Cattle Market, Great Northern Street, Huddersfield

GEOGRAPHIC STUB
This page is a bare-bones entry for a location which appears on an historic Ordnance Survey map. More detailed information may eventually be added...

Details

  • also known as: Beaumont Street Cattle Market
  • appears on maps: 1890 [#152]
  • location: Great Northern Street, Huddersfield
  • status: no longer exists
  • category: livestock market

Laid out by Borough Surveyor John Henry Abbey and formally opened on 14 May 1881.[1]

The former site of the market is now part of the Great Northern Retail Park.

Discovering Old Huddersfield

Extract from Discovering Old Huddersfield (1993-2002) by Gordon & Enid Minter:

Sixty yards beyond the tramway depot was the gateway to the cattle market its tall stone pillars appropriately surmounted by stone animals, a sheep on the left hand side and pig on the right. Inside, permanent sheep and cattle pens stood on the cobbled surface in front of single storey refreshment rooms which catered for buyers and sellers attending the market.

During the demolition of the cattle market the sheep and the pig disappeared. We presumed that they had been removed for cleaning and renovation and would be eventually relocated and displayed as a small part of the town's history. In an effort to trace them and record their whereabouts in this book we contacted the demolition contractors, the architect, the builders, the planning department, the Examiner and Tolson Museum. Nobody knew what had become of them - apart from a suggestion from the architect that they had been stolen. If this is so then the theft was not a casual one as the sculptures weighed upwards of ten hundredweight and their removal would have required a crane, a lorry and several men. After the Examiner published our enquiry we received an anonymous telephone call telling us that the sculptures were taken away on a butcher's wagon one Saturday in July 1996. Despite further enquiries the trail went cold and we must presume that the sculptures are lost to the town forever.

The main fairground was laid out behind and to the south side of the cattle market. Here on fair days were to be found fast and thrilling roundabouts, the enormous steam operated swinging boats called Shamrocks, and such dubious delights as boxing booths, flea circuses and bearded ladies. When the fair was not in town the fairground was used as a convenient storage space for buses, an arrangement that lasted until 1928 when a new bus depot was built behind the tramway depot.

Thirty yards past the gateway to the cattle market a tall Gothic-style house fronted onto Great Northern Street. This was for many years the home of successive Superintendents of Markets who were also Inspectors of Weights and Measures. Behind the house, between the cattle market and the Hebble Beck was the slaughter house built to replace the old shambles in King Street.

Gallery

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Location

Notes and References

  1. "Public Notices" in Huddersfield Chronicle (03/May/1881).