A modern covered Market Hall (information from huddersfieldgem)
Huddersfield Market Hall (1880)
Background
Market rights in Huddersfield were held from 1599 by the Ramsden family of Almondbury, who dominated the town's 18th and 19th century development. Incorporation as a Borough was secured in 1868 and the new Council was one of great civic ambition, including the creation of a modern covered market hall.
After an unsuccessful attempt at compulsory purchase in 1871, the Corporation acquired the market rights by agreement in 1876, and immediately initiated a competition to design a market hall on the site of the existing butchers' shambles. Over 30 entries were received and adjudicated in 1877 by the eminent Victorian architect G E Street. However his recommendation for Charles Fowler's 'Queen Anne' design was rejected by the Markets & Fairs Committee, who turned instead to local architect Edward Hughes.
Although based in Huddersfield since 1871, Hughes had practised for 12 years in George Gilbert Scott's office. His design was approved on 1 March 1878, and described in detail in The Builder of 28 December 1878. The Market Hall opened to the public on 31 March 1880. Here we review it from the perspectives of function, fashion and materials.
Function
The building was an "oblong parallelogram", 270' x 101'6", on a North-South axis, surrounded by streets on all sides, each with a central entrance. There were glass-fronted shops on the N and S facades, and open-fronted butchers' shops with glazed awnings on the E and W sides, sheltered as part of the building but adequately ventilated for their trade. Fish shops were at each side of the S entrance, while the shops of the N façade were for anything but fish.
Within was a general market of 4153 square yards on two floors, at ground and basement levels. The southern third of the basement was originally a wholesale market with a ramped cart entrance, and the rest was for storage. In 1888, however, a new iron-and-glass wholesale market was opened at Brook Street and by then, such was the demand for space that the whole of the basement was in retail use.
The floor of the main hall was of asphalt on cement to minimise clatter. This was supported on arches resting on 60 to 70 iron columns. The roof was in a single span of 71'6", of wrought iron lattice-and-girder construction, with ridges arranged to admit light only from the North. There were originally 72 stalls, arranged in octagonal clusters of four, within a grid of longitudinal and transverse gangways. The site sloped down from W to E and Hughes used this to create a row of inward-facing shops above the butchers on the E side, while on the W side was an arcaded gallery affording 16 small stalls for lighter and novelty goods.
Fashion
The principal North façade was designed to make a powerful urban statement. In a style described as "domestic" or "vaguely romantic" Gothic, "the main" three-storey front to King Street had corner turrets and conical roofs, and the central section incorporated a Perpendicular entrance, a Decorated window in the gable, more corner turrets, and a tower in which a tall pointed roof rose above gables into which were fitted clock faces" The S façade repeated this without the tower, and both contained offices above the shops. The 'shambles' frontages were lower and plainer.
Decoratively, there was extensive stone carving to the architect's designs by a local craftsman, S Auty of Lindley. A carved string course ran round the building above the ground floor, and there was carved foliage to the capitals of the columns and the finials of the turrets.
The Huddersfield Weekly News reported that the carved decoration was "in keeping with the Gothic character of the building" and "very well done". Historical continuity was emphasised by shields at the W and E entrances depicting the arms of Elizabeth I and Charles II, who had granted and confirmed the Ramsdens' market rights in 1599 and 1671. Clearly all of this made use of the fashions of the Gothic Revival to dignify the building beyond any narrowly functional requirements.
Materials
Much has already been said in passing of the materials used. The roof was of wrought iron, painted and gilded (as were the pendant gas lights), with North-facing glass and South-facing green slate. The exterior was of local stone, with ashlar dressings and decorative carving as described above. The market stalls were made of oak and red deal, the latter stained and varnished, while the shops' three-coat plasterwork made them look "clean and white as sea-bleached shells".
Appraisal
As the above shows, Huddersfield Market Hall of 1880 met the functional need for a covered market, and the functional design requirements of such a building. But it went far beyond these in its architectural and decorative rhetoric, with a tower rising to 106' to become a dominant landmark feature of the town. The Weekly News noted that "Mr Edward Hughes is to be congratulated upon having shut his eyes to the dull form of Huddersfield buildings, and raised in our midst one in a decorated Gothic of decidedly domesticated type, as becomes a market."
Given that the town already boasted Pritchett's Palladian railway station (1851) and Crossland's Gothic Revival Ramsden Estate Office (1871-2), this perhaps over-stated the case. But the building was still held in much affection as demolition approached 90 years later (and still attracts much nostalgia in the letters column of the Huddersfield Daily Examiner). Planning consultants to the Council argued in 1966 that:
This is Montmartre in the West Riding. If St George's Square contains the spirit [of Huddersfield], then here is the body - an earthy one, maybe, but representing a sturdy, robust way of conducting business - the essence of the town at its most vital.
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