Cleckheaton

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Cleckheaton is a town in West Yorkshire, England, situated south of Bradford, east of Brighouse and west of Batley. It is at the centre of the Spen Valley and was the major town in the pre-1974 borough of Spenborough.

It is now within the metropolitan borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire and has a long tradition of returning Liberal Democrat councillors although has a varied history of MPs. It has a history as a mill town, like much of West Yorkshire, although this industry has now all but vanished.

The doom metal pioneer band My Dying Bride originate from Cleckheaton.

Roger Hargreaves who wrote the Mr Men and Little Misses series of books came from Cleckheaton.

The Reverend Patrick Brontë, lived in Hightown while he was the vicar of Hartshead Church and the area is made famous in his daughter Charlotte Brontë's book, Shirley.

The famous confectionery sweet 'Lion Midget Gems' come from Cleckheaton (now sold under the Trebor Basset name). They were made originally in a little row of cottages at the bottom of South Parade directly opposite the slide back large door of the existing factory which is just off Westgate. The present factory (now owned by Cadbury Schweppes) stands on the original site.

Cleckheaton was home to Aakash, the world's largest Indian restaurant, seating 860 guests, which was set in an English congregational chapel, originally built in 1859 until the business closed in October 2006.

1 History of Cleckheaton and the Spen Valley
2 Cleckheaton and the Spen Valley
3 Cleckheaton Sport
4 External links

[edit] History of Cleckheaton and the Spen Valley

[edit] Early history

Like much of England, the Spen Valley was once heavily wooded and this is reflected in some of the local place names, Birkenshaw and Oakenshaw mean birch and oak grove respectively, and the well used -hurst and -royd suffixes suggest clearings.

Human habitation began thousands of years ago and Mesolithic and Neolithic remains have been found in various places. Roman remains have been found in the valley and it is thought that the roads from York to Chester, and from settlements in Halifax and Wakefield, ran through Cleckheaton and the junction gave rise to a staging post.

Habitation continued into the first millennium AD as suggested by the Briton place names Walton Cross and Kilpin Hill and the Anglo-Saxon names Gomersal and Heckmondwike. The Viking invasions also left their mark in partitioning the area, half of which was ruled by Anglo-Saxon lords and half by Scandinavian ones.

The Norman conquest led to many revolts by the Anglo-Scandinavian nobles of the area and the various hamlets in the valley lost over half of their value. Indeed only Cleckheaton, Gomersal, Liversedge and Hartshead were mentioned in the Domesday Book despite other areas, Heckmondwike and Hunsworth, being inhabited due to their not having any taxable value due to the ravages by local conflicts. The whole area passed to the lord of Pontefract, Ilbert de Lacy, under whose rule at least one Norman and one Anglo-Saxon lord held some land.

There were at that time ten manors in the Spen Valley area: Cleckheaton, Gomersal, Heckmondwike, Hunsworth, Liversedge, Oakenshaw, Oakwell, Clifton, North Bierley and Hartshead, and it is from these manors that the villages which later bore their names arose. As time passed, the land of de Lacy was subdivided and by the 14th century the manors of Oakwell, Gomersal and Heckmondwike were in the ownership of the de Tilly family who lived at Oakwell Hall, Liversedge passed to the de Nevilles of Cleckheaton by marriage with the de Liversedge family. The De Thornhills owned Hunsworth and North Bierley, and other areas had passed to the de Warrennes family who were the lords of the Manor of Wakefield.

Just as complex was the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The whole area was divided between three parishes. The manors of Hartshead and Clifton were a detached part of the Dewsbury Parish, which had a daughter church in Hartshead, and North Bierley was in the Bradford Parish. The rest of Spen Valley had as its parish church St Peter and St Paul's in Birstall with a chapel-of-ease in Cleckheaton, the White Chapel (later Whitechapel). There was a small Cistercian priory in Kirklees from the eleventh century (near Hartshead) but this had very little influence on the area.

[edit] Robin Hood

It is arguable whether the legendary Robin Hood actually existed, but there are a large number of stories and legends surrounding him and the Spen Valley. It is reputed that the prioress of Kirklees Priory was Robin Hood's cousin and that he was killed in the gatehouse of the Priory. He was buried in the convent cemetery but his gravestone was moved sometime before the 15th century. Nowadays the reason given for this is that it commemorates the site where his last arrow fell - he fired his last arrow from the site of the Three Nun's Public House towards the convent and asked that he be buried where his arrow landed, but this is a recent addition to the legend. The original gravestone was replaced in the 18th century with one bearing the words "Hear Under dis laitl Stean / Laz robert earl of Huntingtun / Ne'er arcir ver az hie sa geud / An pipl kauld im robin heud / Sick utlawz az hi an iz men / Vil england nivr si agen / Obiit 24 kal Dekembris 1247"

Also at this time it is reputed that King John was married in the chapel of Liversedge Hall which was the home of the de Nevilles.

[edit] The Introduction of Textile Working

The area was very disorganised for a long time after the Norman Conquest and the richest townships at that time of the were still the richest 300 years later as the Poll Tax returns of 1379 show. They also demonstrate the lack of administration as only the richest four of the 227 families living in the Spen Valley were made to pay more than the 4d minimum tax. These tax returns also show the recent deviation form the traditional sources of wealth in the area (i.e. farming and allied trades). These were centred around textiles and included dyeing, weaving and fulling (folding, gathering and pleating of cloth for garments) (common names in the area nowadays still recall these early trades: Lister- dyer, Webster- weaver, Walker- fuller). The spread of these trades was also as a result of the absence of regulation of the area. Due to the lack of manorial control, land was divided between all the sons in a family rather than just passing to the eldest. As the farmland owned by a family got smaller they became unable to support the family and so people turned to production of woollens to gain extra income.

After the Reformation, Kirklees Priory was largely destroyed many families were driven from the area and new non-aristocratic lords of the manor who were sympathetic to Protestantism were introduced by Elizabeth I as was a puritan clergyman who was installed at Birstall Church. By 1570, at the time of the Rising of the Northern Earls, the last of the old Norman noble families had been swept away. Sir John Neville went into exile and forfeited his estate and Thomas Hussey (heir to the de Tilly family of Oakwell Hall) was imprisoned in the Tower of London for some time before being pardoned.

By the 17th Century land-owning farmers were finding it increasingly difficult as were their landlords and some payments were still in kind as farmers had no money to pay their debts. Meanwhile the textile workers were becoming more and more prosperous and paid less and less attention to their hard up and increasingly impotent landlords. During the English Civil War the clothiers were on one side and the landlords on the other. Lords of the area were made Royalist officers and made some progress such as at the battle of Adwalton Moor about a mile east of Birkenshaw and the siege of Bradford, before the Parliamentarians took control of the area. Royalist families were forced, after the war, to pay large fines to keep their lands and avoid imprisonment. All the time clothiers were growing wealthier and by the end of the 17th Century more than half of the wills in the parish of Birstall came from men whose wealth came from textiles.

[edit] Nonconformity

After the restoration of the Monarchy, Anglicanism was reintroduced also. However many people had found puritan teachings more to their taste and it took many years to re-install an Anglican vicar to Whitechapel. Despite the draconian nonconformist laws, there was a large number of non-Anglican meeting houses and nonconformity flourished; a fifth of the population of the Birstall Parish was estimated to be nonconformist. Quakers were widespread and even now a number of 17th and 18th Century Quaker burial grounds remain in the area. In the 18th century Presbyterianism was widespread but then lost a large minority of its flock to Unitarianism and Baptistism. Methodism also flourished from the 1740s after visits from John Wesley and Charles Wesley, as did Moravianism. Indeed John Wesley lived in Birstall for some time as it was near to many large towns in the West Riding.

In spite of the religious strength in the Valley, the inhabitants were somewhat unworldly and still went to astrologers, quack doctors and prophets. Men like Eli Collins, the "Wizard of Wyke" and Alvery Newsome, the "Wise man of Heckmondwike" were widespread. Furthermore, to increase the isolation, the area had no canals and had few roads, despite a few turnpike roads, including the major ones from Leeds to Huddersfield and Bradford to Halifax.

Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, was born in Birstall in 1733 and grew up in Heckmondwike in the Old Hall which was the home of John Keighley, his uncle and constable of Heckmondwike. As well as his well known scientific work, he was also a strongly religious man, and as a strict Calvinist disagreed with the establishment for much of his life. He moved to America as an old man to escape persecution where he died.

[edit] The Industrial Revolution

After the discovery of good quality coal in the north of the Valley industry spread quickly and ironworks including one producing steam engines under licence from Boulton and Watt's factory in Soho, London and one making armaments for the Napoleonic Wars were to be found in the North Bierley and Oakenshaw. In 1785 steam engines were used for the first time in textile engineering (to pump water to power the wheels of the mill when the current of the Beck was too weak - an engine which directly powered machinery was first installed in 1897). By the end of the century 11 mills were to be found in the Parish.

The Reverend Hammond Roberson lived in Healds Hall in Liversedge which was built by the Overseer of the Poor in Heckmondwike in 1764. In 1804 Roberson, annoyed that the administration of Liversedge was disorganised, promoted a system of reform - the select vestry - which quickly spread to Cleckheaton and Heckmondwike.

Roberson was incumbent at Hartshead Church and in 1810 after his wife's death turned his attention to church building in the area. The first one he built was Liversedge Church, of which he became vicar, which was opened in 1816 at a cost to himself of £7,474,111.10 and 4 farthings. In 1818 Parliament voted a million pounds for the building of new churches in the country and Roberson was able to secure £9000 of this to build churches in the area. He spent £3000 each on building Heckmondwike and Cleckheaton churches and used the remainder towards building another 6 churches in the region including those in Roberttown, Birkenshaw and Hightown.

At the time of the building of Liversedge Church there was a great deal of poverty in the area and many people thought that money should be spent on supporting the poor rather than building churches. The wars had ravaged the country's economy for years, food was expensive and the last straw was the introduction of machinery which threatened to end what little work was available. Many soldiers were posted in the area in case of an uprising by hungry and angry people.

[edit] The Luddites

Luddism was a movement that began in Nottinghamshire in opposition to industrialisation which was leading to job losses. It was not widespread among all textile workers but was among croppers. These people were involved in the finishing of cloth and shearing frames threatened to make redundant their highly specialised trade. Although the Spen Valley was not a centre for cropping it was the location of the most high-profile act of Luddite action in the country.

In 1812 William Cartwright of the Rawfolds Mill installed shearing frames and there was a great deal of bad feeling in the area as a result. Local clergymen such as Reverend Hammond Roberson and Reverend Patrick Brontë his successor at Hartshead encouraged local landowners and manufacturers to stand up against the Luddites' threats.

Patrick Brontë was the father of the more famous literary sisters. He became curate of Hartshead Church in 1810 and while there met and married his wife Maria. His eldest two children, Maria and Elizabeth were born in a house in Liversedge which still stands today. He was very strongly against any action to destroy cropping machines and with Roberson formed a formidable body of opposition to the widely held sympathy for the Luddites.

On 11 April Luddites attacked the Mill. 100 to 150 of them met by the Three Nuns and walked to the Shears Inn, and onto Rawfolds. Cartwright had anticipated the attack and had 13 men on guard at the factory.

The attack was a failure and two Luddites, Samuel Hartley and John Booth, were mortally wounded. The dying men were taken to the Yew Tree Inn (which had previously been the home of Josiah Ferrer, a 17th Century Constable of Liversedge) and then to the Star Inn, both in Roberttown. Medical men attended Hartley and Booth as did Roberson who tried to bully them into telling him who their leader was. Nitric acid and white-hot pokers were used but whether this was for torture of to staunch bleeding is not known. Booth's leg had to be amputated but before a surgeon could be called he had died. At the point of death, Booth whispered to Roberson, "Can you keep a secret?" Yes, promised the clergyman. "So can I" said the dying man just before he expired.

Soon after a mill owner in a nearby village was assassinated and the sympathy of the inhabitants of industrial areas quickly switched sides to that of the mill owners. A number of men, some of whom who were involved in both attacks were arrested. The committal of these men was heard in the upstairs room of the Black Bull Inn, in Birstall opposite St Peters Church (which still has the courtroom intact) and they went from there to the York Assizes where they were tried in 1813.

There were two trials, one for four men accused of the murder and one three days later for the attack on Cartwright's Mill. The murder trial took place on 12 January 1813 and three men were found guilty who were publicly hanged and dissected two days later.

The trial of the men accused of attacking Cartwright's Mill was also a capital trial as intent to destroy of a factory was a hanging offence. Eight men were tried (the three hanged the day before were also implicated in this trial). The jury found 5 of the 8 men guilty. They were hanged the next day on Saturday 16 January 1813.

[edit] The Rise of the Spen Valley

By the mid 19th Century the Spen Valley entered its golden era. In 1800 children were paid not enough to feed them for putting staples into leather for carding wool, but by 1838 there were eleven carding factories in Cleckheaton and by 1893 the town was recognised as the carding capital of the world! Other trades which flourished were blanket making and carpet weaving. Towns became rich and the population rose (by a factor of 5 between 1800 and 1900). At this time Heckmondwike began to celebrate its wealth with the first Christmas illuminations in the country.

The mill owners built turnpike roads between the villages to enable their employees to get to work and lobbied to get railways built to get their products to reach customers. After a great deal of wrangling with the various railway companies in the 1840s railways were finally built which enabled the textile mills, ironworks, chemical factories and collieries compete with those around the country. More that this, the railways brought together the people of the individual villages of the Valley and the quickly the villages grew until they merged together.

[edit] The Emergence of Spenborough

In 1853 Heckmondwike was granted a Local Board of Health, as was Cleckheaton in 1864. In 1873 the partition of Liversedge between them was mooted and it was only the Tories coming back into power in the next year that saved Liversedge which was given a Local Board in 1875, as was Gomersal. Bradford, the now huge town to the north stole away Oakenshaw and North Bierley and in 1885 the four townships amalgamated to become the Parliamentary constituency of Spen Valley. There were at this time attempts to involve all the local boards in joint pan-valley projects such as installation of sewers and water. In 1915, such joint ventures resulted in Cleckheaton, Liversedge and Gomersal merging to form the Spenborough Urban District Council, which was enlarged in 1937 when Birkenshaw, Hunsworth and Hartshead joined.

Around of the turn of the century, many huge and expensive buildings were erected and became symbols for the area's wealth, massive chapels and new Grammar Schools were built in both Cleckheaton and Heckmondwike, public baths were opened and to mark the new constituency and the fact that it was the centre of it, Cleckheaton built a town hall in 1892, paid for by public subscription.

A motorcycle factory and a car factory opened in Cleckheaton and BBA, the large asbestos firm built its headquarters in the town. There was even a thriving tourist industry as people came to look around the area made famous by Charlotte Brontë's "Shirley" and by the Luddite attacks. The inhabitants of Spenborough were very public spirited and due to its local nature everyone knew their councillor and took part in public events which were very widespread and popular. The local gentry were well respected and were great benefactors to local causes, the Mowatt family paid for Cleckheaton Library and also the reference library at Cleckheaton's grammar (later secondary) school, Whitcliffe Mount which bears their name.

From the 1920s however Spenborough's fortunes began to decline. Pits began to close and trade waned. Slowly the centralised government took on responsibilities previously held by Spenborough such as water supply, gas production, public health and education. Spenborough which now included all of the Spen Valley save Heckmondwike was given a Borough Status by Her Majesty the Queen on 23 May 1955, the borough retained its coat of arms which bore the motto "Industry Enriches" which it had been granted in 1915, but by now the level of industry was in serious decline as the textile mills, foundries and other factories slowly closed.

[edit] Kirklees

After about a hundred years of joint public interest in civic administration, this quickly came to a virtual end in 1974 when the local authority changes took effect. The West Riding of Yorkshire was reconstituted as West Yorkshire and Spenborough and Heckmondwike were swallowed up by the new Kirklees Metropolitan Council, which although centred around Huddersfield was named after an area in the Valley! As a result of the distant local authority and the reduction of councillors people in the valley became detached from their representatives and large-scale public involvement in local administration was hence much reduced.

[edit] Cleckheaton and the Spen Valley

Although Cleckheaton is only a small town it is surrounded by a number of small villages. Most of these are separate to Cleckheaton although are classed as part of the postal town of Cleckheaton. Liversedge is a separate postal town and its villages are therefore, postally, classified differently. All the following villages form part of the Spen Valley with Cleckheaton in the centre:

Oakenshaw, East Bierley, Hunsworth, Birkenshaw, Drub, Gomersal, Little Gomersal, Littletown, Millsbridge, Liversedge, Roberttown, Hartshead, Clifton, Hightown and Scholes.

Cleckheaton itself is made up of areas such as Moorend, Whitechapel, Whitcliffe, Moorbottom, Moorside, the Marsh and Rawfolds.

[edit] Cleckheaton Sport

Cleckheaton's rugby union team play in the National Division 3 North and are a constituent part of Cleckheaton Sports Club and play at their grounds in Moorend, where they also have "one of the best bowling greens in West Yorkshire", often holding local league games and such competitions as the John Smith's Classic.

Liversedge F.C. are the town's highest football club in the football league pyramid, playing in the Northern Counties East Football League Premier Division for the 06-07 season. They play at Claybourne, not far from Cleckheaton town centre, down Quaker Lane off Hightown Road.

There are many Sunday League football teams around Cleckheaton and cricket is also big locally, with Cleckheaton (also part of Cleckheaton Sports Club) Scholes, Gomersal, Spen Victoria, Hartshead Moor, East Bierley and Liversedge all within the Spen Valley.