HUDDERSFIELD

HUDDERSFIELD 'TECH' ETC..

Huddersfield Technical College Textile Department, where I started in 1955, was obliterated in the development of Huddersfield and its ghost lies somewhere under Queensgate and the Market Hall multi-story car park.

The Textile Department faced across a road to the Catering Department block which was located in what looked like prefab buildings.  During lunchtimes, and in periods of inactivity, the doorway to the textile department would contain a gathering of the socially inclined,  mostly of mill owner's sons with public school confidence.  They would be talking of cars and motor racing, admiring their mother's cars or their MG TDs and such like parked across the road and not least the coming and goings of the white clad female catering students. To mix in that society you had to be an avid reader of Motor Sport and Bill Boddy with Autocar as a second string.

The Textile Department was held in high esteem as were many of the departments in the 'Tech' which taught technology that was in demand for the large textile, engineering and chemical infrastructure, and others, of Huddersfield district and beyond, to the highest levels.  The term 'Centre of Excellence' gets used these days, but it can certainly be attributed to the 'Tech' in those days.

Here is a picture of some of a few textile students and Staff taken in the doorway of the original Textile Department.

For anyone who happened to be there at the time, here are the names I can identify –

Mark Bedforth – n/k - David Blackburn – ? Newman – n/k - Terje Baraldsness (Norwegian) –Ian Mackenzie – Rene Stizel (Swiss) – David Swanbury – Adnan Suvari (Turkish) – Per ? (Norwegian) – Irash ? (Persian) -  Zulfigar (Don' Know) – ? Mac Guinness

n/k (Staff) – George? (Staff) – Peter Hauser (Swiss) – Mrs Hauser (Swiss) – Bruce Firth – Christine Senior – n/k – Barry Quarmby – Lill Selmer (Norwegian) – n/k child

Mr Oxtoby (Staff) – Mr Thewlis (Staff) - ?(Mr Bell's Sec) – Geoff Kendall (Staff) - H S Bell (Principal) – John Mahoney (Staff) – Mr Brierley (Staff) – Edgar Hopkinson (Staff) – Mr Townend (Staff) - Mr Hallas (Staff)

Armand de Bouisseau (French) - Mustapha Kazerouni (Persian) – Ali ? (Persian?) – ? Khan (Indian)

(Adnan Süvari (b. 1926, Aydın, Turkey - d. 6 June 1991, Antalya, Turkey) was a Turkish football coach.
Under his lead, Turkish side Göztepe played semifinals in the UEFA Cup (1968–69)^[1] and quarterfinals in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup (1969–70).^[2]
He died of a heart attack on June 6, 1991.^{) Source Wilkipedia}

I regret I can't recall the names of some students and staff I knew so well.  This was taken in summer 1958.  Only a very small number of us are there for some reason and I am not sure of the occasion unless that was the end of the textile department in that location.

Here is a photo of a textile student dinner.  I won't attempt to name everyone.

 However, nearest the camera -

Standish??  – Brian Longbottom, who was the Design Apprentice immediately before me at Rock Mills - Colin Blackburn

 Facing the camera on that table -

Sohi Zargham (Persian) - Mustapha Kazerouni (Persian) and his English girlfriend - Irash ? (Persian) - Barry Quarmby - Ian Baxter

Apologies if any above are wrong or spelt wrongly. 

Two textile students in Greenhead park in 1959 - Then and Now!

 Self and Skender Zogu - (I won't ever get in Wikipedia!) - Skender Zogu

From there we moved to the new aesthetically acclaimed development of the Textile Tower.  There was another one for Engineering, behind St Paul’s Church and the original 'New Building', which were designed in the best traditions of Soviet style budget architecture.  The Technical College metamorphosed into a College of Technology around then, which I suppose sounded more upmarket, but it was still the Tech, and then into a Polytechnic, which sounded even grander and they ran business courses like the DMS, which meant another three years of evening study for me.  Now it is the University of Huddersfield.  It must be a great business as it seems to keep the construction industry fully employed as it sprawls around Huddersfield with a significant bespoke property portfolio.  One benefit has certainly been preserving some of the wonderful edifices of Firth Street mills.  I am told it makes an important contribution to the finances of the town in general and is held in high regard.

However, here is the textile tower, now long gone.

There used to be a little garden with a seat or two by the main road outside the college which has vanished and it was near where there is now a bus stop lay-by.  The first photograph I ever took with my Voigtlander Vito B camera was this one while the twin towers of textiles and engineering were still under construction as you can just see scaffolding.  I had been known to sit there myself. This gentleman was having his lunch there in 1959.  The dual carriageway ring road as it now is was much quieter then.

And here are two pictures taken from the textile building in November 1959 looking towards the Huddersfield Power Station and beyond.  The building on the right was the new Catering Block but that was also demolished in the University rebuilding programme

Beyond the power station and gasworks, further down on Leeds Road were assorted large chemical works, which burnt off or stunted the vegetation with the chemical fallout on the high valley side above the river Colne and Huddersfield Broad Canal just below Kirkheaton .  Now it is something of a nature reserve.

Looking towards Moldgreen.  I worked in Moldgreen a bit later on and it was not unusual to have a layer of fine soot on my desk or even in my desk drawers.

A couple more of the power station and gasworks in Turnbridge on a clear day.

From its origins as the Tech, the University of Huddersfield, has been extensively rebuilt in heroic style and virtually all you see in these images has vanished and been redeveloped.  The smog and fog has gone too.  We could get some real pea-soupers once upon a time.

This is Wakefield Road in January 1963 with the truck going uphill just past Chimney Lane towards Lepton from Huddersfield.   I was coming up this hill in the very dense fog on my 125cc Vespa scooter when a car coming down failed to realise that the road bends to the left a bit further down, so carried on in a straight line and tipped me over the kerb on the wrong side of the road - for him.

And another of January fog in 1963 looking towards Lepton from Wakefield Road.  They lingered for some time once they came.

But the sheep on the hills are now nearly white, well, raw wool coloured, instead of nearly black.

As an afterthought, since I have just come across it and it is totally unrelated, here is a picture of Denby Dale Centenary Methodist Youth Choir. 

Denby Dale Centenary Methodist Youth Choir - I took this sometime around the 1950s

 Mr  Beever the choirmaster is on the right at the front..  

Left to right- in blazer Tony Ward, John Ibbotson, Margaret Watts, partly hidden David Beever, Carol Sanderson, Margaret Ward, partly hidden Kevin Keeling, Patricia Ibbotson, Rex Blamires, Gillian Hallas, Alf Dearnley, Angela Beever, unknown hidden, Alan Whitehead, Carol Flack, Richard Haigh, Mr Beevers, David Flack. 

 
That is how we dressed on Sundays then.

I had a look on the web to see if I could find anything else about them (despite the fact that I was in the choir for a short while though not a Methodist) - Just this comment -

"CHURCH NOTES: Denby Dale Centenary Methodist Youth Choir in April, 1954 after winning the Wilson Shield at Barnsley Music Festival"

There must have been a picture too but it is no longer there. - I think the one below relates.  It is from Kirklees Image Archive taken by Huddersfield Examiner

Found this one of April 1954 - Photo of Youth Choir

So I finally got all the names of the choir here - 

Back Row –     Alwyn Boot, David Beever, Tony Ward, Alan Whitehead, Alwyn Lockwood

Middle Row – Michael Noble, John Ibbotson, Bryan Aukland, Rex Blamires, Keith Barraclough.

Front Row -    Margaret Chapman, Joan Bradford, Mr Beevers, Catherine Taylor, Alan Lockwood, Patricia Ibbotson.

 
Sad to say, but of all those named above, a few are no longer with us and some are not now in the best of health, but one remembers them all as they were then and life as it was in those days, which wasn't so bad at all.