Huddersfield historian Dr Anne Brook has received an award from the British Association for Local History.
Anne’s prize-winning article appeared in last year’s Huddersfield Local History Society Journal (2014) and looked at the history of Huddersfield’s small Jewish community.
She won the prize for the short local history article.
Following a career in higher education, Anne took early retirement to pursue research into Huddersfield’s commemoration of the First World War, completing her PhD at the University of Leeds in 2009.
Her research into the history of Huddersfield during the First World War had convinced Anne that the town had never had a synagogue until she came across a reference in an account of migrations here on the Huddersfield Local History Society’s website. Feeling ‘more than a little sceptical’ she was determined to find out more, both by tracking down original historical sources and contacting others in the area who were already researching the histories of West Yorkshire’s Jewish communities. This led to the surprising discovery that Huddersfield had been home to two synagogues although at different times.
Anne said: “Nigel Grizzard, an expert on the history of the Bradford community, put his skills in tapping the memories of present day descendants to use on the Huddersfield story, especially from the Second World War onwards. We were soon convinced there was very solid evidence emerging of two synagogues, one in the 1910s and early 1920s and the second in the 1940s, as well as a pre-history of Jews in the town and the surrounding area stretching back at least to the 1840s.”
She also paid tribute to Dr John Pearson, former head of Huddersfield University’s textiles and design department, who shared his own extensive research into the history of Huddersfield’s Jewish community.
Anne suggests in her article that the reason that Huddersfield’s synagogues have been forgotten was that they were not purpose-built. She believes the most likely location for the earlier synagogue was 11 Northumberland Street, now under the dual carriageway. The later synagogue at 11 Albion Street was last used in 1961 and was demolished to make way for the Civic Centre.
But Anne’s research touched not only on the buildings but also on the people who used the synagogues, a theme which she continues in this year’s recently published Huddersfield Local History Society Journal where she tells the story of Mark Freedman who managed the Empire cinema which opened in John William Street in 1915 and his son Meyer, killed in the First World War.
One consequence of trying to find out more about the history of Huddersfield’s Jewish community has been a series of Jewish-themed walks around Huddersfield led by Nigel Grizzard.
