Are blue plaques a measure of heritage? A
KIRKLEES has four twin towns. Which makes it a quintuplet.
They are Besançon (France), Bielsko-Biala (Poland), Kreis Unna (Germany) and Kostanai (Kazakhstan).
These are not names that stick in the memory or slip off the tongue.
How much more memorable if Huddersfield, and the towns and villages round about, were to twin with places that had a common denominator. Such as Huddersfield in Queensland, Australia, halfway between Yorkshire Downs and Waterloo Plains.
Unfortunately, I can’t find the location on Google maps because it seems to be an abandoned farmstead but it’s in the outback 37 kilometres from Julia Creek, a town with a population of 511 and pubs that seem to specialise in ice cold beer.
Perhaps that’s close enough for a twin?
Or Holmfirth in South Australia. Or Elland in Clarence Valley, New South Wales. MONG the framed photographs we have hanging on the wall at home, are three that remind me of heritage. The first is of Beryldene, a large mansion in Carleton, Poulton-lyFylde, where my wife Maria was born. Her grandfather, Diamond Tony Colaluca, had bought it from film and music hall star George Formby.
The second is of Kingsmede, another mansion, this time on Whitegate Drive, Blackpool, built by Colonel William J Parkinson, and described by an estate agent as “one of the most outstanding properties of its kind on the Fylde coast”.
It boasted domestic quarters and a three-car garage. This was where Maria grew up and was living when I met her.
The third picture is of 5 Cheapside, off Westgate, in Wakefield, a three-storey terraced house that had only a gas light in the one downstairs room.
If you ventured upstairs, you needed a candle. That downstairs room is where I was born. I have often thought that between us, my wife and I might have achieved at least one blue plaque. Don’t scoff: blue plaques are becoming ever more common as individuals and organisations arbitrarily put up their own.
The Blue Plaque scheme that started in the 1860s is now administered by English Heritage and has a 20-year rule: recipients have to have been dead for two decades before being considered worthy of
Perhaps we should aim higher like Dull, a village in Perth and Kinross in Scotland.
They have twinned with Boring in Oregon, USA, and Bland in New South Wales, Australia, to form a League of Extraordinary Communities.
They are currently waiting for applications to join from the townships of Ordinary and Dreary, both in the US. Would there be a place for Shat?
Any suggestions for suitable twins for local towns and villages? the accolade. Only around 10 a year are awarded.
But civic societies, councils, groups and individuals put up their own and it’s estimated there are more than 45,000 around the country.
Former DJ Mike Read, chairman of the British Plaque Trust, said Charles Dickens has about 50.
“Tolkien has quite a few. There’s one for a place he stayed for two nights. That’s nonsense.”
There are 13 in Holmfirth and 11 in Huddersfield, including ones for Rugby League, Harold Wilson and James Mason.
Mirfield has four, one featuring Roe Head school because of its Bronte connections.
Some claims to fame are tenuous and if a two-day Tolkien visit qualifies, I would have thought George Formby’s mansion would have rated one. Then Maria could say her former home had a blue plaque, without directly claiming it was erected for her. To be fair, George’s final home at Lytham does have a plaque.
Victorian author George Gissing, who was born in the next street to me in Wakefield, has one, even though his novels were so depressing they never made his fortune. Mind you, neither did mine.
It seems that after 60 years in journalism and a score of books, I