Huddersfield formed its very own council 150 years ago this week

This Friday, September 7, sees the 150th anniversary of Huddersfield Corporation’s very first meeting .

Three days before, 42 councillors had been elected for the new borough’s 12 wards. For the first time, Huddersfield had an elected local council.

The corporation would look after the town’s affairs for over a century, until combined with its neighbours into Kirklees in 1974.

Those first elections were an all-male affair – though some single women had a local vote from 1869, half a century before any women gained a Parliamentary vote in 1918.

Elections in most wards were vigorously contested, with most seats taken by Liberals – the leading party then in the northern industrial towns. The building of today’s Town Hall lay ten years ahead, so when the town’s first councillors met on the 7th, it was in the Philosophical Hall on the other side of Ramsden Street – later rebuilt as the Theatre Royal, on the site of today’s Piazza.

Their first duty was to choose 14 aldermen to serve alongside the 42 elected councillors. Most were elected from their own number but three from outside the council – a custom which survived, like the borough, until 1974.

Charles Henry Jones beat Wright Mellor by 27 votes to 15 for mayor

After an adjournment for lunch they went on to elect the first Mayor, Charles Henry Jones – defeating his fellow Liberal Wright Mellor by 27 votes to 15, he retained the office for the corporation’s first three years.

Both were businessmen; both had been prominent figures in the town for many years. The appointment of committees and of the first Town Clerk,

Joseph Batley, took up the remainder of the historic six-hour meeting.

The path to incorporation had been a long and winding one. The opportunity to seek Borough status had existed since 1835 and neighbouring towns, including Halifax, Bradford and Wakefield, had done so back in the late 1840s.

In Huddersfield, however, a well-supported petition had been rejected by the Government in 1842. The town was still very much under the influence of the Ramsden family, lords of the manor since 1599 and principal landowners, and in 1848, instead of an elected council, the Huddersfield Improvement Commissioners (HIC) were established – mainly elected by wealthier ratepayers but with three seats reserved for the Ramsden estate .

It was the HIC’s premises, and indeed their clerk, which the new corporation inherited in 1868.

By then the HIC was increasingly ill-suited to meet the needs of the fast-growing town. Its remit extended only 1,200 yards from the Market Place, with outlying districts in the hands of less effective bodies or none; its powers were limited, with water supply in particular hopelessly inadequate; and in status and dignity, Huddersfield was falling behind its incorporated neighbours.

A petition for incorporation had been launched by the HIC in March 1867 and – after intricate negotiations, not least with Sir John William Ramsden estate – Borough status was awarded by Royal Charter on July 7, 1868.

Coming late to the party, the town’s new councillors and their officials were soon making up for lost time. The takeover in 1869 of the unelected Waterworks Commissioners enabled the water shortage to be tackled, with corporation reservoirs soon built at Deer Hill (1875), Blackmoorfoot (1876) and Wessenden Head (1881) – all still local landmarks.

Gas supply was taken over in 1871 and market rights (from the Ramsdens) in 1876, with the Market Hall in King St following in 1880. By then the Town Hall too was nearing completion, and a pioneering estate of 156 council houses was under way at Turnbridge.

In 1883 Huddersfield famously became the first town to initiate its own municipal tram service, and in the same year Beaumont Park opened, closely followed by Greenhead Park in 1884.

After that the pace of new initiatives slowed somewhat, but by no means came to an end.

Promoted from Municipal to County Borough in 1888, and thus fully in charge of local services, the corporation added electricity supply to gas in 1893 and built a large sanatorium at Dalton in 1896.

'A civic oasis in Yorkshire'

In that year Huddersfield was hailed in London magazine as a ‘civic oasis in Yorkshire’. As the author reported: “The Huddersfield Corporation occupies a high position among the municipalities of England. No town of the same population can show the same extent and variety of municipal institutions.

“Few, if any, of our great cities can equal it, as there is not a single local service in Huddersfield which is not under the control of the Corporation.”

Huddersfield had come a long way from its mid-century days as a local government laggard, though the range of corporation services would continue to grow in the 20th century.

It all began, however, when the first councillors met in Ramsden Street on September 7, 1868.

The Town Hall will mark the anniversary on Friday and Saturday, September 7 and 8, as part of Heritage Open Days, with bookable tours and a small display.

On Friday (10am-4.30pm) the display will include the original Borough Charter and Award of Arms, newly restored by West Yorkshire Archive Service and on public view for the first time.

The tours, on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, can be booked at Huddersfield Library – find out more on the Heritage Open Days website .