allowing for the provision of day continuation classes for 14-18 year

It was Lloyd George's record as a social reformer and his role in winning the war, rather than the issue of what peace to make with Germany which dominated the debate surrounding the General Election which was called soon after the Armistice. Thomas attended the Liberal mass meetings in the town hall addressed by Asquith and by his daughter, Violet (later Lady Violet Bonham Carter), whom he described as, ‘a very clever speaker’, but it was Sir Charles Sykes, a supporter of Lloyd George's Coalition who won the Huddersfield seat. Thomas attended a mass meeting in support of Sykes on the eve of polling day. In November 1903, aged 29 years, he had voted for the first time in a local election; now, on 14 December 1918, he was a polling clerk at Marsh for the first general election since 1910. Now all men over 21 years of age and all women over 30 could vote. There were three times as many voters in 1918 as in the last election thanks to the 1918 Representation of the People Act. This was one of the reforms which Prime Minister Lloyd George, hoped would

‘make Britain a fit country for heroes to live

* HDE 5 February 1915 HDE 11 January 1917; HDE 21 January 1918; HDE 11 February 1918 “ HDE 4 March 1918; HDE 12 December 1918

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More than 3000 local men died as a result of the conflict but Thomas Hinchliffe mentions only two. Lieutenant Leonard Roebuck, aged 24 years, was the son of a neighbour in Somerset Road and was killed in a night flying accident near Sleaford. Thomas attended the military funeral at Almondbury Cemetery on 8 April 1918. He acted as a bearer at the funeral of 21-year old Harry Goodwin, a work colleague, who had enlisted in January 1917 and was wounded at Armentieres in March 1918. He died of his wounds at the Queen's Hospital, Frognal and was buried at Edgerton on 15 June 1918. Thomas remarked: ‘Touching ceremony and very simple. Sunny

15 afternoon’.

Whilst Thomas Hinchliffe was obviously deeply affected by these tragic losses and by the war itself, his diary is not dominated by the events of the war and its local consequences and manifestations. He appears to enjoy his work and an active social life, with regular visits to the theatre for plays, musicals and opera, to the town hall for orchestral and choral concerts, illustrated talks and lectures, and holidays by the sea and in the countryside. The short entries in his diary reflect this rich cultural life and the friendships he formed, but tell us little of his thoughts and feelings; they do however, give us a brief insight into one man's experience of living in Huddersfield through the First World War.

In the same matter-of-fact way in which he recorded the declaration of war, Thomas recorded its end. ‘November 11th Monday - Great War ended. Armistice signed 11

,

am.

Biography

Brian Haigh is a retired museum curator who developed an interest in local history at an early age.

Margaret Stansfield, ‘Huddersfield Roll of Honour, 1914-1922’, edited by Paul Wilcox, Huddersfield, 2014. Harry Roebuck was to build the Roebuck Memorial Homes on Wakefield Road, Dalton, in memory of his son.

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THE GREAT WAR AND THE VICAR OF HUDDERSFIELD: HUDDERSFIELD’S PARISH CHURCH AND THE WAR EFFORT

Robert Piggott

In this article, I explore the activities of the Vicar of Huddersfield in relation to the Great War. There were two successive holders of the post during this period: C. H. Rolt, who served from 1910 until the end of 1916, and A. D. Tupper-Carey taking up the role in the summer of 1917 and departing in 1924. This article makes use of Huddersfield’s Parish Magazine, and of newspaper reports, to examine their activities in Huddersfield over a period of time beginning with the start of the war and finishing in the early twenties. The aim of the piece is to show how both vicars operated as a conduit for pro-war feeling in the town, and to demonstrate the ways in which both vicars maintained the parish church as a place in which the war could be both justified and memorialised.

HUDDERSFIELD:

a core 3 er ae

TT 7 ia Pi ma = F. a

=

c ee = Petey ots: :

na ea 7 ree PARISH

Huddersfield St. Peter’s Church on a postcard from around 1904. Photo courtesy of Kirklees Image Archive, www. kirkleesimages.org.uk.

The Vicar of Huddersfield since 1910, Canon Cecil Henry Rolt, was the chaplain of Huddersfield’s Territorials, the 5th Battalion Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment. And so, on 4 of August 1914, on the parade ground of the Drill Hall, prior

Chelmsford Chronicle, 17 September 1926 52

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to their departure for an uncertain future, Rolt led the prayers.’ He had been born in 1865, the son of a Canterbury vicar and the grandson of a British army colonel who had fought in the Napoleonic Wars.” Rolt studied Modern History at New College, Oxford before being ordained in 1888.* He then took on a series of curacies in the North East, before becoming the incumbent at Holy Trinity, Darlington in 1897, the Vicar of Batley in 1905 and then on to Huddersfield.”

We are lucky in that St. Peter’s, Huddersfield’s Parish Church, managed to maintain publication of its parish magazine throughout the First World War despite paper shortages, and that these issues are held by the West Yorkshire Archive Service.” The magazine’s August issue, written in late July, tells a familiar story of obliviousness to the unfolding crisis, giving information on Mrs Rolt’s ‘At Home Day’, and on the flower service. Canon Rolt himself signalled in his letter to the magazine that he would be away with the Territorials for the next ten days whilst they camped at Marske.’ These plans were of course cut short, and the battalion was called back on 3 August in readiness for the declaration of war the following day.

Canon Rolt appears to have thrown himself into work in support for the war. This is perhaps unsurprising given his close relationship with the Territorials. Rolt’s patriotism is also seen in his having served as honorary chaplain to the Royal Society of St. George during his incumbency at Huddersfield and his allegiances would influence the conduct of his public activities for his remaining time in the town.” On 25 September he spoke publicly in support of the war at an overflowing meeting at the Town Hall, where Colonel Thorold of Halifax called for a new battalion of ‘Havercake Lads’, and he spoke again at the equally oversubscribed follow-up meeting a week later.” Canon Rolt’s letter for the October issue of the parish magazine came from the camp at Riby Park, Grimsby which had been the destination of the Duke of Wellington’s 5th. In this letter, which was part reprinted in the

* Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 5 August 1914 3 Chelmsford Chronicle, 17 September 1926 * Ibid. ° Ibid. ° WYAS, WDP32/Box 14; On the effect of paper salvage see Jane Platt, Subscribing to Faith? The Anglican Parish Magazine 1859-1929 (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke: 2015), p. 11. Platt’s work is an insightful guide to the value of parish magazines to historians. ”C.H. Rolt, ‘My Dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, August 1914, p. 3 ° HDE, 5 August 1914 HDE, 24 April 1914; On the history of the Huddersfield Branch of the RSStG see Lesley Robinson, ‘English Associational Culture in Lancashire and Yorkshire, 1890s to c.1930s,’ Northern History, 51:1, 2014, pp. 131 - 152 © Leeds Mercury, 26 August 1914; HDE, 4 September 1914; See also Brian Heywood (ed.), Huddersfield in World War I (Upper Calder Valley Publications, 2014), p. 9 Rolt, ‘My Dear Friends..., Huddersfield Parish Magazine, October 1914, p. 2; HDE, 6 October 1914, p.4

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Examiner, he seems have been enjoying being at the camp and he expressed disappointment at not being able to go away with the battalion, a brigade chaplain having already been appointed. ~ This is not to say that he took the war lightly, and he used his next letter to the parish magazine to argue that ‘Christian Civilization is

Rolt’s reaction to the war seems to have been typical of provincial clergy. Although a few clergy of the Church of England maintained a pacifist stance throughout the war, in general their reaction to the invasion of Belgium was one of horror, and they supported the war as a way of securing an improved international order.” In tandem, the start of the war was greeted with an upsurge in attendance in churches and chapels and many were convinced a religious revival was underway.” In April 1915 the Examiner reported that year’s church parade conducted by the Huddersfield branch of Royal Society of St George had drawn large crowds and that the accompanying church service was attended by the Mayor and the Corporation, and a muster of the Huddersfield and District Volunteer Corps, with hundreds of others unable to get through the doors.’ The Examiner printed Rolt’s sermon of that day verbatim. In this he pronounced the war to be one of ‘self-preservation’, arguing that it was not a failure of Christian principles to be involved in war, ‘non-resistance being proper for him, where only his interests were concerned’ but was ‘ousillanimous’ when there were obligations to others to be honoured.” At the end of the week Rolt and the Mayor spoke at the performance of a group of Scottish pipers who had come to Huddersfield as part of a nationwide recruitment drive.”

The people of Huddersfield gave generously in support for the war.” In connection with St. George’s Day 1915, the Royal Society of St George organised a Flag Day across the Huddersfield Around a thousand vendors took delivery of a total of 190,000 flags of St. George to be sold, raising over £868 in aid of the Sick and Wounded Soldiers and Sailors Fund and other charities.” The parish church also raised money in support of the war effort. They had begun collecting for the Sick and Wounded Fund themselves at the start of At the end of that year they raised a small amount of money for a military hospital, spending this on service books and

* C,H. Rolt, ‘My Dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, October 1914, p. 2 Rolt, ‘My Dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, November 1914, p. 2; see also his speech for St George’s Day in HDE, 26 April 1915 * Alan Wilkinson, The Church of England and the First World War (SCM, London: 1996), p. 30 * Ibid., pp. 71-79 ‘© HDE, 26 April 1915 *” Ibid. ** Leeds Mercury, 30 April 1915 * See Heywood (ed.), Huddersfield in World War I, pp. 26-27 & 190 *° HDE, 26 April 1915 ** Ibid. °C. H. Rolt, ‘My Dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, January 1915, p. 2

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Penny Testaments.” That Christmas they began sending parcels to those men from the congregation who had gone to the front.”” Seventy-two parcels were sent in this first instance.” These prompted appreciative replies, extracts of which were printed in the parish magazine.” The over-riding impression these responses convey is that the men were grateful at having been remembered at what must have otherwise been an extremely miserable time.

As part of its role as the Established Church, the Church of England promoted its places of worship as centres for national fellowship. From November 1914, the Parish Church held a daily service of intercession and continued to do so every day throughout the war.” Following the death of Lord Kitchener at sea in 1916, services were held in churches and chapels across the country. At St Peter’s, the ‘Dead March’ was played on the organ and Canon Rolt paid tribute to Kitchener ‘the great administrator... and his long distinguished service to the Empire’.”” A memorial service was also held in November of that year for the members of the parish church who had been killed in action, at which Rolt ‘read the names of the fallen and gave a short address’ saying that ‘they had sacrificed themselves for a worthy cause’.”” Memorials were printed in editions of the parish magazine, as were The Rev C. H. Rolt, Vicar of Huddersfield,

reports of members of the congregation te unknown. Photo courtesy of mentioned in dispatches.” Huddersfield Local Studies Library.

1916 saw Canon Rolt’s last St George’s Day at the Huddersfield Parish Church. The occasion was celebrated a week later that year due to Easter, but included the same public procession as previous years, with local dignitaries, service men and their bands gathering in St. George’s Square before processing to the Parish Church.”

*° C.H. Rolt, ‘My dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, November 1915, p. 2 ** Anon, ‘Christmas Parcels and Letters’, Huddersfield Parish Magazine, January 1916, p. 2-3 * Ibid. ° Ibid. *” C,H. Rolt, ‘My Dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, November 1914, p. 2 *8 feeds Mercury,12 June 1916 *? HDE, 2 November 1916, p. 2 *° See issues for June 1915, August 1916, June 1917, January 1918, August 1918 ** Leeds Mercury, 1 May 1916, p. 4

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After their departure from the Square, a protest against the Military Service Act was held there.” Conscription papers were burned and there were calls for the Act to be withdrawn.” Meanwhile, the church service took place as usual, but the participants were instructed not to return to the square by police order, and so stood outside the church and sang the national anthem, before quietly dispersing.”

In November of 1916 it was reported in the Leeds Mercury that Canon Rolt had been appointed to the Deanery of Cape Town.” Shortly before becoming Vicar of Batley in 1905, Rolt had spent six months as part of Mission of Help to South Africa.” In his letter to the parish magazine for December he suggested that his appointment as Dean of Cape Town was a direct consequence of that trip.” He expected his work at St George’s Cathedral, which was then still being built, to be very like that at St Peter’s, although with added duties.** It seems a strange decision to travel so far at a time when sea travel was fraught with danger, but he argued that if it was ‘right to go under ordinary circumstances it was not less right to go now’.”’ He left in January of the new year and the congregation appears to have waited anxiously for news of his safe arrival. At the Easter Vestry Meeting, the curate in charge reported that Dean Rolt was still at sea and ‘not yet out of the danger zone’. They would have to wait until the June edition of the parish magazine to announce news of his safe passage.

Before coming to Huddersfield, Canon Rolt’s replacement, Canon Albert Darrell Tupper-Carey, had been a residentiary canon at York minister and had maintained a high public profile. Born in 1866 and educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, by the time of his death in 1943, Tupper, as he was affectionately known, had, at one time or another, been a slum priest, the Vicar of Huddersfield, a King’s Chaplain and the Church of England’s man in Monte-Carlo.” Tupper seems to have been considered something of a character. During his tenure at York, his suggestion to a temperance meeting that clergy should visit pubs more often and play cards with the men seems to have caused some amusement in the press.” After the war, Tupper

*? Ibid. *° Ibid. * HDE, 1 May 1916, p. 4 Alex King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain (Berg, Oxford: 1998), p. 45 °° Rolt, ‘My dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, December 1916, p. 2 *” Ibid. Ibid. *° Ibid. “°F R. Farmer, ‘My dear People,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, April 1917, p. 2-3 “" FR. Farmer, ‘My dear People,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, June 1917, p. 2 ” The Times, 22 September 1943, p. 8 *° Yorkshire Evening Post, 7 March 1916, p. 4

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again made the papers, this time for having invited a party of chorus girls to camp in the vicarage gardens after they had failed to find accommodation in the town.

The new vicar’s first public appearance in Huddersfield was occasioned by the third anniversary of the declaration of war. Tupper spoke at what the Leeds Mercury described as a ‘solemn service of intercession attended by between three and four thousand persons near the Peel monument at St. George’s This public gathering followed calls for peace both from German moderates in July and the Pope at the start of August.” At the service Tupper moved a resolution in support of continuing the war, saying that ‘peace made... at the present moment would be a

greater evil than the war.”

We can follow the continuation of the war in Tupper’s letters to the parish magazine. His letter for the December 1917 issue advanced the themes of his contribution to the series War-Time Tracts for the Workers which he had written for the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge in In his letter he hailed the season as a ‘real Advent’, asserting that ‘we are entering a new era in the world’s history’ and he called on each in their ‘respective stations in life’ to work to see that the foundations of this new world were ‘established on the principles of Christianity’ .”” Tupper’s calls for the continued prosecution of the war to be conducted on Christian principles and joined by Christian devotion seem to have reflected the thoughts of the rest of the elite. The first Sunday of 1918 had been proclaimed by the King as a National Day of

Prayer and the Examiner reported that Rev Albert D. Tupper-Carey in Monte Carlo

(1930-1940). Photo courtesy of St. Paul’s ‘there were very good congregations at the Church, Monaco. Huddersfield Parish Church’. The vicar

“ Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 20 June 1919, p. 6 * Leeds Mercury, 6 August 1917, p. 4 “© David Stevenson, 1914 - 1918 The History of the First World War (Penguin, London: 2005), p. 354 *” Leeds Mercury, 6 August 1917, p. 4 See Alan Wilkinson, The Church of England, p. 69 *? A. D. Tupper-Carey, ‘My dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, December 1917, p. 3 °° HDE, 7 January 1918, p. 4; See also Philip Williamson, ‘National Days of Prayer: The Churches, the State and Public Worship, 1899-1957,’ English Historical Review, 128:531, p. 333

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used the occasion for a sermon which urged his congregation to ‘pray for a change of

heart in the

Tupper’s new year letter for 1918 reproduced the newly revised scale of rations and he underlined the need for self-denial.” His letters had proclaimed the war to be at a critical stage on several occasions, and now Tupper made the same prognosis.” Yet here the phrase appears more apposite than ever before. ‘The American forces are not yet available, the shipping to replace the loss by U boats is not yet launched. Russia is no longer effective as a fighting force, and the whole of the German armies are to be concentrated on the Western front’.”” Clearly, developments on the Western Front were causing an immense amount of anxiety at home.”

Lent 1918 gave Tupper cause to again dwell on rationing and by implication the form of fasting it necessitated.’ He welcomed this as a way of sharing the burden of ‘our fathers and brothers’.”” In his letter he states that ‘we are only just beginning to feel the strain of the However, on the Western front the Germans were in the process of overreaching themselves.” In April, Tupper’s brother, Brigadier-General George Sandeman Carey was commended in parliament by Lloyd George for his leadership in the Second Battle of the Somme.” By the time of the June edition, Tupper was able to report that the German advance was at a standstill even if it was

possible that ‘at any moment it may break out with renewed

Despite the bad weather, preparations for October’s Harvest Festival found Tupper in an optimistic mood. Looking back over the last six months, he found the situation reversed, with ‘all the lost ground... won back’, and the support of the American forces soon to come.” Armistice was followed by thanksgiving services in churches across the country. That day, Tupper presided over a packed church and impressed upon the congregation the duty they owed the war dead to ‘make the world

** Ibid. °* A. D. Tupper-Carey, Huddersfield Parish Magazine, January 1918, p. 2 °° Ibid.; See Rolt’s letters to the parish magazine April 1915, p. 2 and March 1916, p. 2 ** Ibid. °° Between March and July of 1918 the Germans would launch five assaults on the Western Front, commencing with the operation ‘Michael’, which would capture in one day as much ground as the British had taken in a hundred and forty days at the Somme. See Stevenson, 1914 - 1918, pp. 371 & 409 °° A. D. Tupper-Carey, ‘My dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, February 1918, p. 2 Ibid. ** Ibid. >’ Stevenson, 1914 - 1918, pp. 412 & 418 °° HDE, 10 April 1918, p. 3; Newcastle Journal, 22 October 1918, p.5 A. D. Tupper-Carey, ‘My dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, June 1918, p. 2 °* A. D. Tupper-Carey, ‘My dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, October 1918, p. 2

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brighter, cleaner, better than it had been in the past’.”° The celebrations were continued the following day at the Town Hall at which both Tupper and the pastor of the Highfield Congregational Church spoke.”

As we have seen, Huddersfield Parish church acted as a site of memorial to the war dead even as the war was going on. The churches had begun the tradition of Remembrance Day before the war was at an end, holding services on the fourth anniversary of the declaration of war in August 1918.°° At Huddersfield the events of that day had been very similar those of St. George’s Day.”° A procession of local worthies, including members of the Royal Society of St George, soldiers and their bands made their way from the Town Hall to the church, singing hymns as they went, before listening to the vicar give an address.” Following the service, outside of the church, the mayor had moved a resolution in continued support of the war and the national anthem was That evening a united service was held in St Georges Square with the Huddersfield Mission Band leading the singing.”

In December 1917 in the pages of the parish magazine, Tupper had announced the resolution of the parish council to rebuild the chancel and side chapel to provide a lasting war memorial.’” When the war was over, the architect Sir Charles Nicholson was engaged to provide designs.” However, these plans proved to be too expensive and Ninian Comper instead supplied designs purely for a reordering of the east end including a memorial window.” Funds for this would be in place by the start of 1923 and the new window, altar, canopy and hangings would be unveiled in November. ” The opening ceremony was conducted by Tupper, his brother George, and their cousin, Admiral Sir Reginald Tupper.” The admiral used the opportunity to assert the continued necessity of the Navy, not as ‘militarism’, but as ‘patriotism’. ” Perhaps the purpose of the window was then not just ‘remembrance’, but was also meant to signify ‘vigilance’.

Both Vicars of Huddersfield were deeply committed in their support for the war and this was in part due to their respective social connections. At the same time, the

°° HDE, 12 November 1918, p. 4 ** Leeds Mercury, 13 November 1918, p. 3 °° King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain, p. 45 66 HDE, 6 August 1918, p. 3; See also Williamson, ‘National Days of Prayer’, p. 334 °” HDE, 6 August 1918, p. 3 °° Ibid. °° Ibid. A.D. Tupper-Carey, ‘War Shrine,’ Huddersfield Parish Magazine, December 1917, p. 2-3 ™ Charles Nicholson, ‘Dear Sir,’ Huddersfield Parish, April 1919, p. 2-3 ” A.D. Tupper-Carey, ‘My dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish, March 1920, p. 2 ”° A. D. Tupper-Carey, ‘My dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish, October 1923, p. 2 ” A.D. Tupper-Carey, ‘My dear Friends,’ Huddersfield Parish, November 1923, p. 2-3 ” Leeds Mercury, 19 November 1923, p. 3

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office itself remained a highly public position and Huddersfield’s parish church provided a theatre in which the office holders could propound their thoughts on the conflict. Canon Rolt supported the recruitment drives of the start of the war, and Tupper-Carey, the grim resolve of the public to end the war victorious. Their support for the war seems to have been instinctual and neither vicar seems to have had a problem squaring the conflict with Christian values.

Canon Rolt’s pre-war relationship with the Society of St. George and the Territorials indicates a pre-existing relationship between the Church of England, the military, and patriotic organisations, with Tupper’s familial relations also providing evidence in this direction. Moreover, the religious traditions of the period developed rituals of remembrance that have lasted into the present day. This form of remembrance, although generated by a Christian culture, appears to have been less concerned with peace than we might have expected. Nevertheless, because of the actions of the clergy within and without it, the church remains an enduring memorial to the war, whatever our opinions on the conflict itself may be.

Biography

Robert Piggott is a History Ph. D. student at the University of Huddersfield researching the management of historic places of worship, with a focus on the Anglican stock of church buildings. Email: robert.piggott@hud.ac.uk

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‘OH, JUST THINK OF HUDDERSFIELD, THAT’S CHRISTMAS ENOUGH!’: THE SEX PISTOLS AT IVANHOE’S, 25 DECEMBER 1977

Martyn Richardson

December 2017 marks’ the _ fortieth anniversary of the Sex Pistols performances in Huddersfield which became a defining moment in the lives of the people that were at Ivanhoe’s and thrust Huddersfield into the Punk limelight. The town’s Punk scene (\ ‘1 4 is perhaps a lesser known side of - b cay Huddersfield’s heritage but one which eile fh 7 contributed to its cultural identity of the (ee : 1970s/80s. 2S/7T2Z/ NG

A CD cover of the Sex Pistols Christmas Day gig.

The summer of 1976 is widely regarded as being the birth of Punk-rock in Britain. This was a decade during which industrial disputes were plenty, power cuts were common, racism was on the rise, inflation was up and mass unemployment was at its highest levels since the 1930s hovering between 2.7 per cent in 1970 and a decade peak of 6.2 per cent in 1977.* The Punk subculture, which adopted the rhetoric and attitude of reggae and used overtones of Rastafarian religion, arose out of the socio-economic conditions of the 1970s. It presented a united front in which the working-class youths of Britain could voice their dissatisfaction with the greedy bosses, politicians, and wider establishment. National media attention around the time of the genre’s emergence, both from the political Right in The Mail, topical music magazine NME and publications of the far-Left such as Socialist Worker, all suggested the language being adopted by the subculture was ‘flirting with the language and imagery of National Socialism to provide a conduit for ‘violent-racist-sexist-fascist’ attitudes to feed their way into popular music’.” Historians such as Matthew Worley have since quite rightly pointed out the nuanced complexities of Punk and the people who were a part of it.”

* This comment was made by Johnny Rotten at the end of a programme about the Huddersfield concert. See BBC Four, ‘Never Mind the Baubles: Xmas ’77 with the Sex Pistols’, Available [online] at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/bO3ncggy [Accessed 30 March 2017] * James Denman and Paul McDonald, ‘Unemployment statistics from 1881 to the present day’, Labour Market Trends, Vol. 104, January 1996, pp. 5-18 > Matthew Worley, ‘Oi! Oi! Oi!: Class, Locality, and British Punk,’ in Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 24, No. 4, (2013), pp. 606 — 636 * Ibid.

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Indeed, Jon Crook, a former local Huddersfield Punk suggests the town was by no means alone in its challenges with provincial Punk: ‘it represented the spirit of a lot of northern towns back then. In so far as it was cut off from the big city mentality and was unsophisticated yet still moved by the basic essence of the change and volatility of the times’.” Punk represented a youth alternative and ‘connected with a lot of unrest and desire for change’. Equally, wider societal pressures meant that ‘not every Punk was anti-racist or embracing of other’s personal freedoms. Similarly, the level of violence that was evident in the late 70s meant a lot of idiots were just down there for a fight or to pick on someone else’. One such occasion that occurred in Huddersfield was at an Adam and the Ants gig at Cleopatra’s on Friday 6 June 1980. ‘A bunch of skinheads had come down to cause trouble and were picking on people [...] the gig had to be stopped a couple of times due to violence in the crowd’. It was ‘out of control with no real security or order’. Nevertheless, argues Crook, ‘the spirit had connected with a lot of people and engendered a lot of freedom or at the very least, the desire to question and challenge the established order’.°

Huddersfield’s long radical heritage of challenging the norm, along with the town’s history of multi-culturalism and diversity, provided a suitable backdrop for the sub- culture to flourish. Punk was a multi-layered, grassroots movement which was openly anti-establishment and angry at the previous generation’s failure to sustain a stable society and was well-suited to the pressures within Huddersfield at the time. Within the over-arching framework of frustration and rebellion, however, lay a rich and diverse culture which embraced individual forms of expression and identity ranging from the raw aesthetics of the music to the radical fashion, hair and make-up which despite the individuality and uniqueness of each ensemble, was immediately recognisable as collective ‘Punk’ by the public. Punk had something for everyone and the expressionism associated with it was simply defined as ‘wanting to be different’. Punk began to grow rapidly in popularity across the UK including provincial towns such as Huddersfield. Albeit, Huddersfield was slightly later in embracing the scene and it was not until after the now infamous Bill Grundy interview with the Sex Pistols on 1 December 1976, where the band swore before the television watershed, that momentum began to gather.

In 1977, social-economic plights continued to engulf the UK. Despite this, the summer of that year was filled with patriotism as the Queen and Country celebrated her Silver Jubilee.” Red Rum won the Grand National and the king of rock ‘n’ roll, Elvis himself, was dead.” Locally, ambulance drivers were in dispute over the promotion of

> Jon Crook written testimony, part of the ‘Punk in Huddersfield’ project ° Ibid. ” The Huddersfield Daily Examiner (HDE), 30 December 1977, p. 16. Available on microfilm at Huddersfield Local Studies Library * Ibid., pp. 8-9

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a woman clerk, Labour councillors were in a bid to ban the National Front from using council owned buildings — which was rejected later in the year - and the local tie manufacturing industry must have known that Punk was on the way as one manufacturer warned that sales had dropped by 2 million in twelve months.” Water rates rose by two pence per week to 63 pence and Kirklees Council was accused of letting their houses rot for want of repair. By the end of 1977, local Huddersfield firemen had been on strike for nine weeks and the Sex Pistols were also at the height of their notoriety leading to them being blacklisted from playing at the majority of venues throughout the UK. In a show of resilience, the band put together a Never mind the bans tour in which Huddersfield and its striking firemen would play centre stage to arguably Britain’s most radical band of all time.

Ivanhoe’s today is the Lid! supermarket which is located on the outside of the ring road next to the large junction at Chapel Hill and Manchester Road. Photo by Frank Grombir, March 2017.

The date for the gig was set for Christmas Day 1977 at the then popular live music venue of lvanhoe’s. The timing was somewhat worrying as areas of Yorkshire had been experiencing beer shortages in the run-up to the festive season. A local licensee responded to the situation and ‘allayed fears of a possible dry Hogmanay in Today Ivanhoe’s is a Lidl’s supermarket but at the time it was a popular haunt for live bands and the local Punk scene. Ex-pistols star, Glen Matlock performed there with his band, ‘The Rich Kids’, a matter of days before the Sex Pistols. Rather unsurprisingly, considering the negative attention that had been cast onto the Sex Pistols throughout that year, there was very little advertisement for the

9 HDE, 9 December 1977, p. 1; HDE, 13 December 1977, p. 1; HDE, 30 December 1977, p. 8 HDE, 15 December 1977, p. 16 Mt HDE, 30 December 1977, p. 1 12 Ibid.

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gig. |lvanhoe’s regularly advertised their gigs in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner but the first piece of publicity for the Sex Pistols gig was not until 23 December and even then, there was some confusion surrounding the setup of the gig.

‘Children of striking Huddersfield firemen and laid off-off workers from David Brown Gears are in for a Christmas Day treat from controversial Punk rock band, the Sex Pistols. A bumper party for children under fourteen will now be an even bigger romp than originally planned, with invitations going out to more than 500 youngsters. [...] The Pistols have hired three buses to pick up the children and take them to the party, where they will be greeted by 1,000 bottles of pop, a monster cake which will provide slices for all the party-goers, presents and a mountain of sweets’. ””

On the day of the gig, lead singer of the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten, was asked by an Examiner reporter why they had come to Huddersfield:

‘One of the reasons we are having the party here is because we have been banned from most other places. But we wanted to throw a party for the kids. Our group is about having fun and because they are not contrived they know how to enjoy themselves. [...] We believe in these kids and that’s where the future

Perhaps Johnny was not so rotten after all. Footage of the gig, which was filmed by Julien Temple and is now widely accessible via the internet, shows the singer and the rest of the band partaking in tomfoolery with the kids which ended in a mass cake fight. The benefit gig in the afternoon was received well, ‘they [the Sex Pistols] had given a delightful party for the youngsters of the town when they had been full of joviality and good humour’ reported the Huddersfield Daily Examiner.” The night time event however received mixed reviews, ‘the spirit of goodwill had obviously worn off. The Pistols were the abusive, foul-mouthed Punk group who seemed to have captured the hearts of an alarming number of teenagers up and down the country. The Sex Pistols swore at and insulted the youngsters and they got their thanks in streams of spittle’. ° Julien Temple described the atmosphere as a ‘hardcore experience, very intense, a very extreme and charged atmosphere filled with respect and affection but also with explosive For the band and their

8 HDE, 23 December 1977, p.1 “ HDE, 28 December 1977, p.3 * Ibid. *° Ibid. ‘” BBC Four, Never Mind the Baubles: Xmas ’77 with the Sex Pistols (BBC: 2013)

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fans, the event was a complete success which occurred without any trouble whatsoever.

Shortly after the Huddersfield gig the Sex Pistols embarked on an American Tour. Whilst there, in October 1978, the Sex Pistols bass guitarist, Sid Vicious, was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. Vicious was later found dead whilst on bail in February 1979. The band subsequently broke up which meant that Huddersfield was the last place the Sex Pistols played on UK soil, an accolade which stood for many years and which meant the gig went down as a landmark event for both band and the town.

Johnny Rotten captured cutting the cake during the children’s party on 25 December 1977.

The Sex Pistols gig in December 1977 ensured that the local Punk scene would go on to flourish and Huddersfield would play host to many prominent Punk bands including Adam and the Ants, Talking Heads, The Damned, The Crass and The Cure playing at venues including Cleopatra’s, Ilvanhoe’s, The County and Huddersfield Polytechnic. Albeit, the commercialisation and capitalisation of the Punk scene in the early 1980s meant it would eventually become the victim of its own success and many original staunch Punks left the scene as the record companies began to profiteer. Punk’s place in the history of Huddersfield, whilst not that different than in other towns, should be remembered. It contributed to the diversity the town possesses today.

The clothes may not have been to everyone’s taste, nor may the vibrant hair have gripped everybody’s imagination. The music may have been loud and offensive and

the crowd at gigs boisterous. But if you were looking in from the outside and that is

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all you saw, then you were missing the point of being a Punk. Their whole ethos was to be different and to stand out, and to do things differently from the norm. Forty years on it is important to remember an event as radical as the Sex Pistols gig. For just like the Luddites, the Chartists and Huddersfield’s other radicals who saw a different way of doing things, Punks too, in their own unique way, were sticking their two fingers up at the powers that be.

Biography Martyn Richardson is a first-year Ph.D. research student based at the University of

Huddersfield. His current research is focusing on British Trade Unionism during the inter-war period in Yorkshire.

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PART TWO: HERE TO STAY - AT THE CROSSROADS’

Waseem Riaz

Islam was not very important to the first and second generation Pakistani migrants who settled in Heckmondwike during the mid-1960s and early 1970s. Only their Muslim names made their religious identity stand out. Otherwise, they were first and foremost Pakistanis. Yes, they had been born into the Muslim faith, they had Muslim wedding ceremonies, they were ready to follow Muslim dietary laws, and they would have a Muslim burial service when their time came. But this was as far as these men were prepared to go. They only expected to stay in England for a short period before the government would ask them to leave the country. So why bother to buy a house, worry about religion, or open a mosque?

Heckmondwike, like many other mill-towns in northern England, had no mosque until the mid-seventies. Because there were no mosques, most first-generation Pakistani-Muslims had no religious knowledge about their faith. Early migrants used to recall stories of men sitting around the television on Saturday afternoons casually saying things like: ‘| am not sure, but I think it’s Eid today in Pakistan!’ This is how far away these ‘Asians’ had gone from religion in that the significance of an important Muslim festival like Eid did not mean anything to them in 1960s post-war British society!

The First Two Mosques

During the mid-seventies, some of the first-generation elders became concerned and realised something had to be done to make sure their grand-children knew about the ancestral religion. Most of these children had been born in Britain and were attending British state schools. Yet, there was no religious education available for them.

Abdul Rahim was one of the elders who played an important role in opening the first mosque in Heckmondwike. An end house in a run-down terrace on Cemetery Road was used from around 1976 until 1978. This ‘mosque’ was used for Maddrassah classes — where Heckmondwike's third-generation Pakistani children went after school to learn how to read the Koran in Arabic. Each Maddrassah pupil paid twenty pence every week to the person in charge of teaching who was known to the local children as ‘the mosque man’. In Potwari, this man had the title Maulvi-Ji, meaning

* The first part titled ‘Part One: “Three Job Offers in One Day” - the Story of a Heckmondwike Community’, was published in the 2016/2017 edition, issue No. 27, pp. 86 - 93

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‘the religious one’.” He was usually a middle-aged or an elderly individual with a thick grey beard, and a very loud voice! His job was to teach the children to read the Arabic alphabet, then to help them identify the different Arabic style symbols, and finally to enable the children's ‘eyes and mind’ to recognise these words after joining them together. These joined up words were obviously short verses taken from the Koran.

The mosque man was often in charge of between fifty to sixty kids in his class! Toddlers, children, teenagers, all sat together in the same small room for up to two hours. Everyone had to sit on the floor! The first mosque man for Heckmondwike drove from his home town of Batley in his dark-blue Cortina and used to stop on the way to collect some of the children who were always on the alert trying to avoid him especially if they were playing outside during the long warm summer evenings. The mosque man's loud stern voice shouting out of his car window. ‘Get ready! It’s time for class!’ was enough to startle many of them.

In fact, the whole mosque environment did not make any sense to the children. Everyone had to read from the same Koranic books. No other activities were available. They were not allowed to draw with felt-tips, and neither were there any display boards on the walls to put up their work. Instead, the children found themselves sitting in a small, damp terraced house with cold running water dripping from a small sink in a tiny bathroom — along with an outdoor lavatory. This was their town's first mosque! It was the best their first-generation elders could do. Their English was poor, communication with the local authority was going to be an issue, and the tiny Muslim population in Heckmondwike had to do its own fund-raising to keep this mosque running.

As the seventies drew to a close, the elders in Heckmondwike realised the house on Cemetery Road was no longer habitable. The whole row of terraces was to be demolished anyway by the newly set up Kirklees Metropolitan Council. In 1978, the mosque was moved to another end-terrace house on Brighton Street. By this period, all the houses on the ‘lower end’ of Brighton Street had Pakistani owners. Across the road was a large open area of derelict land. Here, the town's ‘Asian children’ used to play. At its top end was the Battye Street Infant School where most of these third- generation British-Pakistani children went from 1976 onwards.

The mosque on Brighton Street was used for kids Maddrassah classes, and by adults for their five daily Namaz prayers, but it was not big enough to accommodate the

* Potwari (also referred to as Pothwari or Pahari-Potowari) is a dialect of western Punjab spoken by most Pakistani Muslim migrants in Heckmondwike and taught to their British-born children. Ironically, the first four mosque men did not speak Potwari as they came from Gujarat in India. They had to use Urdu instead to communicate with their pupils.

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entire Pakistani-Muslim community of Heckmondwike.” It is the culture during the Islamic festival of Eid for everyone in Muslim society to turn up for prayers which take place first thing in the morning. But how could the whole community fit into a terraced house?

For three years, this problem was solved thanks to the generosity of Canon Reverend Keith Grain, the Vicar of St. James Parish Church. Opposite the church was St. James Parish Hall. The St. James Parochial Church Council was always happy to allow Heckmondwike's Pakistani residents to use the hall for Asian or Muslim wedding ceremonies, and for Congregational Eid prayers. As a qualified school-teacher, and as someone who used to speak the best English amongst the elders, Abdul Rahim mostly acted as a ‘gate-keeper’ between Heckmondwike's Pakistani Muslim community and the church. Since the early 1980s, Christians and Muslims in Heckmondwike have enjoyed a proud tradition of getting along with each other.

Even a local funeral director was ready to help. Herman Tattersfield ran a family- owned business on Bath Road. Herman was always obliging whenever he received a phone call from the Chairman of the Heckmondwike Muslim Bereavement and Burial Committee. He would get out of bed early and have a coffin ready before his normal office opening times (especially if a Muslim funeral was due to take place before midday). Herman got to know about the important aspects of a Muslim burial service. Islamic guidelines emphasise the deceased should be buried if possible before sunset on the same day of passing away. Until Herman died in 1998, he gave a superb service to the Muslim community in Heckmondwike.”

The 1980s — ‘Here to Stay’

By the early 1980s, the Muslim community in Heckmondwike gradually began to accept that the return to Pakistan was not going to take place. The older men had been working in the mills for nearly twenty years and were now beginning to reach their retirement age. Thus, they started going on the Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. The Hajj is a ritual all Muslims should perform at least once in their lifetime. Most perform it whilst in their twenties or thirties. But for Muslims from the Indian subcontinent, the custom is to go on Hajj when old or after retiring from work. Abdul Rahim retired from Flush Mills in 1981, performed his Hajj pilgrimage in 1982, and

* Namaz (also referred to as ‘salat’ or ‘salah’) is a term designated for the five daily ritual prayers and is one of the five pillars of Islam. Namaz consists of several designated movements accompanied by recitation of prayers and Koranic verses in Arabic. See Max Farrar, Simon Robinson, Yasmin Valli and Paul Wetherly (eds.), [slam in the West: Key Issues in Multiculturalism (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke: 2012), D. XXIV * The tradition is kept alive by his son who continues to make caskets at his father's workshop on Bath Road. The sign-board ‘Herman Tattersfield & Son Funeral Directors’ can still be seen above the Chapel of Rest's stained glass windows.

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then decided to divide his remaining years between Heckmondwike and his ancestral village of Khotli in Pakistan.

The lives of those first and second-generations, who had come to Britain during the 1960s had become far too deeply adjusted into British society and culture for them to even think of moving back to the Subcontinent. As for the third-generation, the children born and bred in Heckmondwike, there was an even bigger dilemma. Physically, their bodies would struggle to cope with the water and the intensely humid tropical climate of rural Pakistan. The weather, food, clothing, social lifestyle, literature, television, and even the education was clearly going to be very different to what they were used to in Britain. Even by the early 1980s, very few children had been taken by their parents to see this mystery of a land known as Pakistan. For these kids, Britain was their only home. Therefore, they were all here to stay.

To accommodate the needs of a growing community the elders decided to move from the Brighton Street mosque into a larger building. At first, all eyes were set on the former closed down Upper Independent Chapel on High Street. Members of the adjacent United Reformed Church seemed happy for the town's Muslim residents to use the building as a place of worship. But the new mosque also had to have its own carparking space. The old chapel grounds had a large outside area overgrown with bushes. But hidden under the bushes was a big Victorian graveyard. The inscriptions on its huge headstones made clear that in some graves there were up to three caskets from one family!

In the Spring of 1981 the old St. Saviour's Sunday School on Jeremy Lane came to their notice. It had a disused playing area that would be ideal to convert into a car park. St. James’ Parochial Church Council supported the Pakistani-Muslim community's move into the building. The deeds were signed, and planning permission granted by Kirklees Council to turn the old Sunday School into a mosque. Again, the elders played an active role in fundraising. The building had been shut for many years and was in a state of disrepair but it was in a perfect location. By sheer coincidence, the main hall faced exactly 250 degrees south-east towards Mecca — the direction Muslims face when praying five times a day!

The new mosque had a comfortable carpet, nicely plastered and painted walls, proper lavatories, good tube-lighting, central heating, and a new wash-room had been built as an extension to the existing building providing lots of warm water! A beautiful tiled niche was also added on a wall facing Mecca. This niche, called a Mirhab, is where the imam stands to lead his congregation in prayers. The mosque premises were further extended as the Muslim community kept growing with more improvements made well into the 21st century.

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Jamia Masjid Al-Haramaine in Jeremy Lane, Heckmondwike in 2015.

To the Muslim community's surprise, the white English residents living on Jeremy Lane and Ings Road welcomed the mosque's opening! They had their reasons for doing so. Except for two hours during the children's Maddrassah classes, the mosque was exceptionally quiet. The children always used to rush home after a long day at school. Anyone seen messing around outside was given a detention by the mosque elders. The Spenborough Guardian printed a feature article on this new mosque shortly after the then Conservative MP, Gary Waller, had paid it a visit. His successor, Conservative MP Elizabeth Peacock, also made regular visits. During the 1983 general election campaign, the Labour Party's Deputy-Leader, MP Denis Healey met a group of Maddrassah pupils at this place of worship. Over the years, the mosque was to receive many more visits from local schoolteachers, councillors and senior police officers, all of whom were keen to build strong community relations with the town's local Pakistani residents.

By the mid-1980s, the new mosque had a long list of people paying yearly membership fees. This allowed the appointment of a Head Imam and several Maddrassah teachers working alongside him. These newly appointed imams were deeply passionate about their work with the children. At this stage, the number of pupils attending Maddrassah classes was increasing rapidly. Soace was no longer an issue in the bigger Jeremy Lane premises. The children could now be separated - by their age, learning ability and gender - into smaller groups being taught in side rooms. Gone were the days when one mosque man had to keep an eye on mixed-age groups of up to fifty or sixty boys and girls.

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The Sufis

With the mosque firmly established on its Jeremy Lane premises, another dilemma arose during the 1980s for Heckmondwike's Pakistani residents concerning the choice of denomination to be adopted for their new place of worship. Like several other religious beliefs, Islam is separated into many other schools of thought with two main branches being Sunni and Shia. Most Pakistani households in Heckmondwike were Sunnis.

In the end, the mosque's membership voted overwhelmingly to follow Sufism, a traditional mainstream school of thought. The origins of Sufi teachings go back to the earliest times of Islam in the Middle East, and the Subcontinent's main Sufi shrine is in a place called Ajmer in the Indian province of Rajastan, along with a seminary in an area of northern India known as Brailvi. What many Pakistani homes in Heckmondwike found appealing about this Sufi-Brailvi school was its spiritual focus on mysticism manifested in the concept of Sulh-i-Khul, meaning ‘love for all’. This included intense love for the Prophet Mohammad and the celebration of his birthday known as Eid-Milad, praying five times a day, and reaching out to the Lord through the blessings and intercession of Muslim Saints.

These spiritual teachings were also taught by the well-educated Sufi-Muslim imams appointed after the elections. One of them was Shaiykh Allama-Moalana Zafar Mahmood Farashwi, a high-calibre Sufi-Muslim scholar and an authority on Islamic law, who was approached to take up the post of Head Imam around 1985. He helped the management committee write up a constitution which clearly outlined the mosque's aims and objectives, as well as its Sufi-Muslim (Brailvi) identity. Shaiykh Allama-Moalana Farashwi left the Jeremy Lane place of worship in 1987 to take up his next post as Head Imam of the Manchester Central Mosque in Victoria Park.

His successor was Shaiykh Allama-Moalana Hafiz Abdul Ghafoor who quickly became one of the mosque's most popular Sufi imams. An expert on the Arabic and Persian languages, he was admired by the entire congregation, men and women, for his friendly ‘community’ focused approach. No one left the mosque building without having a cup of tea with him! He was also highly popular and loved by the young generation, as well as the Maddrassah children, for his Koranic teaching techniques. This friendly scholar retired from his post in 1993 to return to his home city of Lahore in Pakistan where he now oversees the running of a successful Maddrassah school.

The next Sufi-Muslim Scholar who left his mark on Heckmondwike was Mufti Shaiykh Allama-Moalana Shams-Ul-Huda Khan Misbahi who is still active not just in

Heckmondwike, but also on a national level across England. He writes books on Sufi-

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Islamic teachings and is committed to tackling inequality, racism and radicalisation within local neighbourhoods and communities. The scholar is also passionate about social justice and is always keen to get involved in local community cohesion projects within the Kirklees region.

Four Amazing Generations

This history of Pakistani migrants in Heckmondwike opens a window into less well- known area of Kirklees’ past. It has demonstrated how the migrants from humble terraced-house beginnings in the mid-1960s had built a sizeable community around a large mosque on Jeremy Lane in the late 1980s, replicating the development of Asian communities in other local mill towns. The history and future of the Heckmondwike Pakistani community has been moulded and shaped by its four different generations.

The first generation began their lives as the sons of farmers ploughing meadows back in British India; they had then joined the British-Indian Army, travelled to other continents in their khaki uniforms, fought in the Second World War, witnessed the independence of British India along with the founding of Pakistan, and afterwards moved to England as factory workers doing 12-16 hour shifts. From farmers, to soldiers, to mill workers, to retired Hajj pilgrims, for them it had been an amazing lifetime of diverse phases and varying contrasts.

The first EID-Milad public peace procession organised in Heckmondwike during the summer of 2003.

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The second generation came to Heckmondwike during the late 1960s. This was the group that bore the brunt of some of the most violent aspects of ‘Paki-Bashing' racism. Yet, they still made an equally valuable contribution to the local economy. From factory workers in the 1970s, many became taxi-drivers during the eighties, providing a much-needed service to the whole town. Some opened restaurants and introduced Indian cuisine to Heckmondwike and the Spen Valley.

The third generation supposedly had their feet in both cultures. They were the ones in school during the 1980s, and faced lots of discrimination in the job market after leaving further education. Yet, they worked hard to set up their own small businesses and persevered to create a better life for themselves.

The youngest fourth generation have English as their first language rather than Potwari and the knowledge of their South Asian heritage is limited. This generation no longer has any firm belief in the traditional South Asian concept of arranged marriages, but are passionate advocates of love marriage relationships and strongly believe in choosing their own partners. Many are also turning into a professional white-collar generation immediately after graduating from university. They are the ones working in the banks, call-centres, classrooms, legal profession, and in the NHS. It is a generation that sees Britain as its home and is proud to feel British. Their attitudes clearly show how much the British Pakistani society has changed not just in Heckmondwike but also across the rest of Kirklees.

Biography

Waseem Riaz is a member of the Kirklees Faith Network, an initiative aiming to promote a better understanding amongst different cultures and faith groups in the area. He is a former student of the University of Huddersfield, and author of the Quaid-E-Azam Education Resource Pack looking at the life story of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.

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SOUTH ASIAN FOOD AND SONG: YESTERDAY’S PRACTICES REPEATED IN LOCKWOOD TODAY

Razia Parveen

This article talks about the cultural practices surrounding recipes and songs which migrated from South Asia along with the women in the late 1960s. Most of the women I interviewed came to Huddersfield to join their husbands who had found employment in the local mills and factories. They came with the hope of returning to their homeland after saving some money. However, as the days went by and the families began to settle in Lockwood, this ‘hope of return’ began to dissolve before their eyes. The migrant women brought with them little in the way of possessions but had an abundance of memories. This article is about those memories and, in particular, about those related to the recipes and songs they learned when growing

up.

Bridge Street in Lockwood, 1970. Photo courtesy of Kirklees Image Archive.

I was intrigued by three related questions: Why do these women continue to cook the food they grew up with? Why are certain songs still remembered and sung? What effect do these things have on the identity of British Asians living in Lockwood

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today? I embarked on a quest to find this out. To achieve this I had to find women who live in this neighbourhood and talk to them about the food dishes they prepare and the songs they sing. Several of them gave me recipes that they had learned from their mothers whilst others gave me songs.

One of the things which became very clear was just how important the women felt it to be that they ‘pass’ these foods and recipes on to the next generation. The recipes recreate the foods of the homeland and, therefore, the memory of ‘home’. Aqsa spoke of one such recipe for cooking Pinnia:

‘In the past women used a pestle and mortar to grind ingredients. Grind them and put them to one side. Soak the sultanas. In the wok, heat the butter and soya butter on a low heat. When it’s golden brown the aroma of the dish spreads to all over the house. Then take it off the gas to avoid burning. Then add all the ground nuts and mix well. Then wash the sultanas and add, add the ghor (very sweet sugar blocks made from sugar canes) Then add the ground poppy seeds. Mix well. Let it get a little cool. When it gets cool enough to handle, roll into little balls using your hands. They are the size of golf balls. Then place into a separate tray/bowl. This recipe my mother taught me.’

The opening paints a picture of a traditional scene, that of women using historic equipment. The phrase ‘in the past women used’ instantly takes us back to a different time and introduces the idea that only women used to do this. It further implies that women no longer use this tool. However, the continued practice of this recipe in Lockwood suggests otherwise.

Pinnia is traditionally cooked in a wide-based pot over an open fire but in Lockwood, we now use a wok and cook with gas. The recipe is also an instruction and part of Aqsa’s inheritance as a South Asian woman. She is told to ‘grind’ and to ‘put’, to ‘mix well’ to add the next ingredient and then to let ‘it cool’. In passing on the recipe she is teaching the listener and sharing memories of the mother and of the homeland. The authenticity of the dish remains, regardless of swapping ingredients or cooking equipment. Making and then eating this dish is about bringing people together in a memory of a ‘golden’ past when their ancestors also made and ate this dish.

This desire for remembrance entwines not only the head and the heart but involves other senses, especially the power of smell. Cooking Pinnia with melted butter and plenty of fruit and nuts produces an aroma which pervades the house and affects every person in it. By recreating this dish in Lockwood, a sort of the culinary nostalgia is ‘owned’ by the community and plays a vital role in the identity of those reproducing this ‘back home’ practice.

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Saag kotna originating from Punjab in A Daath originating from Punjab in the 1970s. Photo by Razia Parveen. the 1970s. Photo by Razia Parveen.

Nostalgia, then, also becomes a question of searching for authenticity by recreating the dish ‘as mother made it’. Recipes describing how to blend the ingredients using traditional tools such as Daath (a tool used for cutting spinach leaves) and kotna (a mixing tool used in the dish called Saag) give it a sense of authentic memory from the homeland and imbue it with the authority of continuity. Using specialist tools allows the people to feel a stronger connection to the past. Consequently, the dish tastes better and more ‘like the one we used to eat’. However, using traditional tools can also become a barrier. The wooden tools which would have been used in the homeland are remembered by the migrant women and they prefer to use them in Lockwood. However, in Lockwood most equipment is electric and there are different implements and easier solutions to some of the cooking methods. This idea that without these tools the dish loses authenticity stays in the community and is taught to the next generation.

Another important aspect of this search for continuity with the homeland through remembrance and nostalgia is singing. In particular, songs which are usually sung before a wedding. This cultural practice again is one which is saturated in nostalgia and is repeated by women coming together and singing. One song which is beloved and sung a lot is called ‘The Shawl’. Women usually gather in the brides’ home at the strict invitation of the bride’s mother, aunt or grandma. There are up to 15 women at the gathering and one woman volunteers to sing the song.

‘The Shawl’ explores romantic relationships. This very traditional and archaic song is notable for its effect upon the assembled women. Historically, the fabric from which

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the shawl is made was readily available in rural areas and served a double purpose. It was durable and strong whilst also having long-standing cultural significance to wedding celebrations. It is also common for dead bodies to be wrapped up in this type of cloth, making it a site for mourning as well as celebration. This type of shawl remains culturally significant for these reasons and has found its way into folk songs and literature of that region of South Asia.

It deals with the archetypal theme of love between a girl and a boy. References to ‘chickens in the yard’ ‘ropes’, ‘garden walls’, “chapati flour’ and food evoke strong connections with a South Asian rural domestic environment and generate a sense of nostalgia among the gathered women. The lyrics begin with a young girl calling out to a young man:

Come in front of me don’t walk on by ina sulk, my beloved from my wall, from my wall A rope has broken You didn’t ask and I didn’t say

The song is sung from the perspective of the girl and so we hear and empathise with her voice. It is a voice the women rarely hear out of these circles so to hear it is not only a ‘novelty’ but weight is added to the voice by the simple fact that women themselves are singing this. It is women singing to themselves about the experience of loss, and in doing so they are consoling themselves by becoming both the singer and the audience. Here she expresses her frustration at the mixed messages being given and received between her and the boy. The lines above are repeated: “you didn’t ask and I didn’t say’ shows the misunderstanding due to the failure of communication between the two. A rope is something that binds and connects and a wall is symbolic of something firm and rooted which divides and separates. So, by saying a rope has ‘broken’ from my wall suggests her having been uprooted, and her connection being ‘broken’ is suggestive of the girl leaving her family after marriage. This verse implies not only a broken connection but also a self-expression that is denied. The female voice in this song is in effect also ‘silenced’ for it does not leave the four walls of the room.

In contrast the boy’s desires are portrayed throughout the song. The activities of the young boy are constantly referred to:

From over my wall, from over my wall My hands are in the flour dough you winked at me over my wall over my wall You threw a stone over my wall

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His actions may appear juvenile but they also indicate a time of pre-sexual innocence to the women gathered in the room. By ‘winking over the wall’ and ‘throwing a stone over the wall’ we learn of the eagerness of the boy but also his inexperience at articulating his emotions. It also implies the impassive nature of the female as opposed to the very active nature of the male. The male’s eagerness for a sexual relationship with the girl is implied through the winking and the stone throwing. Convention prevents the girl from any hint of promiscuity as such behaviour would bring her shame. By singing this song and re-telling this narrative the women are reminded of the conventions of courtship in the homeland.

The dynamics of a female-to-female relationship are also played out in this song. The traditional methods of song writing are employed such as a repeated chorus and rhyme but the subject matter can be read as much darker in tone. The daughter in law continues to sing:

Your mother made chapatis I asked for them and she hit me with a stick

Your mother, oh your mother cooked eggs I asked for them she got annoyed Your mother, oh your mother

made rice pudding I asked for it and she hit me with a broom

The girl is stating that it is the mother-in-law who makes the food thereby consolidating traditional gender roles. This reaction clearly conveys the stereotypical mother-in-law in communal and patriarchal culture. What is portrayed here is a power struggle between the women for the male. Interestingly, the two women, themselves trapped inside a very rigid patriarchal system, are seen here to be fighting each other over the affections of their ‘jailer’. The relationship between the daughter- in-law and the mother-in-law is a source of amusement for the women gathered. The character of the cruel mother-in-law is a stock character in many of these songs. The reaction of the mother-in-law is repetitively negative with words of physical violence: ‘annoyed’, ‘hit me with a stick’, ‘hit me with a broom’. The constant bickering between the two women brings light relief to an audience wanting to be entertained through elements of nostalgia. It has elements of a ‘Punch and Judy’ show.

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These songs originate from a highly patriarchal culture and to have somebody other than a woman singing them would be unthinkable. Also, the three dishes mentioned here, i.e. chapati, eggs and rice pudding, are all simple foods that almost all present can relate to cooking. The song ends with a repetition of the chorus: ‘Linen shawl with grey stone colour upon it, come in front of me, come in front of me, don’t walk on by in a mood, my beloved.’ The final few lines are also highly significant as they speak of a desire to be physically noticed by the boy. One way of interpreting these lines would be by seeing that the woman is inaudible to the male and therefore typical of the condition of the woman’s voice in the patriarchal society from which this song originates. Patriarchy and its structures imposed upon the women gathered are explored in the song narratives. The fact that this is repeated in diaspora could be ironic as it shows the current generation sharing this perception of inferiority to males. There is a resistance implied by these words and heard by a diasporic audience.

Like the recipes, these songs have travelled ‘wholesale’ from the homeland to Lockwood. By singing the songs and using the recipes the women of this South Asian diaspora are sharing their sense of the homeland and of their past. These recipes and songs, therefore, act as a glue which binds not only the women together but the past and the present together and the diaspora with the homeland. They provide that vital link in the chain to creating an identity here in Lockwood. These cultural practices are used in a small area of Northern England by women who ‘pass them down’ to a younger audience. The women are in some way ‘re-creating’ a sense of the homeland. Nevertheless, they also highlight the tensions of living in diaspora: the concept of being dislocated and never fully belonging to the adopted country, the feeling of forever looking back to the country of origin and preserving a time and place which have become over-romanticised and, therefore becoming an obstacle to coping with the world of the everyday here in Lockwood.

Biography

Razia Parveen is a Huddersfield-born researcher. She completed her Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of Huddersfield in 2013. She has recently published a book entitled Recipes and Songs: A Cultural Analysis of Practices from South Asia (Palgrave, 2017).

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KIRKLEES CURIOSITIES — ‘?VE NEVER SEEN ‘OWT LIKE IT!’

Carol Hardy

What have the Lion Chambers Lion, Stanley Matthews, a house brick made in Fenay Bridge, World War I battleships and HMS Titanic all got in common? That is a very good question and I am hoping to be revealing the answer.

They are all on the Kirklees Curiosities website! It developed from a conversation with my colleague, Linda Smith, back in 2009. I have always been interested in odd and unusual items, so I suggested a project which would highlight historical objects and items across Kirklees which may disappear over time. This resulted in the creation of a website and several public talks in various libraries across the region.

The title stone from Albert Mills in Holmfirth now resides in Crown Bottom car park in Holmfirth. Albert Mills was one of the early textiles mills in Holmfirth, started by Ben Mellor in 1841. In 1910, following Ben’s death it became B Mellor & Son Ltd, dyers, fullers, finishers, waterproofs. Photo by Carol Hardy.

Linda has done most of the work on the website and it is really expanding as we research different areas of Kirklees. You can search the website by village, e.g. ‘Honley’, or by a subject such as ‘statues’. There are lots of photographs, most of which we have taken ourselves and then a brief history to go along with each of the items. In this piece, I have highlighted three of my personal favourites just to give you a flavour. Also, I have concentrated on some of our curiosities which relate to the textile industry. Huddersfield has produced some of the finest worsted material and prospered because of the success of the textile trade. My family go back at least four generations in the Holme Valley and most them worked in the textile mills.

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Ghost signs

The first curiosity is a ghost sign. Ghost signs have been described as fading ‘hand painted advertising signs’. They give us a real insight into products that were available at the beginning of the 20° century. They advertised a wide range of local and national brands. They were hand painted directly on to the brickwork of Kilkof ghost sign on Huddersfield Road. Photo by Linda buildings and therefore exposed ‘Smith to the elements they have become faded over time. The above illustration shows one on Huddersfield Road, travelling from Berry Brow to Holmfirth. The sign on the side of a row of houses, the end one of which was formerly a grocer’s shop is advertising Kilkof cough mixture with the slogan ‘Tackle that Tickle’. Following this we have found several more around Kirklees, advertising Gold Flake cigarettes, Thompson’s Mineral Water and India Tyres.”

Berry Brow Railway Station

My next curiosity brings back a memory from my childhood living in Brockholes and travelling on a proper steam train into Huddersfield. My family would tell me to watch out for the train in the wall at Berry Brow station. Travelling the same journey again a few years ago, I realised the sculpture had disappeared. Having researched the carving whilst working at the Local History Library I discovered that it was carved by 16-year-old John Charles Stocks as an apprentice piece in 1886. The sandstone was purchased from Scotgate Quarry in Honley for ten shillings. The sculpture was moved to the National Railway Museum in

Stone carving by John Charles Stocks currently displayed at Tolson Museum. Photo by Carol Hardy

* Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopaedia, ‘Ghost sign’, Available [online] at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_sign> [Accessed 20 January 2017] * There is a very interesting website relating to ghost signs set up by Sam Roberts: www.ghostsigns.co.uk under the guise of the History of Advertising Trust.

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York in 1966 when Berry Brow station closed. It reopened in 1989 but it was felt that the carving was too vulnerable to erosion from the weather and to damage and it was decided to store it in Tolson Museum. According to the Ancestry database John Stocks travelled to America in 1891 and became a well-recognised sculptor. He returned to England but stayed in the London area. John’s father Thomas Stocks left his legacy on the Huddersfield cultural landscape; he carved the twelve heads of Roman and Greek gods in Huddersfield Town Hall.

Vintage Petrol Pump

Petrol pumps are such a common factor of everyday life and a familiar sight on the forecourt every garage and supermarket we pass. This vintage petrol pump stands on the forecourt of the Muslin Hall Garage at the corner of New Mill Road and Heys Road in Thongsbridge. It is a Theo Multi Pump and was made in Liverpool by Theo & Co Ltd of Tarleton Street. It dates from around the 1930s and was one of the first pumps able to dispense different types of petrol. Petrol pumps first appeared in Britain for private use around 1916 but it wasn't until around 1920 that oil companies such as Shell and BP began to install hand operated pumps on a commercial basis. By 1925 BP were said to have over 6,000 pumps across Britain. Since researching the history of this petrol pump we have found other pumps on Leeds Road, in Honley and near Mirfield. One of the Vintage petrol pump. Photo by Avery Hardoll pumps in Mirfield has a petrol price of Carol Hardy. one shillings and four pence halfpenny per gallon.

Curiosities relating to the history of the Textile Industry

At the height of the textile business in this area there were hundreds of mills but very few remain as working entities. Some have completely disappeared, having been knocked down and faded photographs and distant memories are all that remain. Some have been converted into apartments or are now used as shops or smaller business units.

A large proportion of our curiosities relate to the textile industry which played such an important part in the growth of Kirklees. It is also of great interest to me as the majority of my family earned their living in the textile trade. My paternal grandma worked in the mills and she told me that if you were late for work the mill gates were

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locked and you would miss a day’s pay, which at that time, when money was short would make things really hard for your family. My mum and my auntie were menders all their working lives, often in the same mill. My dad was a weaver, a job which severely affected his hearing as the machinery was so noisy but the weavers ‘compensated’ for this with their own version of lip reading and sign language. My uncle was a weaver as well and spent time in Switzerland during the 1970s learning all about some new machinery.

As a child, I visited the mill where my mum worked, Graham and Potts, Kirkbridge Mill, at New Mill, near Holmfirth. My lasting impression was of the noise, the heat and the strong smell of wet wool. The mending room itself, where my mum worked, was at the top of the mill. It was very light and bright, each worker had their own bench set into a window. They required excellent light to see the faults and any mistakes in the woven cloth which they had to rectify as part of the finishing process. Kirkbridge Mill closed for business in 1968 and has since been demolished and houses built on the site.”

The tenter posts in Marsden on the following illustration are left over from the very early days of the textile industry when production was based within the home and these posts and hooks were used to stretch and dry out the finished cloth. The early home based production was done _ in weavers’ cottages where people lived and worked. The windows ran along the whole width of the upper floors to provide as much natural day light as possible to maximise production. The wall in Lockwood on the following page is an excellent example of the effect the smoke from the mills and factories had on the surrounding buildings. The dark part of the wall has been covered by an advertising hoarding, whilst the surrounding wall has been stone blasted. In fact, there are some very black buildings remaining in the area. In addition, the names of public houses around the area reflect terms used in the local textile industry." For example, the Croppers Arms at Marsh relate to

* Michael Day, Wool & Worsit: A History of Textiles in the Holme Valley (Laverock Publishing, Huddersfield: 2013), p. 262 * David Green, Huddersfield Pubs (The History Press, Stroud: 2007), p. 80

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cropping, ‘raising the nap on cloth, then cutting it short to improve the finish’, or the Slubbers Arms at Hillhouse deriving from slubbing, the process of drawing the fibres out further and joining them end to end. °

The Kirklees Curiosities” project has thrown up some extremely interesting topics which we have enjoyed researching. Each time we do a talk on the subject new curiosities arise. i at The fact that some of the items we have photographed have already disappeared - the faded business sign of Bamforth’s postcard company in Holmfirth, a wrought iron hand pointing to the railway station in Thongsbridge and a business sign for Brook Dying Company in Meltham and a milestone in New Mill - has spurred us on to continue building up the items on the website as a way of recording them for the future and for anybody interested in local history to enjoy.

Biography

Carol Hardy is a Customer Service Officer based at Huddersfield Local Studies Library. She has worked on various local history projects, including the First World War, the Holmfirth tiger and Kirklees Curiosities.

° Vivien Teasdale, Huddersfield Mills: A Textile Heritage (Wharncliffe Books, Barnsley: 2004), pp. 10-11

6 gs ‘ys To access the website, go to: https://sites.google.com/site/kirkleescuriosities/home or just type ‘Kirklees Curiosities’ in the Google search.

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‘DID THEY TELL YOU ABOUT THE DANCING?’

Cyril Pearce

The Huddersfield Local History website has a friendly ‘Contacts’ function where you can find the email contact details of its officers and Committee members. Sometimes, in fact, quite often, these contact details are used by people wanting to know where best to look to discover more about an aspect of our local history which interests them. On occasion the enquiries are altogether more intriguing, such as the one which came our way on the 1 December 2016. An email came to Hilary Haigh, our Secretary, which simply said:

‘lam working on a BBC2 series looking to celebrate Yorkshire and I was wondering if you might be able to put me in contact with a local Huddersfield historian who would be willing to talk to us on camera to give us an overview of Huddersfield’s history as part of the programme. We are hoping to film next week and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.’

Cyril giving an interview to Steve Elias at the Local Studies Library in December 2016.

Instant stuff then, not exactly long-term planning. Hilary’s response was to send the email to me with the simple comment ‘One for you, Cyril, I think!’ Being a bit of a democrat and already having had my ten seconds of TV fame some years ago, I offered this opportunity to my Committee colleagues. No one seemed at all interested in their own ten seconds of fame and they all said that I should do it. I

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have to confess that at that point it felt a bit like being in the front rank when the Commanding Officer asked for volunteers and everyone but me took one step backwards.

Having offered my services, I was then told that the film crew would be in Huddersfield next Thursday and could I meet them in the Local History Library at 3.30. Along with that came a list of topics on which they would like me to offer a ‘ight overview’. They included mills, the textile industry, the station, architecture, Luddites and the Industrial Revolution, jobs, machines, living and working conditions and, oh yes, immigration from India and the West Indies.

I duly refreshed my thoughts on all these topics and turned up at the Library. There was no film crew, they were running late so I took myself off for a cup of tea. They duly arrived by about four o’clock having been held up when filming elsewhere, and the questioning began. I was indeed asked by Steve Elias, the show’s presenter, about all the topics I had been advised to think about while the producer studied the images he was getting on a portable monitor. After a while we had run through all the questions and I’d done what I could but then they began to ask them again. I wasn’t sure what they were wanting except that, perhaps, I had not said it as succinctly as they would have liked — 1 know I am inclined to ‘go on a bit’. I tried to be a little more concise and glossed over some of the detail while trying for a more ‘informal’ tone. Sadly, even that didn’t make it stop. After about an hour and during a lull in proceedings, the cameraman, who assured me that he was a very good friend of Dan Snow and admired my interview technique, asked me: ‘Did they tell you about the dancing?’

I won’t say that that was when panic set in but it certainly made me pause for thought. As Heather, my wife will testify, although in my youth capable of a vigorous Quickstep complete with forward and reverse turns - not to mention lock steps - and an occasional pedestrian sort of Waltz, I am no dancer. At that point ‘Kat’, the producer’s assistant, explained, much to my relief, that I wouldn’t be expected to do any dancing. Apparently, that had all been done already and by people eminently better qualified. I was still only vaguely aware of how the show was to look or how my contributions might fit in with whatever the dancing might mean — if at all — and the questioning continued. By that time, we had been at it for a full two hours, the producer seemed to think he had what he wanted and he and the team rushed off to other things.

Throughout all this the Local History Library staff had been watching and listening quite avidly. I asked them, ‘Did I get it all right?’, ‘Did I say anything glaringly silly or wrong?’. Kindly souls, they assured me it was all fine. They even had their own recordings and images of the whole thing.

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That all happened on the 8th December. I was told in the flurry of their departure that the Huddersfield part of the show would go out on BBC2 at 9.00 on Tuesday the 24th January. We later discovered that the series was to be called ‘Our Dancing Town’ and that it was to celebrate Yorkshire by celebrating the history and culture of four of its towns — Barnsley, Skipton, Huddersfield and York. The ‘celebration’ was to be in persuading local people to take to the streets and dance through their towns in a series of carnivalesque processions. That was when I really started to worry — how on earth was all the stuff I had told the film crew going to fit with such a project? When the first of the programmes, the one ‘celebrating’ Barnsley, was broadcast on 10 January, I worried even more. Steve Elias, is an engaging man, and, as he freely admits, a most unlikely looking dancer and choreographer. He worked miracles with the most unlikely raw material — as he did in all four towns — but four ‘local histories’? I don’t think so.

It was then that it became apparent that all the programmes had been filmed in the summer of 2016 and, it seemed, that the Huddersfield show had been left with things still to do. Among them was that ‘light overview’ of the town’s history. This explained why I was being continually asked the same questions. The producer knew what he had on film and needed what I said to match it. That is why more than two hours of me going on about Huddersfield ended up as little more than a minute on the actual programme.

In the end, it wasn’t that bad. I still have reservations about the whole concept but a lot of people got a lot of fun out of the process. Huddersfield looked great on screen — an extended promotional video with wonderful architecture — and the dancing was pretty good too!

Biography

Born and bred in Slaithwaite, educated at Colne Valley High School, Birmingham University and Huddersfield Polytechnic. Taught in West Riding secondary schools from 1968 to 1974 and then at Bretton Hall College and Leeds University. A founder member of the Huddersfield Local History Society and, currently, Chair.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Beerhouses, Brothels and Bobbies: Policing by Consent in Huddersfield and the Huddersfield District in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. By David Taylor. University of Huddersfield Press, Huddersfield: 2016. 302 Pages. £25 paperback.”

Keith Brockhill

‘Policing by consent’, the key to this substantial work of scholarship is in the sub-title. If today’s policed society is generally, if sometimes, critically, accepted by the whole nation, this was not the case as little as a century or so ago. As Emeritus Professor David Taylor, an authority on police history explains, the introduction of the ‘new police’, as seen here in the years 1840-1868, was highly contentious and uneven in its application.

Although the Industrial Revolution was fundamentally changing the very nature of manufacturing towns as Huddersfield, the supporting systems of local government had failed to keep pace. As David Griffiths explained in Pioneers or Partisans: Governing Huddersfield 1820-1848, local governance was a_ kaleidoscope of overlapping and, even competing, jurisdictions, which for policing in Huddersfield, involved parish and manorial constables, and from 1820 a limited force of day and night constables and watchmen.” Not until the second Improvement Act of 1848, did the core of Huddersfield receive a unified police force, and that only within a 1200-yard radius of the market cross.

Cover image of Beerhouses, Brothels and Bobbies ; © University of Huddersfield Press 2016. To simplify this situation, the book is

divided geographically into two sections, Huddersfield and the Upper Agbrigg

* Free downloadable copy at: http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/30220/ * David Griffiths, Pioneers or Partisans? Governing Huddersfield 1820 — 1848 (Huddersfield Local History Society, Huddersfield: 2008)

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division of the West Riding that surrounded it. Both sections discuss, in detail, the mechanisms of policing and the unfolding legislation that governed them, notably the 1848 Huddersfield Improvement Act, the consequences of magistrates’ failure to adopt the 1840 Rural Police Act which prolonged the archaic Superintending Constable System and the passing of the 1857 County and Borough Police Act that created the West Riding Constabulary.

While legislation worked top down, implementation worked bottom upwards, depending upon the communities that were to be policed and the individual officers who were to police them. Here, for the non- specialist at least, lies the fascination of this book. Everyone involved was, to some extent, a pioneer. There had been constables for centuries, but an actual bureaucratic, uniformed police force was regarded with suspicion, and, even outright hostility. For, as maintaining ‘order and decorum’ in public places was at the heart of this ‘new’ policing, any anti-social behaviour affecting the ‘respectable’ ratepayers of the town made clashes between the ‘blue jackets’ and the ‘blue smocks’ inevitable. The social role of police officers had been evident from an early stage, with constables being seen by some as ‘domestic missionaries’, in the frontline of an emerging awareness of the social problems of an industrial town. And there lay the rub, for mid-nineteenth century Huddersfield was a tough town with many residents existing in a ‘makeshift economy’ of the marginalised, the poor, the unemployed and under employed, the immigrant, the petty criminal, and the just plain vulnerable. For those living in filth and fear, in squalid lodging houses or houses that earned Huddersfield the unenviable title of ‘brothel of the West Riding’, or under the sway of criminal gangs, such as the infamous ‘Irish small gang’, shared values with the dominant middle classes and the police were largely non-existent.”

Small in numbers, officers were often subjected to terrible violence when enforcing the law or making arrests, particularly in the infamous Castlegate area. One officer was dragged up and down this street by his beard (a favourite tactic) whilst another was struck in the face by a broken fire grate. Severe beatings, even unto unconsciousness, were a regular hazard. Littlhe wonder that turnover was high, and the creation of a core of experienced officers was a slow process.

Alcohol, as the title suggests, played a prominent role in maintaining ‘order and decorum’, or the lack of it. Castlegate, presided over by the notorious ‘King’ John Sutcliffe (other owners of colourful nicknames included Butter Moll, Black Damp and Slawit Hannah a ‘woman of gigantic breadth’ to name but three), possessed thirteen beerhouses and two public houses in barely 200 yards. Yet officers could live there, amongst the very people they sought to control, and PC Wilson was particularly

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unfortunate when Mary Curtis broke his windows merely ‘in order that she might be sent to prison’ where she could expect a better life.”

Other recreations, regarded as legitimate in the eyes of many working-class people, created conflicts, particularly in more rural areas. In Upper Agbrigg, Superintendent Thomas Heaton, zealous prosecutor of illegal gambling, drinking, cock fighting, dog fighting and prize fighting, led some spectacular, if slightly comic, raids including a stake out at Quarmby that was almost ruined by a constable’s ill-timed cough!

Damned if they acted and damned if they didn’t, the largely untrained ‘new police’ trod a precarious line through ‘petty tyranny and pomposity’ and ‘the policeman’s meddling malady’.” Routinely denigrated by the local press, they were criticised by local worthies during the 1862 disturbances in Honley and Holmfirth for overstepping their authority, and by a radical lawyer, of ‘cruelty to the working class [...] servility to the rich’.° Living with communities, but not of them, struggling to find ways of working with acceptance and legitimacy where there was little in the way of shared values, a policeman’s lot, as Gilbert & Sullivan’s near contemporary policeman lamented ‘was not a happy one’. That they eventually succeeded is testament to much trial and error by both police and policed in creating one of the most enduring achievements of Victorian Britain.

Professor Taylor’s innovative study of policing adds a new dimension to the social history of mid-Victorian Huddersfield. The focus shifts from the usual industrial and professional leaders, to those who powered the industrial town and populated its far from handsome backstreets. It makes for a revealing grass roots insight, into a town in rapid transition.

* Taylor, p. 147 ’ Taylor, p. 223 ° Taylor, p. 213

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The View from the Corner Shop: The Diary of a Yorkshire Shop Assistant in Wartime. By Kathleen Hey. Edited by Patricia & Robert Malcolmson. Simon & Schuster, London: 2016. 352 Pages. £7.99 Paperback. £3.99 eBook.

Brian Haigh

Don't be fooled by the cover, this is no cosy tale of Yorkshire folk stiffening their upper lips and overcoming the privations of wartime, pulling together to make do and mend. Most of the story takes place in, or over, a shop at 37, Heckmondwike Road, Dewsbury Moor where Kathleen Hey lives and works with her sister, brother in law and mother. It's not a piece of nostalgia looking back at the past with the benefit of hindsight, but a diary written at the time.

a KATHLEEN HEY » In 1941, the 35-year-old Kathleen Hey responded to : THE VIEW FROM THE the request of Mass Observation, an organisation I FR SHOP.:. which aimed to record everyday life in Britain in I Tie Dar of a, York shire 3 words and pictures, and started a diary detailing “Shop inc Werden i her experiences, thoughts and feelings. She was i ica one of 480 diarists who joined the project Ea producing diaries of varying lengths, formats and styles.”

Cover image of The View from the Corner Shop © Simon & Schuster 2016

Husband and wife, Patricia and Robert Malcolmson produced an edition of Nella's diary in 2012, and are responsible for editing and annotating for publication Kathleen Hey's diary, covering the period from July 1941 to August 1945. Kathleen is allowed to speak for herself and there are helpful, but not intrusive, explanatory notes together with relevant extracts from questionnaires which the diarist completed from time to time as part of the project.

It was not an easy life. Before starting work in the shop at 8.00 am, Kathleen would have made breakfast for one or more members of the household. Then there was the difficulty of satisfying customers’ demands and explaining the constantly changing food regulations, rationing and points systems. There was often not enough to go around and wholesalers could not be relied upon to deliver orders, whilst

* Of these, Barrow-in-Furness diarist, Nella Last has received most attention. In 2006, Victoria Wood dramatised the diary for television. Housewife 49 was partly filmed in and around Huddersfield, with John and Pauline Rawlinson's lovely house and garden in Golcar providing one of the locations. Victoria Wood played the eponymous housewife.

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Woolworths seemed to get more than their fair share of what was available. As small shopkeepers, Kathleen and her family bore the brunt of complaints about shortages and bureaucratic red tape. ‘Oh, Lord Woolton (Minister of Food) could you be in our shoes for a single day! How much wiser you would be,’ she opined.

The shop was open six days a week until 7.30 pm or 8.00 pm with a half day on Wednesday. Some days were busier than others. At times, it was crowded with the predominantly working-class customers, many wearing shawls, who lived in the neighbouring streets. Large groups of children came in for spice (which the evacuees from Hull called goodies), biscuits, apples or carrots if nothing else was available. Then, if it was not dealing with deliveries, there would be the tiresome task of reconciling sales with points and rations. At quieter times, there were opportunities for gossip, laughter and the sharing of opinions.

Sometimes, Kathleen snatched a few moments to read. She read widely, anything from Pushkin to the latest novel by Rosamond Lehmann. On holiday in Blackpool, she and her sister amused themselves looking at a display of comic postcards, but then came away with copies of |, Claudius and Emma. Kathleen was clearly different from the other members of her household and the people with whom she came into regular contact. She was all too aware of the limitations of the shop's customers, but she tried to help them and was sympathetic to their needs, constantly questioning issues of equality and fairness.

‘Why is it glorious for a young man to give up his life and future for King and Country, but only irritating when a young woman gives up the youth and strength caring for elderly or sick relatives?’ she asked. Why were evacuees billeted on poor households in Dewsbury Moor rather than in the larger homes of the town's elite on Oxford Road and Birkdale? Who can afford the six guinea gloves advertised in the Yorkshire Evening Post at a time when the population is being exhorted to make do and mend? Why should 18-year-old girls recruited to work in munitions be paid more than miners? Why is it apparently easier to obtain welfare benefits in Wakefield? Why is it that the very poorest who live on a meagre diet can always manage to buy cigarettes and drink?

Whilst oranges, onions and eggs might have been the cause of more upsets than anything else, in the dark days of 1942, German advances into Russia, the fall of Singapore, defeat at Tobruk and Britain's inability to control the Channel led to much soul-searching. Like many of those who came into the shop, Kathleen questioned the role of MPs considering that Parliament should stop wasting time arguing about the conduct of the war when they should be applying themselves to winning it. By the end of 1942, the situation had improved but an end to hostilities was nowhere in

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sight. The war would last until the arms manufacturers had made enough was an argument Kathleen overheard whilst queuing in the post office.

Such opinions, and Kathleen's own take on them, provide a valuable insight into the thoughts and lives of ordinary people whose voices are not usually recorded. Things were changing before their eyes and whatever the outcome of the war, the world - and even Dewsbury Moor - would be a different place.

Kathleen thought Dewsbury and Heckmondwike drab and ugly with no redeeming features. She fantasised about being an architect with millions of pounds and a free hand to do as she pleased. But she also knew that they had felt few of the direct consequences of war. Whilst some in Britain had given up all, they had escaped relatively unscathed. She felt for all the victims of war - even the Germans. She was thankful too, after reading Beatrice Webb's My Apprenticeship not to be living half a century earlier.

A View from the Corner Shop is engaging and beautifully written. It paints in some detail the everyday lives of a local community in wartime on the canvas of a small shop. It's not just a local story and not one of battles and defeats, but the story of many people's lives in Britain during the Second World War.

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OBITUARIES

John F. Goodchild (1935-2017)

We are sad to record the death on 6 January 2017 of John Goodchild, a long-time friend of Huddersfield Local History Society.

John was known to our members for his always interesting lectures and to some for his vast collection of books and archives, which he made available for research, and for his many publications on industrial and other areas of local history, particularly relating to the Wakefield district.

A former student of Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, John’s career led him to employment in County Hall, Cusworth Hall as Curator, Wakefield Library service as District Archivist and then Principal Local Studies Officer. After retirement, he made his collection available in Drury Lane Library and it is now with West Yorkshire Archive Service in the new West Yorkshire History Centre.

Photo courtesy of West Yorkshire Archive

Service.

John’s great knowledge and enthusiasm for local history will be much missed by his many friends and colleagues.

Compiled by Hilary Haigh Lynn Frances Free (1934 — 2017)

This is more of a personal tribute that a factual biographical portrait but I hope it conveys a sense of Lynn Free who was a teacher, local historian and friend to many. I first met Lynn in the summer of 2006 when I moved onto Cleveland Road, Marsh. Lynn was my next-door neighbour and our first conversation was a hurried ‘welcome to Cleveland Road’ before abruptly explaining she couldn’t talk right now as Countdown was about to start. But before long we shared many conversations over the garden fence and in her living room and I learned that she was an avid local historian, a dedicated football fan, and a stalwart of both the Huddersfield and

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District Family History Society and the Colne Valley Museum. Until the end of her life she remained active in the British Federation of Women Graduates. She was a_ long-time member of the Huddersfield Local History Society and made regular appearances at the Monday talks until ill health made it too difficult to attend.

In addition to raising a large family, Lynn was a teacher at Royds Hall High School and author of a history of the school which traced the building from its early years as private mansion through its use as a war hospital during the First World War and its subsequent redevelopment into a secondary school. [Lynn F. Free, Royds Hall (Huddersfield, 1996)]

Lynn was a supportive friend. I recall, during the early stages of my Ph.D. research she gallantly sat through my first public talk on my Chartist research at Bradford Department of Continuing Education. I don’t expect it was an entertaining afternoon for her. Lynn always had time for people and was especially kind to children, treating them with respect and kindness and making them feel important. At her packed funeral service I was intrigued to learn that she studied for a Geology degree at University and I recalled that she had given a large chunk of black goethite rock to my son when he was about 7. This gift turned out to be the first piece in what is an ever- increasing collection of rocks. It has inspired my son’s desire to study geology and earth sciences at University. It has also resulted in many wonky shelves inexpertly put up by me in his bedroom. Lynn would have been delighted by this legacy and what has grown from that piece of rock.

Janette Martin Peter Butters (1958 — 2016) We were saddened to hear of the death of our member, Peter Butters, who passed

away peacefully at home in June 2016, aged 58 years. We send our condolences to all his family.

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HUDDERSFIELD LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY

WEBSITE: www.huddersfieldhistory.org.uk EMAIL: huddshistory@gmail.com TWITTER: @HuddsLocalHist

SOCIETY OFFICERS AND COMMITTEE

Chair: CYRIL PEARCE Tel: 01484 655970

Email: chairman@huddersfieldhistory.org.uk

Hon. Secretary: HILARY HAIGH Tel: 01924 279477

Email: huddshistorysecretary@gmail.com

Publicity Officer: CHRISTINE VERGUSON Tel: 01484 321628

Email: info@huddersfieldhistory.org.uk

Membership Secretary: VAL DAVIES

21 Glebe Street, Marsh, Huddersfield HD1 4NP; Tel: 01484 315772

Email: membership@huddersfieldhistory.org.uk

COMMUNICATION WITH MEMBERS

Vice-Chair: BRIAN HAIGH Tel: 01484 430666

Email: mail@brianhaigh1.plus.com

Hon. Treasurer: DAVID GRIFFITHS Tel: 01484 540309

Email: treasurer@huddersfieldhistory.org.uk

Journal Editor: FRANK GROMBIR Tel: 07812 925546

Email: f.grombir@outlook.com

COMMITTEE MEMBERS Maureen Mitchell, Bill Roberts, Dave Pattern, Steve Challenger,

Janette Martin

The Society appreciates that not all members are computer users and will continue

to send full information about members’ events by post. The Society now circulates a

regular e-newsletter by email which includes up-to-date information and details of

events which may be of interest to members. If you would like to receive these email

communications, please email your request to the Membership Secretary. Anybody

joining the mailing list may leave at any time. You can also engage with the Society

and get to know about our events and activities on Twitter by following

@HuddsLocalHist and turning on Notifications.

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