I’m happy to let the train take the strain I

I WAS asked the other day how Huddersfield got its name.

It’s the sort of thing we rarely question: we live in the place and accept what it’s called, even if it seems to be in the lower echelons of grand sounding single syllable names like York.

We are, like most villages, towns and cities in Britain, rooted in history.

There has been a settlement in this area for 4,000 years, with Castle Hill being occupied and fortified before the Romans came.

They subdued the local tribe of the Brigantes and built a fort at Slack, near Outlane.

Who knows? The town could have been called Slack instead of Huddersfield.

Everyone living here would have been nicknamed Slackers.

The name was first noted after the Norman Conquest. The Doomesday Book of 1086, a land register rather than an apocalyptic text, said: “In Odersfelt, Godwin had six carucates of land for geld where eight ploughs can be.”

This can be interpreted from Old English as meaning that Godwin’s land was named after a person called Oder, Udder or Hudraed who once owned the feld, which means open and arable land.

Feld or field is tagged on to many places: Wakefield, Mirfield, Chesterfield and lots more.

So our town is named after an Anglo Saxon called Oder. NEEDED to go to Bolton to collect the car I had bought for my daughter. The problem was that I drive everywhere and haven’t usedpublic transport in years.

A search online said I could get a train to Manchester Piccadilly and would then have to change platforms to catch another to the land of Peter Kay.

I felt a tremor of panic. Would I cope? I got a taxi into town and approached the railway station in trepidation.

I imagined everything would be computerised, people would be dashing around knowing what they were doing and I would be totally out of my depth.

What a pleasant surprise to buy a ticket from a real person. It was mid afternoon, so the station was hardly crowded and a train was waiting with doors open as I went onto the platform.

“Does this go to Piccadilly?” I asked a guard. ”It does.” I got on, found a seat and we were off. I had struck lucky and was on the Transpennine express to Manchester Airport that’s only stop was Piccadilly.

Time to sit back, read my book and attempt to adopt the bored look of the seasoned travellers around me.

By heck, I thought. This beats the traffic jams on the M62 any day of the week. It was a stress free 33 minute journey without the hassle of watching out for the big truck on the inside and sticking to the noseto-tail 50mph limit in narrowed lanes.

At Piccadilly I maintained my seasoned traveller look and found it helped to pretend to know what I was doing.

The only hitch was when I almost boarded the waiting train on platform 14 and went to Glasgow.

Fortunately I didn’t. Glasgow went and mine came two minutes later. This one was crowded and stopped a lot but half an hour later I was in Bolton. Total journey time one hour and five minutes.

By heck, but this train lark could catch on. At least if you travel offpeak to avoid the crowds.

Friendly staff, no hassle, a bit of an adventure and no watching out for the big truck on the inside. ORORNATION Street actor Roy Barraclough, who has died aged 81, got his first full time acting job in Huddersfield in the 1960s.

He had been performing part time, in holiday camps and local amateur groups, until Nita Valerie gave him his full professional chance with her Huddersfield Repertory Company at the New Theatre in Venn Street.

Former Examiner journalist Mike Shaw says: “It was the first step up the ladder for him. He had both small and big parts but one thing you could say about Roy was that he was always word perfect. “He was an asset to the company.” Nita ran the New Theatre Rep, after the closure of the Theatre Royal. It was a good company.

”When it closed, Roy moved into rep at Stoke and later joined Oldham’s Coliseum Theatre company and became a regular actor in shows made by Yorkshire TV. That’s where he met Les Dawson and they performed together for years in classic comedy sketches as Cissie and Ada.

Cissie: ”Have you been to the Acropolis?” Ada:”Been to it? I’ve never been off it.” A man of professionalism and fun.