Our Huddersfield

How much do you really know about our amazing town? We’ve put together a selection of known and unknown facts about Huddersfield.

• Huddersfield is a large market town and is the largest settlement in the metropolitan borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England. It is the 11th largest town in the United Kingdom with a population of 162,949 (2011 census).
• Huddersfield’s been a settlement for some 4000 years. It was named in the Domesday Book of 1086 and had two names – Oderesfelt and Odresfeld.
• Did you know that the rugby league was invented in Huddersfield? It all started back in 1895, they were originally formed as rugby unions (RFU) but then split in to rugby leagues after issues with payments to players. Rules gradually changed to make it a faster more entertaining game.
  There are now roughly 98,330 clubs with 2,360,000 registered players, not a bad number to say it started with around 200 clubs leaving the RFU.
• Everyone knows this one, he has a statue in St George’s Square, but, former Prime Minister Harold Wilson was from Huddersfield.
• What do Sir David Brown (Tractor manufacturer amongst other things), and James Bond have in common? The Aston Martin DB range of course. Huddersfield born Sir David Brown became managing director of David Brown Gear Company Ltd in 1931. Not so many years after, he saw an advert in a paper for a certain car manufacturer that was for sale, it was Aston Martin and he acquired it for £20,500. The Atom, the DB2, the DB3, the DB4, the DB5, the DB6, the DB7, DB9 and the DBS series of cars all took his initials. The company was later sold due to having financial difficulties.
• Ever see the giant nodding dog in London? It was created for a re-opening of a Dogs Trust rehoming centre. It was also made in Huddersfield by KD Decoratives Ltd. See it being made here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq3hZKC__0E
• In 1926, Huddersfield Town football club became the first team to win 3 successive league titles, a record that has been matched but never bettered. They also won the FA Cup in 1922.
• Sir Patrick Stewart, of Star Trek, X Men, Macbeth and numerous other films and TV shows, was born right here in Huddersfield, Mirfield, to be precise.
• According to Kirklees Council, there are over 3,000 listed buildings in Huddersfield, the third highest number in the country, and over 200 of them are in the town centre.
• Huddersfield’s main export was textiles for quite a long time but as times have moved on, something a little more technically has taken over, web design is now our number one export.

Do you have a fact about Huddersfield that people might not know? Leave it in the comments section below.

Sources: o2 News, Wikipedia, Huddersfield Students’ Union, Event Coverage