Everything about Halifax West Yorkshire totally explained
Halifax is a town within the
Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale, in
West Yorkshire,
England, with a population of 82,056. It is well-known as a centre of England's woollen manufacture from the 15th century onward.
History
The name
Halifax is said to be a corruption of the Old English words for
Holy and
Face, part of the local legend that the head of
John the Baptist was buried here after his execution. The legend is almost certainly medieval rather than ancient, though the town's coat of arms still carries an image of the saint. (The oldest written mentions of the town have the spelling
Haliflax, apparently meaning "holy
flax (field)", the second
l having been subsequently lost by
dissimilation. An alternative explanation for the name of the town could come from a corruption of the Old English/Old Norse words Hay and Ley for 'hay' and 'field' respectively and flax. Anectdotal evidence for this alternative and plausible explanation can be seen in the presence of Hayley Hill, the nearby hamlet of Healey (another corruption). The fact that the surnames Hayley/Haley which are derived from Hay and Ley and are most abundant around the Halifax environs, also gives credibility for this explanation. )
Halifax Parish Church, parts of which go back to the 12th century, has always been dedicated to St John the Baptist. The church's first organist, in 1765, was
William Herschel, who went on to discover the planet
Uranus.
The coat of arms of Halifax include the chequers from the original coat of arms of the Earls Warenne, who held the town during Norman times.Halifax was incorporated as a
municipal borough in 1848 under the
Municipal Corporations Act 1835, and with the passing of the
Local Government Act 1888 became a
County Borough in 1889. Since 1974, Halifax has been the
administrative centre of the Metropolitan District of
Calderdale, part of the metropolitan county of West Yorkshire. Halifax has given its name to a bank,
Halifax plc which started as a
building society in the town. Nowadays Halifax is a trading name of
Bank of Scotland plc, as part of the
HBOS Group. Halifax is a
twin town with
Aachen in
Germany. The
A58 has a stretch called Aachen Way, with a plaque on the town-bound side of the road.
Geography
Topographically, Halifax is located in the south-eastern corner of the moorland region called the
South Pennines. Halifax is situated about 4 miles from the
M62 motorway close to
Huddersfield,
Bradford and
Rochdale. The
Tees-Exe line passes through the A641 road, which links nearby
Brighouse with Bradford and Huddersfield, The town lies 65 miles from
Liverpool and
Kingston upon Hull, and about 200 miles from the cities of
London,
Edinburgh,
Belfast,
Dublin and
Cardiff as the crow flies. The major waterway is the
River Calder.
Demographics
As of 2004 by
John Taylor (1580-1654), a prayer whose text included
"From Hull, from Halifax, from Hell, ‘tis thus, From all these three, Good Lord deliver us.".(see
Talk page
).
Education
Halifax is home to two selective state schools, which are the coeducational
North Halifax Grammar School in
Illingworth
and
Crossley Heath Grammar School, near
Skircoat Green. Both schools achieve excellent
GCSE and
A-level results with both schools achieving a large proportion of A* to C grades at GCSE level. In 2005, the Crossley Heath School was the highest ranking co-educational school in the North of England.
The Crossley Heath School was formed when
Heath Grammar School, an all boys school given its charter by
Elizabeth I of England, and The Crossley and Porter School, a mixed school founded with his brothers by
Sir Francis Crossley, 1st Baronet which started as an orphanage, were combined in 1985. There are other schools in the area, including the
Holy Trinity Church of England Senior School and
St Catherine's Catholic High School, both of which are located in Holmfield. In January 2006 Holy Trinity was designated a Specialist College for Business and Enterprise, whilst St Catherine's, was designated a Specialist Technology College.
Calderdale College is the local further education college on Francis Street just off King Cross Road, to the west of the town.
Educational development
In December 2006 it was announced that Calderdale College, in partnership with Leeds Metropolitan University, would open a new higher education institution in January 2007 called 'University Centre Calderdale'.
Culture
Halifax is home to a vibrant South Asian community mainly of Pakistani Muslims from the
Kashmir region. The majority of the community lives in the west central Halifax region of the town, which was previously home to immigrant Irish communities who have since moved to the outer suburbs.
North Halifax is noted for its local support of the far-right
British National Party; the suburb of
Mixenden became the first area in West Yorkshire to popularly vote in a BNP councillor, with
Illingworth soon to follow. It is also home to the prestigious North Halifax Grammar and Crossley Heath Grammar schools. North Halifax, in contrast to west central Halifax's ethnic diversity, consists mostly of white
Protestant residents.
Halifax has benefited from SRB and URBAN money through
Action Halifax who have a vision for "a prosperous, vibrant and safe centre where all sections of the community can access opportunities to enhance their quality of life."
Dean Clough, a refurbished
worsted spinning mill, is the home of
Barrie Rutter's
Northern Broadsides Theatre Company and the
IOU theatre company as well as providing space for eight art galleries.
Halifax town centre has a busy night life with lots of clubs and bars. To help with those who become vulnerable whilst enjoying and using Halifax's night life,
Street Angels was launched in November 2005. Street Angels patrol the town centre on Fridays and Saturdays between 9pm and 3am. In the first year police report violent crime has fallen by 42%. Street Angels work in partnership with St John Ambulance, Nightlife Marshals, Police Community Support Officers, Police and doorstaff as well as the
Halifax Ambassadors who patrol in the daytime.
Halifax, and in particular the Victoria Theatre (originally the Victoria Hall) is home to the oldest continually running amateur choral society in the country and possibly the world.
Halifax Choral Society was founded in 1817 and has an unbroken record of performances. The Choral Society has a strong rivalry with the equally eminent choral society of neighbouring town, Huddersfield. The Victoria Theatre contains a large concert organ originally built by William Hill & Sons, installed in 1901 and rebuilt after internal modifications were carried out in the building in the early 1960s.
There is plenty to occupy lovers of amateur theatre.
Halifax Thespians and the Actors' Workshop present plays of all kinds, and musical theatre is represented by Halifax Amateur Operatic Society, Halifax Light Opera Society, Halifax Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and All Souls Amateur Operatic Society. Halifax YMCA Pantomime Society presents its annual show in late January each year. Young people interested in drama are catered for by Halifax AOS and Halifax LOS, which each have a junior section, and another group, Stagedoor Theatre Co, specialises in dramatic activities and performances by children and young people.
The
Halifax & District Organists' Association, is one of the oldest organists' fellowships in the country.
As well as conventional cultural attractions, the Calderdale area has also become a centre for folk and traditional music. The Traditions Festival, held at the Piece Hall in Halifax town centre, is a celebration of traditional music and dance from around the world, whilst the
Rushbearing, held in
Sowerby Bridge and the surrounding villages, is a traditional festival which was restarted to celebrate the
Queen's Silver Jubilee and attracts
Morris dancers from all around the country.
Commercial enterprise
As well as the unforgettable significance of the
Halifax Building Society (which merged with the
Bank of Scotland in 2001), the town has associations with confectionery. John Mackintosh and his wife, Violet, opened a
toffee shop in King Cross Lane in 1890. Violet formulated the toffee's recipe. John became known as
The Toffee King. A factory was opened on Queens Road in 1898. A new factory at Albion Mill, at the current site near the train station, opened in 1909. John died in 1920, and his son Harold not only continued the business but took it to the present size and range of confectionery it has today. Their famous brands, including
Rolo,
Toffee Crisp and
Quality Street of
chocolate and confectionery are not just popular in the UK, but around the world including the
USA. It was merged with Rowntree in 1969, which was then bought by
Nestlé in 1988.
As well as producing confectionery, Halifax was in the past a busy heavy industrial town dealing in and producing wool, carpets, machine tools, and beer. The Crossley family began carpet manufacture in modest premises at Dean Clough, on the banks of the Hebble Brook. The family was philanthropic and Joseph and
Sir Francis Crossley, 1st Baronet built and endowed
Almshouses for their workers, which exist to this day and are run by volunteer trustees.
Transportation
The transportation in Halifax is managed by the
West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive.
First Calderdale & Huddersfield operate most of the services in Halifax, while
Arriva operate services that link Halifax with
Dewsbury and
Wakefield. Halifax is well connected to the nearby towns of Bradford,
Leeds and Huddersfield, with the First services 576, 508 and 503, serving these destinations every 10-20 minutes during Monday to Saturday daytimes. First also run services into other counties, including 528 to
Rochdale via
Ripponden and
Littleborough, 590 to Rochdale via
Todmorden and Littleborough and 592 to
Burnley via Todmorden.
Other bus operators in the town include T.J. Walsh (Also known as The Halifax Bus Company) and
Halifax Joint Committee which use the livery of the old Halifax Corporation buses, used on the town's buses until 1974. Unlike many other bus stations, Halifax is noted for having much character, with many listed buildings being incorporated on the site.
Halifax railway station is on the
Caldervale Line, with links to
Manchester Victoria,
York via
Bradford and
Leeds,
Blackpool North and via
Brighouse to
Huddersfield and
Wakefield Westgate. All services are operated by
Northern Rail. Many services are subsidised by the local-government public transport coordinator,
MetroTrain. Passenger representation is organized by the local users' group, the Halifax and District Rail Action Group (HADRAG).
The railway leading from Halifax due north towards Keighley (and thus towards Skipton, Morecambe and Carlisle) with a further branch to Bradford via Queensbury, unfortunately saw its last through services in May 1955, although parts of the route, which was extremely heavily engineered with long tunnels and high, spectacular, viaducts, have now been repaired and revived by Sustrans as a walking and cycle route.
Notable attractions
The cloth hall was where the trading of the woollen cloth pieces was done. Opened on
January 1,
1779, it was only open for business for two hours on a Saturday morning, and contained 315 merchant trading rooms. After the
mechanisation of the cloth industry, the Piece Hall was and continues to be used as a public market. The former Calderdale Industrial Museum (now closed) was housed within the Piece Hall. In winter 2006-07 the Piece Hall hosted an outdoor temporary ice rink.
Town Hall
This was built by
Charles Barry, who also built the
Houses of Parliament, in 1863.
An elaborate factory chimney or
folly, built for a dye house that was never used, which dates from 1871. It was designed by
Isaac Booth, and is now capped with an observation platform reached by an interior spiral staircase.
Museums
The
Yorkshire Regiment's 3rd Battalion (Duke of Wellington's) formerly
The Duke of Wellington's Regiment (West Riding) Halifax Area Headquarters is based at Wellesley Park, on the junction of Gibbet Street and Spring Hall Road, in the former Wellesley Barracks museum and education centre building. The
Regimental Museum has been re-located within the
Bankfield House Textile Museum on Haley Hill. The former
Barracks was converted into an educational school in 2005 .
Former
Regimental Colours of the 'Dukes' are laid up in the Halifax Parish Church. The 1981 set of colours, were taken out of service, in 2002. They were marched through the town from the
Town Hall to the Parish church accompanied by two escorts of 40 troops, the Regimental Drums and the Heavy Cavalry and Cambrai Band on Sunday the
31 March 2007 from the
Town Hall to the Parish Church. The troops were then inspected by The
Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire,
Dr Ingrid Roscoe BA, PhD, FSA and the
Mayor of Halifax
Cllr Colin Stout making a total of eight stands of colours within the Regimental Chapel. The Regiment was presented with the 'Freedom of Halifax' on
18 June 1945.
This notable attraction was inspired and opened by
Prince Charles in the summer of 1992, and is located in part of the railway station.
Once home to the diarist
Anne Lister, Shibden Hall is located just outside Halifax in the neighbouring Shibden Valley.
Churches
The fifteenth century Parish Church dedicated to St John the Baptist didn't achieve cathedral status when a new diocese was being considered for the West Riding (Wakefield Parish Church became the cathedral in 1888 and was extensively altered and enlarged). There is a collection of rare Commonwealth white glass as well as a series of Victorian windows. Another feature is the complete array of Jacobean
box pews. The pair of gothic organ cases by John Oldrid Scott now house the four-manual instrument by Harrison & Harrison. The tower contains fourteen bells and an angelus.
The currently mothballed mid-Victorian All Souls' Church by Sir
George Gilbert Scott standing part way up Haley Hill to the north of the main town centre is now vested in the Historic Churches Preservation Trust. Its lofty (236 feet) spire and white magnesian limestone exterior stand as a very personal statement in 13th century French style of the mill owner Colonel Sir Edward Akroyd, who paid solely for its construction as the centre-piece of a purpose-built model village ("Akroydon"). All Souls' boasts an unusually complete sequence of windows by the leading artists of the 1850s, including William Wailes, John Hardman and Clayton & Bell. The large organ by Forster & Andrews inserted in 1868, ten years after the building was completed, is currently unplayable and many of its surviving parts are in store, awaiting restoration. The tower houses a ring of eight bells.
Other churches include the Georgian Holy Trinity Church (now converted to office use) and the late neo-gothic (1911) St Paul's King Cross, by Sir Charles Nicholson. St Paul's is notable not only for its fine acoustics but also for an unusual and highly colourful west window, specified by Nicholson, showing the apocalyptic vision of the Holy City descending upon the smoky mills and railway viaducts of Halifax as it was before the First World War.
The spire of Square Church, not far from the Parish Church at the bottom of the town, paid for by the carpet manufacturing Crossley family, is all that remains of the gothic congregational church built by Joseph James in 1856-8 as a rival design to All Souls' Haley Hill. The building was closed in the late 1960s and arsonists caused severe damage to the building several years later, leading to its partial demolition. The rather comic story of the rival spires runs that the two buildings' towers were nearing completion simultaneously; the architects were ordered to stop work within a few feet of the top of the spires to see who would finish first. After some time, the Crossleys lost patience and finished their spire at 235 feet, prompting the immediate completion of the rival building one foot higher. Today, they still stand as the second and third highest spires in Yorkshire. The neighbouring and earlier (Georgian) Square Chapel survived a hundred years of use as a church hall and Sunday School for the larger church.
Other attractions
The
Square Chapel Centre for the Arts offers music, dance, plays, comedy as well as community events such as
tea dances. The
Victoria Theatre, opened in 1901 and seating 1568 people, or 1860 for a standing concert, hosts a variety of performances.
Sports
The town has relatively successful sport teams. Its
rugby league team,
Halifax RLFC (formerly the "Blue Sox"), plays in
League One, and the town's
football team,
Halifax Town A.F.C., currently plays in the
Blue Square Premier (formerly the Conference League) after twice being relegated from League One. Both teams share
The Shay football ground, which is the largest ground used by a
non-league football club in England. In the 1960s Halifax Town played
Millwall in a Fourth Division match that had the lowest attendance ever recorded for a professional match in England.
The Crossley Heath Grammar School normally excel in nationwide school rugby union competitions.
Motorcycle speedway racing has been staged at two venues in Halifax. In the pioneer days of 1928 to 1930 a track operated at Thrum Hall. A Halifax team took part in the English Dirt Track League of 1929.
Speedway returned to Halifax at The Shay Stadium in 1949 and operated until 1951. The team operated as the Halifax Nomads in 1948 racing three away fixtures. The Halifax Dukes, the name they took once The Shay was opened, operated in the National League Third Division in 1949 before moving up to the Second Division in 1950. Riders including Arthur Forrest, moved on to Bradford. More in depth details of the 1948 - 1951 era can be found on the free access Speedway Researcher website.
The Dukes re-emerged in 1965 as founder members of the British League and operated there for many years before the team moved en bloc to
Odsal Stadium in Bradford.
The steeply banked bends of the track at The Shay have been buried under stands at either end when the spectator facilities were squared off.
Famous Haligonians
- Phyllis Bentley, novelist
- John Bromley, International folk music/sea shanty legend With his band Kimbers Men
- John Reginald Halliday Christie, the murderer from 10 Rillington Place
- Keith Clifford, actor. Appeared in Last of the Summer Wine, Coronation St. Former member of Halifax Thespians
- Daniel Coll, actor. Has appeared in Emmerdale (ITV Drama, UK) Former member of Halifax Thespians.
- Shirley Crabtree, wrestler Big Daddy
- George Dyson, composer
- Stuart Fielden, rugby league footballer
- Barrie Ingham, actor
- Paddy Kenny, footballer
- John Kettley, weatherman
- Nick Lawrence, radio presenter
- Ann Lister, diarist and former owner of Shibden Hall
- John Mackintosh, created Mackintosh's Toffee, which became Rowntree Mackintosh
- Harold Vincent Mackintosh 1st Viscount Mackintosh of Halifax, developed his father's firm into a significant chocolate manufacturer
- Thomas Nettleton, local physician who carried out some of the earliest systematic programmes of smallpox vaccination
- John Noakes, TV presenter
- Paradise Lost (band), Gothic Metal Band
- My Dying Bride, Death/Doom Band
- Carolyn Pickles, actress who appeared as a Chief Inspector in The Bill, daughter of James Pickles and great-neice of Wilfred
- James Pickles, judge
- Wilfred Pickles, actor/comedian/broadcaster
- Kathryn Pogson, actress who has appeared on television many times including 'We'll Meet Again' and 'Foyle's War'
- Eric Portman, actor
- Jesse Ramsden, inventor of the Ramsden theodolite
- Percy Shaw, inventor of 'Cat's Eyes' used on public roads worldwide.
- Herbert Akroyd Stuart, inventor of the Hot Bulb Engine (ancestor to the diesel engine)
- Brian Turner, chef, restrauteur and TV personality
- Séan Walsh, local poet, writer & artist
- John Wolfenden, Baron Wolfenden, chairman of the Wolfenden committee
- Frank Worthington, Footballer
Further Information
Get more info on 'Halifax West Yorkshire'.
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