I have rambled many times about what the air quality was like in the Colne Valley in the 1950s and 1960s. How dozens of mills and thousands of houses were belching out black smoke from their chimney stacks, not to mention all the steam locos pulling all those train loads of coal up and over the Pennines from iconic coal mining areas of Yorkshire – like Wakefield, Doncaster, Barnsley, Selby, Rotherham, Kirklees, Castleford and Leeds – all producing millions of tonnes a year to be transported by millions of coal wagons to every corner of the land.
This is an image of what Milnsbridge looked like 100 years ago. It is just one village at the eastern end of the Colne Valley. There were several villages with their own ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ just like this along the valley bottom.
The main image for this article is Milnsbridge today. The large mill in the centre is where I started work as an apprentice carding engineer in 1962. It ceased as a working mill in about 1980 and was converted into flats and apartments in the late 1990s.
Shaping the Colne Valley
Geologically, the Colne Valley was shaped by the ice age – known today as the quaternary period – which is the most recent of the three geologic periods. This started just 2.58 million years ago, which seems a long time, but is only 0.1% of the overall time the earth has existed. It shaped our landscape by the toing and froing of the ice sheets over thousands of years, long before the term ‘global warming’ was invented.
Along with the quirkiness of rock formation, this in turn gave us water that ran through rock containing very little calcium or magnesium – now commonly known as ‘soft water’. The steep-sided, narrow Colne Valley has lots of available soft water, and an abundance of local coal laid down 300 million years ago – during a period when the earth was mainly swamp and any vegetation was quickly buried by more swamp and more dead vegetation, which then rotted very slowly due to the lack of oxygen contained in this soup. Millions of years of heat, pressure and oxygen-free vegetation then gave us coal, but this had to wait for the Industrial Revolution for most of it to be put to use.
The abundance of soft water in the Colne Valley, and the availability of cheap coal and a reliable canal and railway system, meant the area was ideal for producing textiles. This was first done in small cottage industries dotted around the landscape, and then centralised in vast mills. These in turn needed more trainloads of raw wool to be processed, and the finished fabric to be transported to the rest of the world, which began to regard Huddersfield cloth as second to none.
Air quality and hay fever
I started this ramble intending to write about air quality and hay fever, but as usual my train of thought has shot off in an entirely unpredictable direction. I find this whole process fascinating. It’s probably something to do with being unable to concentrate my mind, or summat. Anyway, back to the plan…
The corporal of our W.A.R.T.S. walking group had been moaning, groaning and chuntering about a sore throat of late. After he got over the idea that it could be throat cancer, I suggested that as I was experiencing similar symptoms but not moaning anywhere near as much. Being a friendly helpful sort, I wanting to put his mind at rest and said “it was probably hay fever brought on by tree pollen, ya soft wart”.
It’s been known for some time that children who are being over protected by their helicopter parents (constantly hovering) are not allowed to build an immunity because they don’t play outside as much, in the fresh air, muck and dirt. As the old saying goes “a little bit a muck does ya good”! This fresh air also contains pollen, from different plants at different times of the year. As there were no trees is the Colne Valley when I was a lad, I never got the opportunity to build up an immunity to that particular pollen, so I now get a sniffly nose and a tickly sore throat in April and May.
From textiles to rugby
As well as being world-renown for its textiles, the Huddersfield area is proud of its rugby heritage. Many of the local towns mentioned earlier – including Dewsbury and Batley, but not Kirklees – hold fond memories for me for this reason. They were where my dad took me to watch rugby league when I was a lad.
Huddersfield Giants were called Fartown in those days, because that was where the ground was situated. The team was founded in 1895 during the breakaway meeting from the Rugby Football Union that took place in the George Hotel Huddersfield. The Giants are now in the professional super league.
Batley also have a claim to fame, for they were the first Challenge Cup winners of the 1896/97 season, beating St Helens 10-3 at Headingly, Leeds. Huddersfield have won the Challenge Cup six times, but not for some time. However, they came very close in 2022 when they were narrowly beaten by Wigan 16-14 in the final at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium.
Bureaucratic Kirklees
‘Kirklees’ is an area many readers may not have heard of. In fact, neither had the people who lived there, until some bureaucratic council committee decided that Huddersfield was to form the administrative centre of a metropolitan borough, which also includes the aforementioned Dewsbury and Batley. This borough was formed following the Local Government Act 1972.
The name was chosen from more than 50 suggestions put forward by the merging councils. It is named after Kirklees Priory, which is claimed to be the burial place of Robin Hood. This of course prompts at least two thoughts. Firstly, leaving a committee to decide on a name will inevitably result in something that fits nothing and something that no-one can relate to. Secondly, in how many places can somebody be buried if they never existed?
If I learned nothing else when I was a lad, The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Richard Greene – essential television viewing from 1955 to 1959 – taught me that someone as good as Robin Hood can be buried where he wants and in as many places as he wants. Can anyone around my age resist singing ta, ra, ta, ta, ta,ta,ta, ta, tahhh, whoosh… twang?
