Since the Society’s AGM on March 26, 2025 the role of Chair of the Society is being split between members of the Society’s committee. Members’ newsletters are currently being edited by HCS committee members on a rotating basis, this month’s being edited by Geoff Hughes, HCS Secretary, with contributions from committee members. This issue is longer than usual in order to incorporate additional items and photographs.

Membership news

Following a review of membership information final reminders will be issued in the next few days to members who have not yet remitted their 2025 subscription.

If you would like to pay your outstanding subscription please visit https://huddersfieldcivicsociety.org.uk/join- us/ and follow the instructions on the web page. If you need any help, please drop an email

to and we will get back to you.

In fairness to other members, any memberships with subscriptions remaining outstanding at the end of June will be allowed to lapse and future communications from HCS will unfortunately cease.

Coming HCS Events

Thursday, June 12, 10am: Guided Tour of Sunnybank Mills, Farsley, Leeds

There are still a few places available if you wish to join our tour of this former worsted-producing mill which has been restored and adapted to exhibit its textile heritage. It now provides a cultural destination with a contemporary art gallery, growing studio artist community, creative courses and events, a tearoom and shop.

The tour, lasting approximately 45 minutes, will reveal the history of the mill, the mill owners and mill workers and explore the fascinating objects in the collection.

Coincidentally, among the other attractions at Sunnybank Mills, HCS visitors will be able to visit the current Memorial Gestures – Exhibition: https://holocaustcentrenorth.org.uk/collections/artistic-responses/ If you have not yet booked and wish to reserve a place please email:

The charge for the tour will be £7 (or £8 for non-members). Payment please to: Huddersfield Civic Society, Sort Code: 20-43-04, Acc No: 50525022. Please add reference: Sunny + your surname + numbers booked.

Heritage Open Days 2025

A reminder that this year’s national Heritage Open Days festival runs from Friday, September 12 to Sunday, September 21, 2025, with the theme of Architecture. A printed and online leaflet will be produced listing all Kirklees events with full details also being updated regularly on the national website: https://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/

If you would like to plan an event for inclusion in the festival or would like more information, contact Sylvia Johnson on Full details will be required by Friday, July 4.

Many churches will also be open on Saturday, September 13 for Yorkshire Churches Day.

Mills Transformed, Wednesday, September 17, 7pm at the Brian Jackson Centre, 2 New North Parade, Huddersfield, HD1 5JP. Please note change of date.

As part of the 2025 Heritage Open Days festival and following a successful exhibition at Bradford Industrial Museum, HCS and Huddersfield Local History Society have invited photographer Neil Horsley to give a presentation based on the exhibition but with additional local examples of successful conversion projects. This will be introduced by John Lambe, Historic Places Advisor for Historic England who has a focus on mills.

This event is free to attend. To reserve a place a booking will be requested via Eventbrite. Details will be available next month.

‘Discover Huddersfield’ Walks:

Why not discover more of Huddersfield in the next few weeks on any of the following walks.

Sunday, June 8 at 2.30pm: Kilner Bank: Huddersfield Riverside Nature Park,
Thursday, June 19 June at 7pm: Huddersfield Textile Walk,
Thursday, July 3 at 7pm: The University of Huddersfield Campus Trail.

Bookings open two weeks before each walk date. For full details please see https://cdn.hd4.uk/sites/discoverhuddersfield.com/2025/03/DH-Walks-Programme-2025.pdf

Recent HCS Events.

Thursday 15 May: Evening visit to Daphne Steele Building at the University of Huddersfield.

Around 30 members of Huddersfield Civic Society were treated to a fascinating talk and tour of the University of Huddersfield’s new Daphne Steele Building. Led by Tim Hosker, the University’s Director of Estates and Facilities, the talk and tour on Thursday, May 15, were arranged by HCS President Bernard Ainsworth, a member of both the University Council and its Estates Committee during the inception and construction of this prominent centerpiece to Huddersfield’s ‘Station to Stadium’ corridor.

For further details and more pictures, please see https://huddersfieldcivicsociety.org.uk/past- events/2025/05/daphne-steele-building-tour-by-hcs-in-may-2025/

For a personal view of this visit, here is a report by HCS committee member, Amanda Boothroyd.

After a week of sun and warmth the Thursday had been grey, cloudy and quite chilly. The thought of heading out that late afternoon wasn’t appealing but the promise of a tour round the new Daphne Steele building in town was something of a highlight on my calendar.

I work in the town centre and so bit by bit I’d observed the demolition of the old Sports Centre, the clearing of the site and the building of new Health Innovation Centre which now stands proudly on the corner of Southgate and Leeds Road catching the eye with its asymmetric architecture and strips of coloured lighting adorning the façade. I really wanted to get inside and have a look around so when the Civic Society President, Bernard, announced that he had arranged a talk and a tour of the building for society members I couldn’t have been happier.

The site is owned by The University of Huddersfield and the Director of Estates and Facilities, Tim Hosker, (who has been integral to this project) kindly led the tour that evening.

So I stepped out of the chilly tea-time air and into the atrium of the Daphne Steele building. The first impression to hit is one of light and airiness, a bright openness. As I stepped forward to the reception desk.

My gaze was lifted up right through the centre of the building, its height giving a real sense of generosity of space. The white of the walls and the warmth of the wood are beautifully punctuated by a living moss wall.

The other members were already gathered in the café area to the right and as I walked through to join them and get a cup of tea before the talk began my eyes were pulled to the huge full height windows facing on to the rear of the site. The sun had come out briefly and, as I gazed through the windows, it shone on the former St Mark’s Church, the façade of which stood out brightly against the green backdrop of Kilner bank.

The whole ethos behind this building is wellness and wellbeing. From the moment you step inside this becomes apparent. Tim gave an incredibly informative talk about the acquisition of the site, the ambition the university had for it, and the obstacles they had to overcome to bring that vision into reality.

After a look around the lower ground floor, kitted out with ambulance, lifelike mannequins and a replica two-bedroom house to assist in rehabilitation training, we were then led to the lifts where we were headed for the 6^th floor. I wondered aloud if we shouldn’t be using the stairs, surely a healthier way to ascend, but as we stepped out onto the top floor it was an obvious decision. It was a complete ta-da! moment as we took in the wall of windows that give panoramic views over the town. We were seeing our home town from a completely new vantage point.

This floor is an office suite and we all mused how little work we’d get done with so much to see. You really got the sense from up here of the Station to Stadium Gateway with a straight line up Northumberland Street to St George’s Square and then sweeping down Leeds road to the Stadium beyond.

I confess I missed a lot of the finer points as I spent most of the time looking around in awe at this impressive building and thinking what a privilege it must be for students to be studying here. It’s warm and inviting, it has state of the art technology, it runs clinics and has a focus on practical hands-on learning for a skillset that will be applicable in the real world, but also kitted out with secluded little study pods for when computer time is required. There are two beautifully designed roof gardens, one for staff, one for students and it feels like it’s really setting the standard for what a building can be, here in the heart of Huddersfield.

Wednesday, May 21: Evening visit to Penistone.

A group of 19 members and friends enjoyed a guided tour of this town with its proud agricultural, woollen cloth, rail and industrial history. Our guide was Richard Galiford, assisted by Marlene Marshall from Penistone Archive Group.

The tour began at St John the Baptist Church in Penistone, dating from the 900s AD and extended in the mid-1300s.

Penistone Grammar school, one of the oldest schools in the country, began in the church in the 1690s. The tour included the site of the Cloth Hall and the Market Hall, plus the Penistone Paramount which still hosts many events and a cinema. This building adjoins the council offices and the Carnegie Free Library.

Our visit culminated in the new open market hall.

An interesting part of the tour was learning that in the middle of the 19th century the rules of modern football began to take shape on fields around Penistone Grammar School. Two schoolboys and their headmaster – Samuel Sunderland, John Charles Shaw and John Marsh – played here, prior to all three becoming instrumental in shaping many of the rules of how the game is played across the world today.

Planning and Enforcement – Recent cases

George Hotel (Application 2025/91147)

Huddersfield Civic Society supported the ongoing proposals to bring the George Hotel back into use. Its prime town centre location, as well as the urgent need for quality town centre hotel space, made this application one to be welcomed.

However, HCS had concerns regarding details contained in the submitted drawings. The building’s redevelopment is necessary, but the new design could have been more sensitive to the original historical character of the building and historical urban context it sits within. The alterations to the windows on the façade facing John William Street, though understandable for interior bedroom layouts, diverge from the original features. The large glazing strip replacing the historic roof feature does not seem to fit well with its surroundings. Its excessive height, assuming extended to the roof level to hide the plant compound inside, feels out of proportion compared to windows and features on other levels.

Prudential House on New Street (Application 2025/62/90578)

Plans now approved with work to commence shortly to form five apartments on the upper floors of this listed building at the end of New Street.

Castle Hill (Application 2024/93494)

Some amendments to an earlier planning application which reached the end of its 3-year period of validity in February 2025. These relate to erecting a 2-storey building, described in publicity as a free-to-use visitor centre, on the summit of Castle Hill (a scheduled ancient monument), but including a restaurant/café/bar, bedrooms, ancillary accommodation and car parking. The Society remains strongly opposed to this development.

HCS is not alone in this view. In the first 3 months of this year Historic England again raised multiple objections, many echoing those regarding previous applications. The Victorian Society also objected “…to these proposals due to the design of the centre, the damage increased traffic may do to the site and the unnecessary impact the below-ground level would have on the monument.”

After all statutory bodies and local interested parties had submitted their comments, and with the application still undecided, at the beginning of May the applicant then submitted – and Kirklees Council accepted – a further 24 detailed documents. This is not how the planning process should work!

The Castle Hill planning saga continues.

Clayton Fields, Edgerton (Application 2025/90373, which follows on from application 2024/70/92167)

Jones Homes has now begun work on this site in the Edgerton Conservation Area between Halifax Road (A629) and Clayton Brook. HCS has objected both to the diversion, or closure, of several public rights of way (PROWs), even though they were only dedicated as recently as 2020, and also to the unnecessary felling in April 2025 of over 10 mature trees alongside another right of way which runs beside the construction site from Halifax Road to George Avenue, Birkby.

In both cases HCS contends there was no prior notice of these intended actions, either onsite or in any document or on any website that a well-informed member of the public might be expected to look.

After multiple communications with council officers, HCS now accepts that the council actions regarding the PROWs may be within the letter of the law, even though we contend they are totally against the spirit of openness.

Regarding the felled trees alongside the PROW, HCS believes the developer’s own submitted landscape documents state that most of the line of felled trees was to be retained. However, the council has recently told the Huddersfield Hub that the developer had permission to fell all but one of these trees. HCS awaits an answer to its written request for evidence of the permission to fell the specific trees having been made, the location of the ‘one tree’ felled by mistake and also the reasoning behind any mature trees in a conservation area being felled when the land they stood on was not required for consented housing.

Kirklees Council Weekly Planning Lists

The Society’s planning work is often based around Kirklees Council’s weekly lists of newly submitted planning applications, as published on its public planning system database. HCS Planning Officer Robert Taylor has recently been in communication with senior council planning managers about why some, often major, applications (such as the Castle Hill item mentioned earlier) have not appeared on any weekly list.

A response has been received that some applications that may have some complexity or missing detail are given an application number relative to the date the (original) application was created, but do not appear on the list for that week as they are considered incomplete. The response continues that such applications are eventually added to the published lists, but against the original weekly list date. This means that a big planning application that is typically received by the council as several separate sets of documents, never appears on any public weekly list. However, if a planning officer looks afterwards, he/she sees a weekly list date has been allocated, without realising that subscribers to the council’s weekly lists will never have been notified!

The Society awaits an answer as to how Kirklees officers plan to rectify the problem they now realise they have.

Planning and Enforcement – General Concerns

Huddersfield Civic Society is increasingly concerned that the quality, timeliness and completeness of council work we are involved with appears to be deteriorating significantly. HCS understands that Kirklees Council has severe budgetary constraints and has noticed a number of staff, typically with many years’ experience, have left the authority’s employment in the last two years.

HCS is currently awaiting completion by Kirklees Council of several pieces of work the Society has been heavily involved with in 2024, examples including:

Using available funds for making town centre shopfront improvement grants for which the Society’s previous Chair, David Wyles, has campaigned for several years
A masterplan for land on, and connectivity between, both sides of Huddersfield station.
The Management Plan for Huddersfield Town Centre Conservation Area which several of the HCS committee members discussed when it was ready for launch in December 2024

In our role as ‘critical friends’, HCS committee members welcome being consulted and passed information on proposals at an early stage of development. In most cases, much work will have been undertaken with public funds that did not directly affect Kirklees Council’s own budget, the external government body funds often being spent on specialist external consultants with the results of their work then returned to the council.

Where this happens we cannot normally reveal the proposal, its options, our views or our formal contributions until the council subsequently puts the information in the public domain, whether as a formal announcement or as a subsequent full public consultation. However, too often, nothing is then happening: expected launch or implementation dates just continue to slip. Sadly, both council staff and HCS volunteers appear to be spending more and more time on funded council-led projects that slip dramatically or do not complete.

Additionally, planning submissions are now regularly accepted for entry onto the council database that are obviously incomplete. Sometimes, planning decisions appear to be taking many months longer to be taken than is the government target or, if they are being made, look to be no longer being entered onto the council’s public planning databases. There are also areas of regular council activity, such as enforcement against planning breaches, that appear to be grinding to a halt and about which HCS can get little or no information.

Unfortunately, in an increasing number of such cases, committee members are finding it difficult even to establish who in Kirklees Council is now responsible for certain activities and where to direct queries.

While appreciating Kirklees Council’s current financial challenges, the Society very much hopes our council will address its problems pragmatically so as to be able to complete the pieces of work it commences and do so in a quality and timely manner. We ask that it properly advertises its proposals and incorporates public engagement though to completion. In any case the council is no longer able to undertake or to complete, then an admission of the position would help all concerned.

Other local events of interest

Sources of information

There are now several comprehensive sources of local What’s On information:

The Huddersfield Hub has a very comprehensive listing of events in and around Huddersfield at https://huddersfieldhub.co.uk/category/whats-on/
Kirklees Council has an events directory: https://communitydirectory.kirklees.gov.uk/communityDirectory/whatsOn.aspx

For events in Huddersfield town centre the Huddersfield BID (Business Improvement District) team now offers the (free to download) Hello Huddersfield app (https://hellohuddersfield.co.uk/). This well-designed app lets you select event subjects about which you may wish to receive text/email notifications and also allows you to scroll through the latest information about entertainment, shopping and dining in and around the town centre.

June Events organised by other local organisations

Saturday< June 7 – Last Orders? Huddersfield Pubs: Past, Present and Future

Charles Smith will reprise his 2024 Heritage Open Days talk at St Stephen’s Church, Lindley (Lidget Street, HD3 3JB), telling the story of Huddersfield’s drinking establishments from remote coaching inns and tiny beerhouses to town centre taverns and trendy wine bars. It’s a fund-raiser for the church, costing £10 for the talk (7pm start) or £15 including prior pie and peas supper (6pm). Tickets from the church or from Charles on 07966 924149

Wednesday, June 11 – Transpennine Route Upgrade: Information session

Huddersfield Town Hall (Old Court Room), Ramsden Street, HD1 2TA, 3pm to 6pm. Huddersfield station will temporarily close between August 30 and September 29, 2025 while major rail upgrades take place. During this period Brighouse Station will be used as an interchange station with connecting buses from Huddersfield.

This is a drop-in event where you can find information about the upgrade, upcoming work and station closures.

Running now at Heritage Quay, Huddersfield University until the autumn.

The Town That Taught Itself Exhibition. https://heritagequay.org/2025/05/the-town-that-taught-itself-open/ Curated by the Heritage Quay team, it displays archival treasures from the University of Huddersfield’s collections that will highlight the bond between ‘town’ and ‘gown’ and the legacy of self-improvement and technical advancement through education which continues today.

Curators have traced the journey from the Young Men’s Mental Improvement Society of 1841 on Outcote Bank to the Queensgate Campus via locations across the town. Rarely-seen material from the university’s other predecessors such as the Huddersfield Female Educational Institute, the Holly Bank teacher training college and the Victorian-era Huddersfield Literary and Scientific Society will also feature. Hours of research into the archive’s holdings have unearthed forgotten facts and insights including information about the many buildings and people who played integral parts in the story and correct long-held myths about what actually happened.

Huddersfield Unlimited June Business Forum

HSC is delighted to have been invited by our friends at Huddersfield Unlimited to participate in their June invitation only Business Forum hosted and sponsored by BAM Construction. The theme of this business forum is to be construction and Business Forum Members will have the chance to see and hear about the transformative work being undertaken to the former Queensgate Market building which BAM Construction is regenerating as part of Kirklees Council’s Cultural Heart Project. Matt Garnett and Jon Salvini of BAM will share with guests the story behind this project and what it means for our town and HCS hopes to encourage local businesses to become Corporate Members of the Society.

Brickbats and Bouquets

Former Chair and urban flaneur David Wyles has submitted the following observations from recent wanderings around the town centre.

‘It’s great to see progress on major capital investment projects such as the Market Hall but for goodness sake, Kirklees, make a little more effort and a little revenue expenditure by tackling some eyesores that would help create a more positive perception of the town centre. Here are two examples:

Fingerposts: If I followed the fingers on the post at King Street towards the Sports Centre, LBT and a few other destinations I would end up in the opposite direction to where I intended to be.
Planters: After several years proving that weeds grow especially well with no sign of any floral displays those large plastic planters opposite the town hall are now blooming with litter, food waste and other delights.

How difficult would it really be to remove these unkempt and uncared for objects?

On a more positive note, well done to the person who organised the restoration of the superb late Victorian streetlamp in the centre of St Peter’s Gardens. It had become seriously vandalised and neglected and, along with new seating, is a step in the right direction in improving this important green lung.’

Written by members of Huddersfield Civic Society committee and edited by, Geoff Hughes, this month’s newsletter editor.