Huddersfield and The North: Notes from a 'Comer-In', a southern bird who stayed north too long.

“I rode over the mountains to Huddersfield. A wilder people I never saw in England: the men, women, and children, filled the street as we rode along, and appeared just ready to devour us. They were however tolerably quiet while I preached; only a few pieces of dirt were thrown” - John Wesley, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, 1827

These words from the visiting methodist preacher as he surmounted the Pennines on his approach to the town, colourful in its prose, summarises some of the shock and awe of the childhood version of myself, sat in the backseat of my father’s Ford Mondeo as we entered the administrative borough of Kirklees.  The sense of the exotic, perhaps not shared by the locals, heightened by the completely different visual character of a town that seem saturated with old stone, chemical works, factories, chimneys, the  hills and huge vistas presenting an area with virtually no similarity with my hometown of Brackley in rural and suburban Northamptonshire.  Huddersfield, then, making the presence of its landscape and industry felt in even the tenderest years of my early childhood memories of the place.

“Someone once asked your dad how long a person would have to live here before they’re no longer ‘comer-ins’. Your dad looked him in the eye and said, ‘Fifty years, and you’ll be dead by then.’” - Simon Armitage, All Points North, 1998

You see, this region can be decidedly dismissive of outsiders, especially those with Queen’s English accents.  The brash and direct nature of the people of this town quick to remind the ‘comer-ins’ that their claims to the area are diluted by the evidently unfortunate position of having a relatively alien birthplace and upbringing. Yet, maybe it stands to reason to give such reminders, there is context to the claim that there exists something in the water here,

“The Colne Valley folk are typically Yorkshire. I know no part of the West Riding where the sterling qualities of a moorland race have been better preserved. The old dialect still survives in spite of efforts of state schooling to give speech an alien twist. The population maintain a spirit of sturdy independence of thought and action characteristic of all peoples who breathe the air which has swept over wide regions of moor and heather… they have good reason to regard themselves as the backbone of England. They led the Luddite rising, were a hotbed of Chartist agitation, and formed their political Labour Union before the Independent Labour Party came into existence.” - Ernest Lockwood, Colne Valley Folk, 1936

“Crouched in a declivity among the Yorkshire moors, in the harsh allure of the Bronte country, there lies the town of Huddersfield… a place of drab and fusty reputation, the long huddle of the textile mills, creeping away to the moor’s edge; the marching file of tall brick chimneys, their vapours drifting into the dusk, the coveys of cramped terrace houses, jammed hugger-mugger against the hillsides; the patina of dirt, labour, and middle age. It is not, at first sight, an exuberant scene.”

“The wind blows chill and bluff off Wessenden.  The buses lumber sadly.   The evening sky is grey and melancholy.  Here nevertheless, the modern world was born.  These stocky, taciturn people were the first to live by chemical energies, by steam, cogs, iron, and engine grease, and the first in modern times to demonstrate the dynamism of the human condition. This is where by all rules of heredity, the sputnik and the moon rocket were conceived.  Baedeker may not recognise it, but this is one of history’s crucibles.”

“Seldom was a town more intensely urban: for the catalyst of industry is acidulous indeed, and old historical roots soon rot away in its intensity.

Everywhere there are echoes of old miseries.

To this day the local motorcycle club calls itself “The Luddites”, after those poor, angry, bewildered folk who, baffled alike by science and economics, smashed up the new-fangled machines of those valleys in an orgy of dazed resentment.

To this day the stunted terrace houses crouch quaintly but damply back to back, instinct with rheumatism, mothers-in-law, and strong, sweet tea.

To this day in the faceless factory alleys of this place, the barren materialism of the pioneers- careless of everything beautiful, soft, old, useless.

Huddersfield is a town without grace. In her streets you may easily imagine the harshness of the technical revolution, and you can hardly escape the relics of its brave gusto.”

- James Morris, The Road to Huddersfield: The Story of the World Bank, 1963