After reading tales of the lost hamlet of Wood Bottom near Honley, Brian Lawrence of Golcar recalls another one.
“I lived in Kirkheaton as a lad,” he says. “I remember walking up The Shog to a hamlet called Houses Hill. It boasted just a few houses but had a phone box and a regular bus service (Route 15).”
Does anyone recall it or what happened to it? And where did The Shogget its name?
Brian adds another question: “Can anyone remember the name of the pub that stood on the canal bridge down Leeds Road at the back of the bus depot?”
Back at Wood Bottom George Mellor, of Meltham, says people still lived there in the early 1950s after the pub – known both as The Three Shiners and The Royal Oak – closed.
He worked for the Co-op in Meltham and says a lady called Doreen Beckett, who worked in the Co-op offices, lived there. The Co-op’s fruit and vegetable wagon serviced the hamlet at that time.
Martin Booth has provided another old photograph of another long gone pub, The Grove Inn.
“It used to be a coaching inn in the 1800s,” he says. “It was situated just after the Alpine bend at Honley going towards town. On the right side of today’s road there is an overgrown area and set back from the road side part of the wall can still be seen where the pub and stables used to be.”
The Grove was built to the same design and about the same time as The Jacob’s Well further up Woodhead Road, which would place it in the 1830s. Does anyone have information about other lost hamlets or long gone pubs in other parts of the Huddersfield area?
Send to the usual address.
