Very often, local history is a history of names. Each area, each parish, each township has its names; names that stretch back into antiquity like historical tendrils. This particular part of Yorkshire is no exception: the Sykes, the Holdsworths, the Berrys, and the Hansons populate graveyards like wild poppies in a meadow. And the names … Continue reading The Lost Pubs Of Brighouse : No. 6 The Thornhill Arms

What's in a name? As far as the history of local pubs is concerned, the answer is all too often a story. Take, for example, the Joiners Arms (my apologies to the Apostrophe Protection Society but there was little call for such frippery amongst nineteenth century signwriters). If you live in the Brighouse area and … Continue reading The Lost Pubs Of Brighouse : No. 5 The Joiners Arms

We often think of our towns and villages growing organically, like some garden bloom, starting with a bud and then slowly expanding around the edges to become the finely crafted communities that we know today. But it didn't happen like that, it never does. Towns grow in fits and starts, first this way and then … Continue reading The Lost Pubs Of Brighouse : No. 4 The Albion Inn

Few people wander around the Birds Royd Lane area of Brighouse these days unless they work in one of the industrial units or unless they took a wrong turning whilst searching for somewhere better. There are a few houses left, but not many. One or two old stone-built mills and warehouses appear to have been … Continue reading The Lost Pubs Of Brighouse : No. 3 The Vulcan Inn

Living in an age where insurance groups and utility companies change their names with alarming frequency, we tend to think of the practice of re-branding as a modern one. However, amongst the dusty annals of the pubs of Brighouse there are many examples of tactical rebranding, some of them reaching far back into the nineteenth … Continue reading The Lost Pubs Of Brighouse : No. 2 The Ring O’ Bells

For those who don't know the area, you can think of Brighouse and Rastrick as the Budapest of the Calder Valley. To the north of the River Calder stands the town of Brighouse; busy, somewhat full of itself with its municipal buildings and self-righteous chapels. To the south of the river stands the older parish … Continue reading The Lost Pubs Of Brighouse : No 1. The Duke Of York