Architectural gem Queensgate Market celebrates 40 years - pictures

Apr 2 2010 by Katie Grant, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

IT has been described as “an architectural wonder”.

Others have criticised it, both as a replacement for a Gothic-style Victorian building and as a modern day shopping experience.

But Queensgate Market Hall has survived and is now about to celebrate its 40th birthday.

Four decades after its opening, later the unique Queensgate Market Hall, with its 187 market stalls and 27 shops, still remains popular with shoppers.

In 2003, the future of the market was threatened by redevelopment plans that could have seen it demolished.

But the iconic building was saved and listed grade II in 2005.

A community group, Huddersfield Gem, was set up to ensure the future of the Princess Alexandra Walk market hall.

Huddersfield Gem co-founder, Adrian Evans, who is an architect and senior lecturer at Huddersfield University, said: “Queensgate Market was designed and built with confidence using a spectacular combination of architecture, engineering and art.

“It has served the town well and has been our own architectural gem.

“It is an exemplar of retail design. It is credit to the designers, builders and engineers that their work was listed after just 35 years.”

The huge soot-stained former Market Hall towered over King Street and The Shambles for many, many years.

But the former Huddersfield Borough Council decided in the 1960s that it had to go and commissioned a replacement.

Building began on Queensgate market in 1968 and it was officially opened on April 6, 1970.

The old 1880 Gothic Huddersfield Market Hall had to be demolished to make way for the daring J Seymour Harris Partnership and Leonard and Partners design.

The building is immediately recognisable by its distinctive roof – 21 white freestanding ‘hyperbolic paraboloid’ shells that allow light to flood into the market hall below.