Lockwood was once a spa town … and other quirky Yorkshire tales

A free event spiced up Yorkshire’s history at a special event in Huddersfield.

An afternoon called A Bit Of Yorkshire Spice featured four speakers talking about Yorkshire’s history and heritage on Sunday, November 23.

The speakers were Ian Stevenson, Christina Longden, Rod Dimbleby (pictured above) and Yahya Birt.

During the pandemicIan Stevenson, Chair of Huddersfield and District Family History Society, created a virtual tour of Lockwood. Many people are not aware that Lockwood was once a famous Victorian spa town.

Ian encouraged people to look up at the buildings in Lockwood and the surrounding areas on this side of Huddersfield and explained the relevance and rich history of the area.

Historian Christina Longden (pictured below) revealed the story of her ancestor Robert Stanley, a grocer who cared about his community and who developed an interest in both national politics and international trade. He became a Muslim at the age of 69 in 1898 and was Vice President of Britain’s first mosque in Liverpool.

Rod Dimbleby is Chairman of the Yorkshire Dialect Society, the oldest dialect society in the world, and is a familiar face on TV, most recently on the BBC’s Countryfile and This Morning where he champions not just the Yorkshire accent, but also a very rich and sometimes hard to fathom dialect.

Yahya Birtis a well-known and highly regarded community historian in the UK who talked about two important pieces of research – the life of Fatima Cates, a young working-class woman who overcame great strife and forged her own directions in life. He also talked about his most recent research on Bradford’s astonishing Somali Village in 1906.

The free event was held at the Unity Centre on St Stephen’s Road, Lockwood, HD1 3RB on Sunday, November 23 from 1pm to 4pm.