Ramsden Heritage Walk

Join local historian David Griffiths on Thursday 15th July 2021, 1 pm for a free online tour exploring the story of the Ramsden family’s impact on Huddersfield from when they purchased the Manor from Queen Elizabeth I in 1599 until they sold out to Huddersfield Corporation in 1920.

Watch live or catch up later on Kirklees Libraries YouTube, Facebook & Twitter.

Issue 32 of the Society’s Journal

journal cover Issue 32 of Huddersfield Local History Society’s Journal is now available.

Current members of the Society receive a free complimentary copy of the journal. However, if we can’t tempt you to join today, you can order a copy of the journal. There is also a downloadable PDF version which has the exact same formatting as the print edition but incurs no extra postage costs.
Continue reading “Issue 32 of the Society’s Journal”

Lockwood Virtual Walk

Press Release

Join Ian Stevenson (Huddersfield & District Family History Society) and Dave Pattern (Huddersfield Local History Society & Huddersfield Exposed) on Thursday 28th January 2021, 1pm on a virtual walk of Lockwood.

See some of the early 19th century buildings which were to be found in this spa village, attracting visitors from all over the country, and later ones which during the Industrial Revolution helped to establish Lockwood as a lively hub of textile and engineering excellence. Produced by Kirklees Libraries in partnership with Discover Huddersfield.

Watch the event LIVE on Kirklees Libraries YouTube channel, Facebook or Twitter.

Follow this link for direct access: https://youtu.be/NvJz0eN0wms

Don’t forget to subscribe to Kirklees Libraries YouTube channel and check out the Local History Virtual Walks playlist where you can catch up all our broadcasts.

Alternatively, log in with a Google ID and follow the trail at your own pace on Google Earth. This will become available via a link in the description of the YouTube video soon after the live broadcast.

Christmas Special Journal 2020

As a festive treat to our members, our Journal Editor Rob Piggott has compiled a Christmas Special issue which brings together a selection of archive articles and a tinseled treasure trove of Christmas Past from the local area.

A limited number of print copies are now available for purchase.

Introduced from Cyril Pearce

We took the decision that, in the absence of our regular monthly meetings and Study Days, we should explore the possibility of a special Covid Christmas edition our Journal. Here you will find pieces with Christmas and New Year themes which colleagues have unearthed from well-known local sources. An account in the Huddersfield Chronicle for Christmas 1873 describes in Dickensian detail – not easy reading for the vegetarian – the rich variety of meat and poultry on display in the town with only a passing reference to a fruiterer. There is writing here from Linthwaite’s Suffragist Florence Lockwood’s autobiography describing New Year Eve in 1902 and 1907 with ‘Guisers’ and ‘Mummers’ singing for their suppers and, on Christmas morning the sound of ‘Christians Awake!’. There are similar stories from Ben Turner’s autobiography of door-to-door ‘Mummers’ and carol singers in Holmfirth and in John Sugden’s account of Slaithwaite at Christmas in 1905. Mrs Jagger’s reflection on Christmases in Honley in times past has the nostalgic feel of a memory of things lost – and scattered throughout are images of historic Christmas cards and mementos.

Interspersed with all of these are pieces that appeared in very early Local History Society journals. Most of them are available on-line through our website but this is Rob Piggott, the Editor’s, selection. Since he has chosen to publish one of my early pieces, I really ought not to comment further except to say that all the pieces he has chosen are well worth seeing again.

I hope you find this ‘Bumper Christmas Edition’ a really good read and up to our usual standard. My thanks to Rob Piggott and to all those members, past and present, who have made it possible.

To all the members of the Society and to those non-members reading this, my very warmest Christmas greetings and best wishes for a Covid-free New Year. Do take care. I hope to see you all in 2021.

Contents

  • Notes for a Covid Christmas Special 2020 — Cyril Pearce
  • Recruits for the Haver-Cake Lads — John H. Rumsby (1984)
  • Extract from The History of Honley and its Hamlets — Mary A. Jagger (1914)
  • Lascelles Hall — Keith Brockhill (1985)
  • ‘Never was there such a time’; Huddersfield Suffragettes in 1907 — Joyce Stevens (1989)
  • Extract from, An Ordinary Life, 1861-1924 — Florence Lockwood (1932)
  • Buying a Station — Clifford Stephenson (1991)
  • Extract from: Slaithwaite Notes: Past and Present — John Sugden (1905)
  • In the Picture (Longley Woods) — Patricia Ann Dyson (1997)
  • The Christmas Market In Huddersfield — Anon. (1873)
  • The Local Historian as Activist — Cyril Pearce (2000)
  • The Frost, the Snow, and the Wintry Woods — Cid (1895)
  • Christmas — Emma Battye (1874)
  • Yorkshire Sings: A musical and social phenomenon — Angela Griffith (2000)
  • Who’d a Thowt Theda Been A Farm Baht Osses — Ernest Beaumont (2002)
  • Christmas Fifty Years Ago — Ben Turner (1923)
  • From Builder to Architect — Brian Haigh (2009)
  • Bookshelf — Keith Brockhill (1999)
  • Book Review: Power in the Land — Christine Vergusson
  • Afterword — Robert Piggott

New Book on Highfields

Society members will undoubtedly be familiar with — and probably own a copy of — David Griffith’s well-received The Villas of Edgerton: Home to Huddersfield’s Victorian Elite (2017).

Huddersfield Civic Society has now published a companion book…

Press Release

The story behind the development of Highfields, Huddersfield first suburb, has been told in a new publication, written by one of Huddersfield’s most knowledgeable local historians, David Griffiths, and published by Huddersfield Civic Society.

Highfields – a Most Handsome Suburb has been written as a companion to The Villas of Edgerton and author David Griffiths again paints a picture of a distinctive and architecturally significant area, acknowledged today by its Conservation Area designation. The text has, once more, been complemented by the photography of Andrew Caveney of Creative Digital Photography, and a variety of images, maps and photographs, sourced from local and national archives.

The book traces Highfields’ development which, in the early nineteenth century, became the favoured residential location for Huddersfield’s business and professional class. Their handsome Georgian houses were followed by the architectural showcase of New North Road where, amid a wealth of Victorian residences, significant educational and religious establishments, some by distinguished architects, were constructed. The architectural quality of the area was recognised nationally by the 1860’s and poet laureate, John Betjeman was, similarly, impressed when he visited the town in 1964.

David, author of several books and contributor to many other local publications, has previously led guided tours around the area about which he says: ‘Highfields is a stone’s throw from the town centre and deserves greater recognition. Its streets and lanes offer up rich rewards, and the book includes numbered maps from which individual buildings can be discovered on foot’.

The book is available to purchase online on the Huddersfield Civic Society’s web site: