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KIRKLEES is on the brink of making far-reaching and long term decisions about how it will use the land under its control.

Its Local Development Framework aims to use a mixture of former industrial sites (brownfield), stretches of rural land (greenfield) and a small amount of land protected by Act of Parliament from development (Green Belt) has attracted huge controversy.

A similar but less ambitious upheaval took place in Huddersfield in the 1960s and 1970s. The crowning glory of this redevelopment was a four-lane ring road, with complementary road-widening schemes on all its feeder roads.

Mills, factories, pubs, rows of shops and hundreds of private homes were compulsorily purchased and knocked down.

This, unlike the LDF of today, concerned opening up a cluttered and largely Victorian town centre by demolishing old buildings, many of them in danger of becoming slums, and almost all suffering from poor access.

It was an urban, rather than suburban or rural plan, but it still upset a lot of people. It still does: many folk mourn the loss of the old Market Hall, the Shambles and the Packhorse Yard, for example.

This week’s pictures, rediscovered during the Examiner’s recent move to Bradley, look at a changing Huddersfield town centre during that period.

Since none of the pictures had captions, staff have dug into their memories to try and identify some of the sites. If readers can provide any more detail or want to offer different opinions, please get in touch.

For more nostalgia galleries click here.