Town in West Yorkshire, England
Huddersfield
Rugby league was born in a Huddersfield hotel in 1895, and 25 years later the town went one better and bought itself from its landlords.
Key information
- County
- West Yorkshire
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- Birthplace of rugby league, wool and worsted cloth, a grand Corinthian railway station
- What locals are called
- Huddersfieldians
- Famous people
- Harold Wilson, James Mason, Herbert Chapman (manager of the Town side)
- Football clubs
- Huddersfield Town (the Terriers)
About Huddersfield
The hotel where a new sport was born
On 29 August 1895, representatives of 22 northern clubs gathered at the George Hotel in St George's Square and agreed to walk out of the Rugby Football Union. The row was over "broken-time" payments, which would have compensated working men for wages lost on match days. The breakaway became the Northern Union, later the Rugby Football League, and rugby league as the world knows it began right in the middle of Huddersfield. The town's own club proved the point in style. Fartown, as the side were known, won all four available trophies in the 1914-15 season and were dubbed the Team of All Talents. Today the Huddersfield Giants carry the flag.
The town that bought itself
For centuries much of Huddersfield belonged to the Ramsden family, who owned the land and had a hand in everything built on it. In 1920 the town council bought the whole estate from them, which means Huddersfield's citizens became, in effect, their own landlords. The Ramsdens' legacy is clear in the grand railway station, which opened in 1847, with the station building finished by 1850. It faces St George's Square across a broad open space. Its six-column Corinthian portico looks more like a temple than a place to catch the train to Manchester, and it is Grade I listed. Sir John Betjeman was among its admirers. Outside it stands a statue of Harold Wilson, born in the town in 1916 and twice prime minister. He is shown mid-stride with a raincoat over his arm, and no pipe, as if he is about to catch a train himself.
Three titles in a row, and a manager who left
Huddersfield Town, the Terriers, won the FA Cup in 1922. Then came something no club had managed before: three consecutive league championships, in 1923-24, 1924-25 and 1925-26. The man who built the side was Herbert Chapman, who left for Arsenal in 1925 and went on to shape the Gunners' own golden era. The third title came after he had gone, which says something for what he had assembled. The club's modern high point was in 2017, when it won the Championship play-off final on penalties against Reading to reach the Premier League for the first time. Town now share their stadium with the Giants, so one ground hosts both football and rugby league.
"Enoch made them, Enoch shall break them"
Huddersfield got rich on woollen and worsted cloth, and the machines that sped up the work caused fury among the croppers who finished it by hand. In 1812 Luddites took sledgehammers to the new cropping frames. The frames were made by Enoch Taylor, a blacksmith from Marsden. His hammers were known as Enoch's, and the Luddites saw the grim joke: Enoch had made the machines, so Enoch's hammers would smash them. The unrest turned deadly that year when the mill owner William Horsfall was shot on Crosland Moor. George Mellor was hanged at York for the killing in 1813, and the Luddites' defeat helped drive the factory age on.
Over the hills and under them
Just outside town, the Huddersfield Narrow Canal climbs into the Pennines and goes through Standedge Tunnel, which opened in 1811. At roughly three miles, it is the longest canal tunnel in Britain, and the canal is also the highest in the country. On the other side of town, Castle Hill rises above Almondbury. People have used it as a hillfort since the Iron Age. Victoria Tower on top was built to mark Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, and on a clear day it gives you the whole of the Colne Valley.
A town that sings
Huddersfield Choral Society was founded in 1836 and has been performing Handel's Messiah ever since, mostly in the Victorian Town Hall, which has a grand Willis organ. Built in 1860 for the Albert Hall in Newport, Wales, it was installed in Huddersfield Town Hall in 1881. The town has an unexpected modern edge too. Every November the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, founded in 1978, fills the town's halls with new and experimental music. It is one of the most respected events of its kind in Britain. Working-class choral singing and avant-garde composition may seem an odd pairing, but in Huddersfield both have local roots and a loyal crowd.