Welcome to this month’s newsletter – the last before our summer break, but a bumper edition to keep you going. The next one will be out in mid-August – any items for inclusion by the end of July, please. We welcome all local history news!
Our next meeting – Monday 18 May
Who was Sally Jerome?
The last meeting of our 2025/26 season will explore the personal history of one of Huddersfield’s most fascinating people, the artist and activist Sally Jerome, who died in 2002. The talk will trace Sally’s story as she constructed a life and identity far removed from her family history.
The talk will be given by Dave Smith, Public Engagement Officer at Heritage Quay at the University of Huddersfield. Dave curated the 2025 exhibition ‘Becoming Sally Jerome’ upon which this talk is based.
Heritage Quay is home to the Sally Jerome archive and Dave has conducted extensive research into the material, the highlights of which will feature in the talk.
The meeting is on Monday 18 May at 7.30 pm in – please note! – the Bronte Lecture Theatres, room BLG/05, our old venue, as our usual spot in the Oastler Building is being used for exams. The campus map is here. Car parking options are these:
- The car park beneath the adjacent University gym, accessed from Wakefield Rd heading into town, just before the roundabout traffic lights. Parking is by the RingGo App only, at about £1.50. There’s a lift which comes out near the Library in the Schwann Building. Full details of University car parks are here.
- Free on-street parking in Oldgate, or in Queen St South and adjoining Chapel St and Milford St, which run though to Chapel Hill.
- The Civic Centre car park in Albion St, free after 6 pm (but NB no walking route through the Piazza during the Cultural Heart development).
Annual Journal, summer outing, summer walks ….
At the meeting you will be able to pick up the 2026/27 Journal – also a bumper issue! – which will otherwise be posted out to members immediately afterwards.
The accompanying letter will give full details of our summer outing on Monday 22 June, which this year is to The David Brown Tractor Club Museum in Meltham, meeting there at 6.30 pm. With the letter you will find details of how to book for this.
Also in the mailing will be the full printed programme of this year’s Discover Huddersfield walks.
Other forthcoming events
Saturday 30 May, 1.0–4.0 pm
‘Worktown’- 1930s working class life and the Mass Observation Project
If you enjoyed Michael Nolan’s talk to the Society in November, ‘The Photography of Working People in Yorkshire Between the Wars’, this should be a good follow-up. It’s a talk by Bill Hodson, originally from Bolton, who has been writing about working class life in the town and the 1930s Mass Observation Project. This engaged Cambridge University researchers to come in and study local lives, as a research project and to try to spur the government into action to improve things for people in similar working class communities. Bill has written a novel about Molly, a young millworker, and Edward, a former Cambridge student, and will talk about the historical background to his book and his family connections to the story.
Presented by Wakefield Socialist History Group, the talk is at Wakefield Red Shed, Vicarage Street, WF1 1QX, and is free to attend; light refreshments are provided.
Wednesday 10 June, 2.0-4.0 – a special collection from the Tolson Museum
A talk by the curator, illustrated with a collection of artifacts from the Museum. This is a Friends of Tolson & Ravensknowle ‘tea and cake’ meeting at the Museum on Wakefield Road.
Saturday 20 June, 11.0-4.0 – another HDFHS booklet giveaway!
On Saturday 20 June our friends at the Family History Society will have more booklets to give away – this time excess 1841 and 1851 census booklets for many of our parish areas. In addition there will be excess stock of genealogy and local history books previously donated to us. Donations will be welcomed.
The event is at the Root Cellar, 33A Greens End Road, Meltham, HD9 5NW.
Commemorating Joshua Hobson (1810-76)
Twenty or so members gathered at Joshua Hobson’s obelisk in Edgerton Cemetery on Friday 8 May to mark the 150th anniversary of his death, after the Society commissioned Huddersfield Funeral Home to make the faded inscription legible once more.
In brief remarks, Alan Brooke, this year’s Luddite lecturer Dr Vic Clarke and David Griffiths brought to life aspects of his remarkable career as ‘intrepid champion of the poor, advocate of a free press and useful public servant’.
Oakes School listed nationally as an endangered building
Each year The Victorian Society publishes a list of England and Wales’s top ten endangered buildings. This year’s list was released on 28 April and sadly includes the former Oakes School in Lindley. The Grade II listed school was designed in 1873 by Charles Fowler and is described by the Victorian Society as ‘long empty and seriously decaying … with spasmodic attempts by its owners to place and replace covers over windows and door spaces, and across holes in walls and roofing as these appear and enlarge’. Their website warns that:
‘Oakes School can and should find re-use. Kirklees Council need to take enforcement action now. The owner should sell this re-usable building rather than continue a course of action that will lead to the building eventually falling down or having to be demolished.’
Update on Castle Hill plans
The Council has now narrowly approved the application for a large new building on Castle Hill. Scheduled Monument consent will still be required from Historic England, but as they did not oppose the latest planning application, it seems that this may eventually be granted. The Archaeological and Civic Societies continue to strongly oppose this development on a key historical site. The latest HCS newsletter has a thorough explanation of the current situation, which you may want to read. Also featured there are plans for the Open Market and the history of another threatened historical structure, the Hillhouse coal shutes.
The newsletter is of course produced by HCS for its members. If you would like to be regularly briefed on these kinds of issues, you may wish to consider joining the Society.
St. Lucius Church Farnley Tyas: Unearthing Our Local History
We’re pleased to include short articles on local history topics in the newsletter, and have received this from Kathryn Hinchliff, Chair of the Eco-group at St Lucius Church, Farnley Tyas.
The grave of the Rev Cutfield Wardroper was uncovered in St Lucius’ churchyard in July 2024 by a member of the probation service Pay Back Team working with St. Lucius Church Eco-group. This characterful figure lived from 1815 to 1906 and was the third vicar, serving the parish for 51 years from 1848. He was renowned for riding around his parish on a white horse, and the St. Lucius Eco-group certainly approve of his choice of a wicker coffin, which he commissioned long before his death.
Funding to restore the grave was raised by St Lucius’ with a generous grant from Kirkburton Parish Council, whose circular walk around Farnley Tyas – ‘The Rev Cutfield Wardroper Wander’ – is popular with visitors and locals. There had been attempts by local historians to locate where he was buried, but several early burial records were lost during Diocesan changes.
His grave had been covered over for at least 50 years until 2024 and had suffered significant damage. Permission was obtained from the Church of England and his next of kin to sympathetically restore it. On Sunday, July 5 at 10.30, the Parish Patronal service at Farnley will include an act of commemoration to mark the restoration, honouring the life and legacy of this priest and his family. A warm invitation is extended to all.
The renovation work has been undertaken and project managed by Calderdale Grave Care with help from stonemasons D. M. Memorials.
The Wardroper Wander is one of 10 walk guides produced by Kirkburton Parish Council, all based on historical characters, which can be found here.
