Changing face of a small corner of town
QUITE often people have asked me where I got a particular photograph from. Many have been given to me over years, or I have bought them. Many have been very kindly loaned to me by people who have then allowed me to copy their cherished sepia photographs.
However, occasionally I do get one or two in what can only be described as in rather strange or unusual ways.
Take the older of this week's featured photographs for example. One day I arrived home to find it had been pushed through my letter-box. There was no note, not even a name and address written on the back – a mystery. I am sure you will recognise this photograph, although these days it looks a little different. It is of course Park Chapel in Bethel Street, taken I suppose just before the First World War.
The J. D. Wetherspoon pub chain started trading in the chapel building as the Richard Oastler pub on November 23, 1999.
Let's go back a few more years – how many people can remember when it was the indoor market?
Turning the clock back even further to the end of the 19th century, the United Methodists decided the old chapel having served them both spiritually and socially for three-quarters of a century was no longer serving their needs. In March 1873 the trustees decided, probably, because there was a lack of building land in the town centre to build a new chapel and Sunday school on the existing site.
Tenders were put out and the following year they were in a position to have the old chapel which had been built in 1795 swept aside to make way for the new building. With the level of support that all chapels had in those far off days you can well imagine the celebrations there were when the new chapel was formally opened.
We take domestic appliances, central heating, showers and flat screen televisions in our stride. But try to imagine how the chapel congregation would have felt in June 1878, when for many of them it was the first time they had seen gas lights, not outside in Bethel Street, but actually lit inside the building.
How nice it is to see the old iron railings along the chapel frontage – little did the congregation know then that some 50 years later they would be taken down to help with the local war efforts. The decision to remove railings and gates was taken when Churchill became Prime Minister and installed Lord Beaverbrook as the minister of aircraft production. It was his responsibility to provide the desperately needed raw materials to help build the Spitfires and Hurricanes. One way of finding some of these raw materials was to requisition the iron railings and gates surrounding many of the cemeteries, parks and squares in Britain's towns and cities.
Just out of view on the left was the old Stag and Pheasant Beerhouse, which reminds me of another item I was once given. It happened one night while working in the early hours of the morning a car drove alongside and the driver said 'Chris Helme?' 'Yes', I said, thinking he wanted to report something. 'I've got something you might be interested in.'
I arranged to call at the stranger's house where he gave me what appeared to be a small coin. Examining it very carefully I discovered in very faint lettering the words 'Stag and Pheasant 2d'. It transpired this rare coin was an old token. It was something you would have exchanged to that value at the Beerhouse, a system based on the same principle as the old Co-op stamps. Like many other old beerhouses it was eventually closed and today forms part of Ed Taylor's Hairdressing Saloon.
The second featured photograph is obviously not as old as the first, and most readers will remember when the back of Park Chapel looked this. But when was it built on and the vacant space became a small row of shops, and the beer garden area of J. D. Wetherspoon's pub the Richard Oastler?
Thanks go to David Brown, who took this photograph in 1985 and describes himself in his very interesting emails as being 'exiled in Essex'. Looking at it now I am sure like me many readers will have forgotten just what that small corner of Brighouse used to look like. Thanks David for the reminder.
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Weather for Halifax
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -3 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 0 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: South
