Shakespeare Cottages, Marsh
Details
- also known as: Newhousing Fold (1854 map), Shakespeare Buildings
- location: Mount Road (off Eldon Road), Marsh
- status: still exists
- category: terraced row
Historic England Listing
- Grade II
- first listed 29 September 1978
- listing entry number 1287629
MOUNT ROAD. Marsh. Nos 4 to 8 (consec). C18. Rendered. Pitched stone slate roof. Coped gables on cut kneelers. Two storeys. All windows have square-sectioned mullions in recessed frames. Nos 4, 5, 6 and 7 have one 3-light and one 2-light stone mullioned window on first floor, and one 4-light stone mullioned window on ground floor. No 8 has one 3-light and one 2-light (mullion removed) stone mullioned window on first floor, and one C19 window on ground floor. Rear (to Mount Street) has catslide roof. One range each of 3-light stone mullioned windows, but No 5's have been partly altered on ground floor, one light on each floor of No 7 is blocked by a lean-to extension, and No 8 has window on ground floor only.
Discovering Old Huddersfield
Extract from Discovering Old Huddersfield (1993-2002) by Gordon & Enid Minter:=
Until the massive development of Marsh began in the late nineteenth century there were only two buildings in the vicinity of Cross Lane: the old Cross Farm and a row of cottages called Newhousing Fold. By 1870, farming had ceased at Cross Farm and the old homestead had been partitioned into separate dwellings where lived a laundress, a cloth dresser, a mill worker and their families and two gardeners. Cross Farm no longer exists but Newhousing Fold remains and readers might like to take a short walk along Eldon Road to the entrance to Marsh United Bowling Club from where the cottages may be seen.
The name Newhousing Fold appears on the 1854 O.S. map but the housing was certainly not new at that time. Although they are not shown on the 1716 map the cottages cannot post-date it by many years as the thick walls, double recessed windows and large quoins are typical of the early eighteenth century.
In the mid 1850s, a narrow strip of land at the side of Cross Lane, between the Fold and Cross Farm, was laid out in formal gardens and named Shakespeare Public Gardens and soon afterwards Newhousing Fold became Shakespeare Cottages. One of the residents at the Fold at that time was Charles Iredale, a forty-four year old cloth finisher who lived there with his wife and six children. Twenty years later, he was working as head gardener at the small park assisted, no doubt, by the two gardeners then living at Cross Farm. By the turn of the century terrace housing had encroached on the gardens and only a few years later the lawns, walkways, flowerbeds and trees had disappeared for ever.
The Shakespeare Gardens at Marsh were, locally, at the beginning of the public park movement which stemmed from a growing awareness that the beauties of nature could and should be made available to all classes through the provision of an artificially produced countryside.