I was informed by the seriously erudite Christopher Marsden that the bus station and car park were the work of Derek C W Vane: Borough Architect 1972-1974.
Having visited and photographed the bus station in 2016 I thought that it was about time I went up in the world, to the top level of the car park.
Mixed opinions from Parkopedia reviewers – let’s take a look around.
There are plans for refurbishment outlined in 2022 in the Huddersfield Hub.
The bus station will undergo a major revamp both inside and out and the most striking feature will be a sweeping canopy with a living grass roof which will run right across the main frontage from Macaulay Square to Upperhead Row.
Also of note a project by Kate Matthews to seriously rethink the role and design of the space.
The starting point for this project was the Welcoming Water group scenario, involving the controlled flooding of areas of the town.
The new interchange includes facilities for cycling, walking, and public transit. The basin and marina on the new lake allow for an increased focus on water-based transport, including a new bus-boat. The main Transport Hub sits below an undulating roof and contains not only the bus bays and ticketing facilities, but also co-working and relaxation spaces. The curves of the roof, trying to confuse the binary of floor and ceiling, are just one example of the ambiguity throughout the scheme.
This project was nominated for the Architects for Health Student Design Award in 2021.
More than once, though that’s no reason not to do so again – so I did.
Saying hello to Harold.
Harold saying hello to us:
Nostalgia won’t pay the bills; the world doesn’t owe us a living; and we must harness the scientific revolution to win in the years to come. This scientific revolution is making it physically possible, for the first time in human history, to conquer poverty and disease, to move towards universal literacy, and to achieve for the whole people better living standards than those enjoyed by tiny privileged classes in previous epochs.
He warned change would have to reach every corner of the country; The Britain that is going to be formed in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for the restrictive practices or for outdated methods on either side of industry.
Standing sentinel over one of Nikolaus Pevsner and John Betjeman’s favourite railway station front elevations.
Through a passage darkly.
Emerging into the light of day and the demolition of the Kirklees College 1969-72 by Borough Architect Charles Edmund Aspinall.
My thanks to the Metropolitan team who invited me in beyond the barriers.
We provide safe and efficient demolition services across a broad range of projects, from the small domestic dwelling to large scale industrial units – we offer the complete solution. With excellent communication and impeccable health and safety standards, we can project manage the decommissioning a structure on time and on budget.
Edward VII is under wraps.
Everything else is up for smash and grab – including the later concrete block immortalised by Mandy Payne.
LIDL is coming – and some homes
The final details have now been signed off by the council and work on the six-acre site – which includes the Grade II-listed original Huddersfield Royal Infirmary – can now begin.
The vandal-hit and fire-damaged late 1960s and early 1970s college buildings are to be demolished and Lidl will build a new supermarket with a 127-space car park. The store will eventually replace the store on Castlegate.
The former hospital will be retained and the site will see 229 apartments and an office complex. The apartments are expected to be for older or retired people.
Huddersfield’s £20M game-changing bus station is set to be completed by the end of 2025 with a living grass roof, sixty bike cycle hub, upgraded shops and new facilities
Crossing the road to the Civic Centre and the perennially empty piazza which along with the Magistrates Courts and Police Station was the work of the Borough Architects team – led by Charles Edmund Aspinall.
Walking excitedly toward the Exsilite panels set in the stone faced columns – a brand name for a synthetic, moulded, artificial marble.
Magistrates Courts
Police Station
Dick Taverne served under Harold Wilson’s premiership in the 1960s, he served as a Home Office Minister from 1966 to 1968, Minister of State at the Treasury from 1968 to 1969 and then as Financial Secretary to the Treasury from 1969 to 1970.
In 1970, he helped to launch the Institute for Fiscal Studies, now an influential independent think tank and was the first Director, later chairman.
The vision is to create an inclusive space where families, residents and visitors can enjoy a vibrant mix of music, arts, food and more in one central area, overlooking a stunning new urban park.
The council plans to demolish the Piazza Centre and create a new events/live music venue, a food hall, a museum and art gallery, a new library and a new multi-storey car park, all centred around a new Town Park.
Named after one of the Twentieth Century’s finest artists, the space nurtures a new and inspired generation of designers. Through visual and physical connection, the environment encourages students to work together, stimulating communication and ingenuity, the ingredients of successful collaboration.
Take that to the bank/s
Keep savin’, keep buildin’ That interest for our love Take that to the bank Keep savin’, keep buildin’ That interest for our love Take that to the bank
HSBC was designed by Peter Womersley, who also designed the thoroughly modern private house, Farnley Hey, near Castle Hill, which won the RIBA Bronze Medal in 1958.
Halifax Building Society
Having walked around town for more hours than enough I sought respite in The Sportsman and a glass of Squawk multi-berry fruited sour
Now I want to look in detail at the exterior ceramic art.
The façade of the market hall on Queensgate incorporates five roof sections with patent glazing and is decorated with square ceramic panels by Fritz Steller, entitled Articulation in Movement, set over natural stone cladding.
These continue across the façade of the adjoining shops, to make nine panels in all, with a tenth larger panel added in 1972, pierced by stairs and an entrance to the market hall from Queensgate.
They have representations of the mushroom shells of the market hall, turned through 90 degrees, with abstract representations of the goods available within.
The enormous abstract art panels weigh almost 50 tons.
Seen here in the 1970s when the trees and cars were smaller – though trousers and lapels were considerably wider.
Fritz Steller
1941 Born in Dresden, Germany.
1959-1964 Studied sculpture and architecture at Birmingham College of Art, Birmingham, UK. Specialised in sculpture.
Until 1969 Head of Art at Sebright School, Wolverley, near Kidderminster, Worcestershire, UK.
1969-1977 Established and led the Square One Design Workshop and Transform Ceramic Company, Snitterfield, near Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire, UK.
1977 -1980 Established and led ceramic production in Isithebe- Mandini, Kwazulu, South Africa.
1980 Left South Africa due to basic fundamental differences of opinion over the apartheid regime. Established and led an art centre and gallery in Ewzulwini Valley near Mbabane, Swaziland.
1992 After the destruction of the art centre and gallery moved to Germany.
Since 1993 has set up a new business in Empangeni, KwaZulu-Natal.
Fritz now lives and works in South Africa and Germany as an internationally recognised artist.
Designed by the J Seymour Harris Partnership – now Seymour Harris Architects, the building was opened on 6 April 1970 and features a roof structure based on 21 asymmetric paraboloid shells.
The practice was inspired by Mexican Felix Candela for the innovative, lightweight concrete roof sections.
Steller met the project’s lead architect Gwyn Roberts while they were both at college in Birmingham.
Roberts was never to see his masterpiece listed, the architect, who left the practice to set up on his own in the early ’70s, died in 2004.
Along the north wall of the hall is a relief sculpture entitled Commerce, in black painted metal with semi-abstract figures representing agriculture, trade and products, also by Fritz Steller.
So let’s have a look at the largest ceramic sculpture in the world – partially obscured by trees.
Commercial building with ground-floor retail units and offices to the upper floors, c1883, by W H Crossland with sculptural work by C E Fucigna. Sandstone ashlar, slate roof, substantial ashlar ridge stacks. C19 Queen Anne style with French influences and classical Greek sculpture. One of the ground-floor shop units was remodelled in 1935 by Sharp and Law of Bradford with Moderne shopfronts and interior fittings.
The cultural and visual collision is immediate – the pairing of Huddersfield’s grand Victorian manner with the latest of European Moderne.
Neaverson’s – purveyors of pottery and glass began life in 1893 in premises on Cross Church Street, before moving to the Grade I-listed Byram Street building in 1935.
Set to the ground floor of bay 4 is a 1935 Moderne shopfront by Sharp and Law of Bradford. The shopfront is of grey and pink/beige marble with unmoulded windows that are curved to eliminate reflection, and has a glazed door set within a recessed porch. Set below the top of the shopfront is a ribbon window with dark tinted glazing and slender vertical and horizontal muntin bars arranged in a geometric pattern. The original metal signage in stylised sans-serif relief lettering reads ‘NEAVERSONS’, ‘pottery’ and ‘four’.
Thought to echo Susie Cooper’s London shop and unswervingly now – the fascia must have been something of a shock to the taciturn Tykes.
There is not a day goes by when I don’t see some of my customers asking what went wrong. They think I was a failure and that is so not the truth.
Along came a restaurant:
The Grade II 1930’s interior has been refurbished by the new owners and exudes understated sophistication.
“Wow, I feel like I’m in London,” said Trish as she stepped into the newly-opened Neaversons restaurant, having just arrived on the train from the capital.
An alternate art trip devised by local art trippers Red Fodder.
We set forth from Huddersfield Station on Monday 13th January 2020 at the prearranged time of 14.00 hours. The weather was resolutely overcast and increasingly cold, with an ever present threat of rain.
Never to be knowingly deterred we made good progress around the town – we were hungry for art, the more contemporary the better.
Almost every avenue, alley and byway explored these are the snaps I snapped during our crazy Kirklees caper.
Along the way I added my own small contribution to the town’s contemporary art stock.
A veil was finally drawn over the afternoon’s cultural caprice with fine glasses of foaming ale in The Grove, where I finally came face to face with the Red Fodder folk for the very first time.
Kirklees College started life as Huddersfield Infirmary in 1831 up until 1967 when the Ramsden Technical College moved in, they paid £105,000 for the site.
In September 1968 the first students began lectures and the first new building on the site opened in 1969. The main new block was built in 1971 – the year the college became Huddersfield Technical College. In 2008 Huddersfield Technical College merged with Dewsbury College to form Kirklees College and relocated in 2013.
The campus incorporates 10 buildings over a 6.1 Acre site ranging from the old hospital complex to modern blocks of classrooms.
Some of the buildings have been used for the filming of the dramas Black Work, Remember Me where they changed some areas to be a care home, a hospital and a police station and the film Extremis.
The site is owned by Wiggett Construction Group, who have now confirmed they want to demolish the 1970s college buildings to make way for a Lidl supermarket.
Thanks to Derelict Places – they went inside, I didn’t, I don’t do that sort of thing.
I walked the lengthy perimeter, bobbing in and out of nooks and crannies in search of nothing in particular. Chatted to a Kirklees employee who had worked at the site, he regretted its closure and passing.
“This building had character, it was great to work here – now it’s going to be a supermarket.”
A curious amalgam of municipal classicism and hard edged 70s modernity, presided over by a sombre, care worn and patinated Edward VII.
Which seems both serendipitous and heartwarmingly convenient.
The bus station was opened on Sunday 1 December 1974 and is owned and managed by Metro. It is now the busiest bus station in West Yorkshire. The bus station is situated in Huddersfield town centre, underneath the Multi-storey car park. It is bordered by the Ring Road – Castlegate A62 and can be accessed from High Street, Upperhead Row and Henry Street.
There are 25 pick-up and three alighting only stands at the bus station.
Forever in the shadow of its Red Rose almost neighbour in Preston.
Some forty five miles and a fifteen and a half hour walk to the west.
Yet still a thing of beauty and a joy forever – given the recent repairs to the membrane covering of its multi-storey car park.
On the day of my visit it was clean, compact, cheerfully bustling and well used, passengers busy going about their business, of busily going about their business of going.
Light classics played soothingly upon the Tannoy, punters popped in and out of Ladbrokes, the kiosk plied its trade, the café was full and an air of calm, clear functionality reigned.
I often visit Huddersfield, and I often discover something new, exciting and different.
The Caledonian Café is everything that it isn’t, it’s the slow accretion of time, personal taste and accoutrements. Not frozen but slowly evolving, warm and welcoming. Owners Tony and Claire were more than happy to offer their company, tea and sympathy.
“The students come in to do their projects, sometimes they just ask to photograph the salt pots.”
I was more than happy to oblige and comply.
The prices are more than reasonable, and Tony goes out of his way to accommodate his customers.
” The families don’t always have a lot, so I give them two plates and split the burger and chips for the two kiddies.”
It was still early for me so I settled on a large tea, but I’ll be back before long for a bite to eat.
So best foot forward, get yourself down to the Caledonian, you won’t be disappointed.
The passengers’ every need was attended to with alacrity and style.
“As a Stewardess your appearance was paramount, a beautician would come in during training to teach us how to apply make up.”
But it simply wasn’t enough.
The life of Christopher Cockerell’s bold British invention, was short and bumpy.
Genevieve Payne, a former stewardess:
“I remember the summer of 1979 as a year of really bad weather and rough seas.”
“I was working on a craft in a force 8, so on this day we were literally hitting the ceiling, passengers were throwing up everywhere.”
“One lady became hysterical I had to slap her to calm her down.”
By the 1980’s Pegwell and the hovercraft were in terminal terminus decline.
It’s a lot less bother without a hover.
What prevails is the shoreline, a concrete landing skirt and the slow process of reclamation, as nature decides that the council is quite right to decide to create a nature reserve.
Slap dab in the middle of the town stands a lone tower block of residential, social housing.
Buxton House backs onto the lower rise Civic Centre and is conjoined to the main shopping street and precinct, linked by a low wide underpass. Adorned on its street entrance by the most enchanting mosaic, announcing a spry geometric optimism to those shoppers and residents that pass under, through the underpass.
Ten floors of homes are bound in brick concrete and glass – a truly commanding central location, graced by the inclusion of an incongruous Chinese restaurant – The Mandarin.
Huddersfield West Yorkshire shares a legacy with many other towns, a legacy of successive shopping developments of varying styles and quality. Shaped by fashion, topography and finance each makes a more or less bold statement on the fabric of the area.
In order to survive each geo-retail layer of architecture, must reinvent itself or die – adding new branding, covering period detail with newer, ever more impermanent fascias, flagging flagging and flags of all stripes.
I encircled the Piazza – its monumental nether regions, enlivened with almost temple like scale and applied brick, stone and concrete surfaces, the dark and forbidding, cinematic subterranean service tunnels, and the open walkways of the main shopping areas.
Spanning the Huddersfield canal and set on a hillside site of a hilly Yorkshire town, the University Buildings dominate the Colne Valley area to the south.
Typically their history spans an earlier site which evolves during the 50s and 60s, as part of the drive to develop the industrial/educational base of the area and the burgeoning growth of the provincial Polytechnics.
The result is a confident yet dizzying panoply of styles and materials on a fairly compressed but expanding site.
Brick, concrete, glass and more recent modern clad additions collide in a bun fight of assertive volumes.
It all seems very exciting.
“David Wyles, The Buildings of Huddersfield: four architectural walks – facing us now is the impressive bulk of the Central Services Building in front of which stood a six-storey building; its structure emphasised by the reinforced concrete frame which projected skeleton-like above the main roof level. This was part of the earlier Technical College development which included several buildings of similar style designed from 1957 onwards by Frederick Gibberd. The six-storey blocks have since been demolished.
The focal point of the campus, the Central Services Building, was designed by Hugh Wilson and Lewis Womersley of Manchester and constructed between 1973 and 1977 at a total cost of £3,651,000. The building contains the main non-teaching facilities.
Much of the layout derives its form from the hillside site and this is accentuated by the undercover concourse leading through to the canal, which gives access to all parts of the building. The construction is based on a grid of reinforced concrete with floors supported on circular columns. The building is clad in light buff coloured bricks intended to harmonise with local sandstone.”
One can only marvel at the ingenuity and vision that brings together modern architecture, technology and municipal functionality. It has produced an indoor market place of lasting and everlasting beauty and wonder.
Vaulted concrete roof columns and high side lighting from the pierced window strips between the split level roofing lead the eye up towards eternity.
The exterior and interior walls are both adorned by some of the finest mid-century public art.
A lasting provincial splendour that offers more with each visit – it’s irresistible.
A local café group, that has the market cornered in West Riding mock-baronial dining.
Walking into a half-timbered, overwhelmingly cream and red, world of tea, toast and hot beef sandwiches, there is a dislocation in time and location. No longer March 2015 in the centre of a Yorkshire Town, but in a lukewarm Westworld totally lacking in animatronic psychopathic killers.
The furniture is brown.
Moves are afoot to refurbish and refresh the brand, one branch doing its best to emulate an Argos furniture showroom, with an incongruous suit of armour thrown in for good luck.
Clank!
Pop in make your own mind up – old new old, or new new old.
Turn left out of the station, round past the George, big and closed. Head under the railway viaduct – there it is right in front of you, on the corner of John Street.
The Sportsman.
You will not find a finer pub, but you don’t have to, you’re there.
Striding across the decorative deco porch, pushing aside the weighty timber and glass doors. Inside a dull warm afternoon light, falls lazily through the windows. White globes glow low from the ceiling, gently washing the well worn parquet floor. Put your bags down on the upholstered seating, walk up to the bar get a pint pulled, then another – take your time it’s fluid.
The main room is wide and welcoming, side rooms smaller and intimate.
Decorated in a post war muted style, all wood and restrained colour, certainly not over fussy or over decorative. It has a style that doesn’t impose itself upon you – simply whispers in your ear
Pub.
Look out for the tiles, a series of sporting scenes in the gents, mysterious.
The former Richmond flats in Huddersfield have been revamped and are now known as Harold Wilson Court.
The two other blocks sadly have neither been revamped nor renamed after famed local politicos.
Herbert Asquith or Luddite House – take your pick.
They stand by the road unloved and forlorn, tinned up awaiting demolition. Once home to hundreds, the former residents have now been paid out, moved out and hopefully rehoused.
Richmond flats were named after Sidney Richmond, the former Huddersfield Borough Council architect, and were the second of the three blocks currently on the site. The first block opposite was Lonsbrough Flats, named after Anita Lonsbrough, 1960 Olympic Gold medal swimmer and council employee, with the third being the middle block Ibbotson Flats, named after Derek Ibbotson, the Huddersfield athlete who held the world record for running a mile.
The site was obviously more valuable than viable town centre homes – Tesco is a coming
Hurrah.
Go see them, say hello and wave goodbye – they’ll soon be gone.
Modern Mooch 