History project to unearth the lost streets of Huddersfield
UNLIKE our near neighbours, Leeds and Manchester, very little has changed in Huddersfield for the past 50 years.
It’s not that we’re stuck in the past it’s just that the infrastructure and roads have barely changed in a generation.
Besides the Kingsgate Centre and the decade long revamp of Huddersfield University, there hasn’t been a lot to think about.
But that wasn’t always the case. The post-war period up to the early 1970s saw huge sections of town re-designed and modernised, not always with the greatest of care for heritage – a prime example being the demolition of the Victorian-built Market Hall beside Huddersfield Town Hall.
Now a project to chart the ‘Lost Streets of Huddersfield’ is working hard to keep some of those memories alive.
The creation of Huddersfield’s ring road in the early 1960s saw numerous streets demolished or chopped up.
Insight into how things looked before much of town was concreted over can be seen at the Huddersfield Exposed online resource.
It shows the ‘Lost Streets’ with maps of where the roads were, an explanation of what used to be there and what is there now.
Many of the roads bulldozed to make way for new shopping areas and bigger roads had been around for hundreds of years and had fantastically antiquated names.
One of the best is Bull and Mouth Street, which was lost during the development of the Piazza Shopping Centre, itself now under threat of demolition for the Huddersfield Blueprint.
Bull and Mouth Street, originally Bull and Mouth Lane, connected Ramsden Street to Swine Market, which also no longer exists, roughly where the grassed area of the Piazza now lies connecting towards the Shambles area by Boots and WH Smith.
Another major road to disappear is Manchester Street, a link between Outcote Bank and Market Street. It was lost during the ring road construction and is now roughly the site of Kirklees Council’s Civic Centre campus.
On the other side of the town centre, Thomas Street, a route from the eastern end of Northumberland Street towards Leeds Road, was lost to the ring road and the creation of the old Huddersfield Sports Centre.
Dave Pattern, the man behind the website, said: “My favourite lost street is Vulcan Street off Chapel Hill, presumably named after the large iron foundry which could once be found there. This disappeared when the current Broadbent works between Chapel Street and Milford Street (which itself used to be called Stables Street) was built.
“Rather than just rip up the cobbled Vulcan Street, it was incorporated into the works and became one of the site entrances.”
He explained: “A few years ago I worked on getting the Buildings of Huddersfield project online and that was my introduction to the ‘lost streets’ of Huddersfield, particularly as we wanted to try and provide locations of demolished buildings on a modern-day map.
“I started getting emails from people researching their family trees who were struggling to locate places mentioned in census records. Quite often when a row of houses were
built along a road, they’d be given a name – for example, 122 to 126 Trinity Street were once known as Victoria Terrace – but those names gradually dropped out of common use in favour of using house numbers.
“So, I’ve been trying to build up an index of ‘lost’ places, some of which still exist if you know where to look.
“This involves searching historic maps, hunting through old street directories, and sometimes making an educated guess if you can figure out where it was inbetween.
“Thanks to assistance from the Huddersfield & District Family History Society, there are now searchable copies of the 1900, 1937 and 1956 street directories for Huddersfield available to read online for free.”