“No, tea would be fine”.
We usually drink coffee.
Our landlord, Dave, brought us two massive plates of breakfast: two sausages, two slices of bacon, beans, a fried slice, two eggs, a substantial slice of black pudding, mushrooms and tomatoes. It was quite possibly the biggest fried breakfast I had ever seen. I gave it a good go, but I wasn’t able to make much progress.
“I can tell you’re southerners; you haven’t eaten the black pudding” said Dave, who appeared to be disappointed with our progress.
Fifteen minutes later, we were on our way to Yorkshire. We retraced our steps, going back on the M61 and onto the M60 for a second time, then picking up the M62.
The M62 is Britain’s highest motorway, traversing the Pennines, connecting Leeds, Huddersfield and Manchester. As I drove, more memories came back to me; I remember driving to university from London to Manchester with my friend Mike in an old mini.
Mike and I left home at the same time to start new lives. When I had dropped my stuff off at a halls of residence at Salford, I then drove Mike to Huddersfield University, or Poly, as it was then known, not really knowing what to expect. I remember my car struggling, the engine temperature visibly rising and a general feeling of worry. I returned to Manchester hours later, exhausted but elated. This time, there were no worries. The weather was good with no sign of rain, just hints of menace from steel grey clouds.
I asked a few colleagues whether they knew anyone who lived in Batley.
“Ah, yes… Batley; the Yorkshire Riviera” chuckled my colleague Matt when I told him about my impending trip. “You find it nestles in a set of motorways. It’s just on the edges of Cleckhuddersfax.”
“Cleg… Cleg what?”
“Cleckhuddersfax. It’s a combination of Cleckheaton, Huddersfield and Halifax. It’s like a strip of urban areas that are gradually encroaching on each other”.
None of this made any sense. I asked another colleague, James, who had moved back to Yorkshire after my office had closed whether he could give me a bit of direction.
“Honestly, I live there and I love it, but it’s hard to recommend a single thing. It’s the general feel of the place… It’s very small town, but it is friendly and you’re never more than a short walk into what is basically the wilderness. Great beer and low prices. Most tourists go to Hebden Bridge; the entire area is basically hills and valleys with rivers and canals.”
James told me about the TransPennine ale trail. There are seven stations between Batley and Stalybridge. The idea is to catch a train between each station and have a pint in each one.
“I'd suggest doing a 'station pub crawl'” James and I have previously taken part in a world record attempt to have the biggest number of people in one pub drinking the same brand of beer at the same time.
“You could start at Batley, then go onto Dewsbury. It’s four minutes away and the station pub there is superb. Then Huddersfield and go to The Sportsman and The Grove. There is honestly nothing in Batley itself.”
We turned off the motorway and started to make our way through villages and towns with unfamiliar names like Rawfolds, Littletown and Heckmondwike. The roads were hilly, and houses and shops appeared to me as unfamiliar, having been built from light brown Yorkshire stone and brick. Our journey took us to an area called Healey, which was on the outskirts of Batley, and towards our destination, the Healey House Hotel.
The hotel was a small but grand looking building, tucked away on a side street. The reception area was professional and efficient. We were met by a hotel worker called Mary, who appeared to be spectacularly stressed.
“What is there to do around here?” asked Sarah, after enquiring about the check-in process.
Mary appeared if she was about to combust with worry.
“Nothing. I don’t know. I don’t know what there is to do around here; I’m not from Batley.”
With our room not quite ready, we decided to walk into town. I felt vaguely excited, since everything I saw was unfamiliar; the streets, the look of the houses, a deserted newsagents that served the local community, and a Fox’s biscuits factory.
We found ourselves in a quiet well-kept square that appeared to be the heart of the town. My eyes were drawn to what was an imposing Methodist chapel that exuded Georgian elegance.
“This is weird; I remember this from the TV” said Sarah. “Do you remember that MP that was killed? They did some news stories from here”. Sarah was referring to the murder of Jo Cox, a Labour MP, who was brutally stabbed by a loner who was motivated by extreme right wing beliefs. I had seen the same news stories, but didn’t recognise any of the buildings. We found a main street and rounded a corner, my eye catching a sight of a building that was clearly once a mill.
“Look!” said Sarah, pointing towards a street sign.
I looked up; a poster. The words “home rule” were written on the background of an English flag. The poster had been stuck on the rear of the street sign. We paused for a moment. I didn’t know what the poster meant, but my imagination could be easily drawn to dark places. Did it relate to the debates surrounding the European Union, or was it something darker?
I saw a quaint looking church, the church of All Saints, which sat in a court yard surrounded by spring cherry blossom. The sun was trying to come out. I saw a photographer with an expensive Nikon camera taking pictures of the trees. I wandered over to her and Sarah followed. I realised that had I been on my own, I might have come across as potentially intimidating; it was easy to talk to people when you’re a couple.
“Excuse me, do you know what places we should visit around here?” The photographer was called Susan. She was happy to talk. I got my camera out, and I confessed to having no idea about how to use it. Sensing that I was clueless, she suggested that I should set it to the automatic mode ‘to get some good settings’.
We picked our way through side streets, circumnavigating a massive Tesco, arriving back on the high street, struggling to get our bearings. I needed a coffee. Still carrying my camera, I looked up and down the street, looking for anywhere I could buy a Cappuccino, toying with the idea of heading into an ice cream parlour.
“It’s a dump isn’t it?” said a middle aged man, who wore a grey beard and scruffy jacket. By the time we realised what he had said, and wanted to know why he had said it, he was gone. Sarah and I looked at each other. I felt slightly unnerved.
We ended up in the Corner Café drinking weak and milky coffee, surrounded by pictures of kittens. As Sarah leafed through the Batley & Birstall News looking for interesting stories, I sent a message to my mate Dan.
I had met Dan at a charity conference a couple of years earlier and had discovered that he lived not too far from Batley. In passing he had offered to show us around. I looked up from my phone. Sarah was reading an advert about carpets.
“Dan’s going to be here in fifteen minutes. He’s going to give us a tour.”
Sarah’s expression suggested that she didn’t quite believe it. True to his word, Dan arrived in an expensive red Volvo with his partner Yvonne and parked directly opposite The Corner Café.
Implicitly echoing the more direct language of the middle aged stranger, Dan began by telling us that Batley was considered a deprived area. Like Adlington, its history is closely connected with the textile industry. We drove past an impressive old mill, which had been recently converted into a gym.
“What do people do here? I mean, where do they work?” asked Sarah.
“They commute to Leeds or to Manchester” replied Dan. Dan worked for a local hospital, providing IT support. He had been working in IT for the last twenty or so years. Yvonne worked in a boiler company, providing customer and engineering support.
We were driven past the huge Tesco towards the other side of the town. I looked outside of the window; the light brown bricks of the buildings remaining a novelty. Dan drove us up a street that was once clearly spectacular; station road. My eye caught sight of three storey Victorian buildings with grand architectural features, not dissimilar to the Methodist chapel that we had seen earlier. Suddenly, I saw a gap in a terrace of richness: a building was missing.
“This is Batley train station; there used to be all these other train lines that used to take wool into the town, but they’re all gone. Just behind you, there’s The Cellar Bar.”
Dan turned around, and retraced the route, took a couple of turns and we were on a road that was heading out of town.
“That’s another thing they do here; they sell cars.” said Dan, referring to the surprising number of used car lots that we had passed. “And beds. Beds are big in Batley” I later found out that there was a very good reason for the number of bed shops in Batley; bed manufacture was once a part of the industrial landscape of the town; wool, weaving and beds are intrinsically connected.
“You see over there? That’s the Frontier club. It used to be a night club, and before then, it used to be a really famous variety club where loads of famous bands played. It’s now a gym. On the corner, there’s an Italian restaurant called Zucchini’s that’s really popular. So, it’s still a place where people go” I continued to peer out of the window, registering Zucchini’s.
After a few moments, and feeling thoroughly disorientated, Dan drove on, passing a blur of bed shops and car sales rooms. We stopped a few minutes later.
“This area is called Batley Carr. Do you remember the case of Shannon Matthews?” I did; I remember it being on the news. Her mother, Karen Matthews, had pretended that Shannon had been abducted. The motivation was to try to get some ‘reward’ money when she was miraculously found. It was a story which resonated with Dan’s assertion that Batley was a deprived area.
“They found Shannon in a house just over there. She was being looked after by her uncle; they didn’t do anything to her, but she might have been drugged or something. I remember this area was filled with police cars and news vans. One thing I do remember was how the community rallied round when it was discovered she was missing; there was a real sense of community.”
We were taken to another site; a site of an old theatre.
“I remember this from when I was a kid; it used to be a grand old building, but now there’s nothing”. I looked over at a piece of land that had been boarded up. “A local comedian who used to play there.” His voice trailed off, his thoughts moving from the present to the past.
It was time to leave Batley Carr and head off to another district: Birstall, a neighbouring village that could be considered a part of ‘Greater Batley’; a notion that I understand would greatly offend those who lived there.
Sarah chatted to Yvonne about politics; in particular, the referendum.
“People would rather say who they vote for in the general election than tell you how they voted in the referendum. People just don’t talk about it” said Yvonne.
Dan parked up close to the local library. I knew where we were; we were at the second crime scene of our tour. I felt unnerved.
“This was where Jo Cox was murdered” said Dan.
Perhaps every town has its own peculiar side of darkness, but the events that took place in Birstall resonated across the country; the political debates had reached a fever pitch. War was being raged by poster and battle bus. There were images of desperate immigrants and words stripped of context, and then a member of parliament was senselessly murdered.
We were on the move again. Dan took us to his old school, which was in Birstall, where he drove around a couple of the blocks. We asked him what it was like going to school in Batley.
“I hated it; I was bullied”.
Dan told us that the school was mixed in terms of cultures, but not in genders; Batley was one of those areas that had separate boys and girls schools. Having gone to a mixed comprehensive, segregated schooling is an idea that I find baffling. The multicultural nature of Batley goes back to the 1950s when immigrants were invited as workers to work in the mills and factories.
Dan wanted to show us another part of the town: upper Batley; the part of the town where the well-heeled live. We were driven to the entrance of the Bagshaw museum. It seemed that Mary had been mistaken: not only was there the cellar bar (and the ale trail), but there was also a museum. It was situated in a grand villa, situated on the top of a hill. Dan then drove down a residential street that gave us a view of the town and the surrounding areas. I wouldn’t say it looked pretty, but it was very green. I decided I quite liked Batley.
It was time to go. On the way back to our hotel Dan gave us a tip: if we went to the Fox’s biscuit factory before 2pm, we could get some broken biscuits from the shop. It sounded like a great tip, but we didn’t think we would be able to make it in time.
Back at the hotel, we decided what to do; Dan’s tour had opened our eyes to new possibilities; a new network of roads, and sides of the town we wouldn’t have seen without him. We decided to explore a local park and try to make it to the Bagshaw museum, and then we would cross town to go to The Cellar Bar.
Our walk took us past the Fox’s factory and towards a mill that appeared to be in the process of being redeveloped and past a garage that occupied the crumbling innards of another mill. We took a slight diversion to investigate a massive building that resembled an old hospital, before finding a path that led towards Wilton Park. It started to rain, but it wasn’t Manchester rain; we walked close to trees to try to escape the worst of it, then followed a path towards the museum.
The Bagshaw museum tells visitors the story of Batley and its immigrant population. One of the signs offers a key historical fact: “in the early nineteenth century a local man, Benjamin Law, developed a process to recycle woollen rags”. It continued: “Batley: it was a town that had sprung up … owing to the development of the rag grinding machine”. Woollen rags were ground up to create a material called shoddy.
I caught one of the museum attendants yawning expansively.
“Busy day?”
“We’ve had seven hundred people in today, it’s been really busy” He was called Steve, and a proud resident of Batley. He began to tell me about the museum, telling me that it once belonged to George Sheard, a mill owner. The house had been built on the top of the hill for a very good reason: to escape the soot, smoke and dirt that emanated from the mills below.
“I’ll take you in here…” Steve unlocked a room that was marked ‘staff only’. “Bagshaw died in this room” gesturing for us to look around. “Look up there!” Steven pointed towards the ceiling. “Copper. A copper ceiling! Can you believe that? Sheard didn’t spare any expense. In today’s money, this house would have cost him millions. He had that ceiling made just because he could”.
In 1909, the house that had cost millions was sold to the local authority for five pounds. A museum leaflet explained that Walter Bagshaw, a local businessman, asked to open one of the rooms as a museum. By the time the museum opened in 1911, three rooms were open to the public. I joined Sarah in the Bagshaw Gallery. Walls were adorned with paintings and the room contained exhibits that referenced rivalries between Batley, Birstall and nearby Dewsbury. One exhibit was about Joseph Priestley who discovered oxygen and invented soda water. Priestly had a life that began in Birstall and ended in Pennsylvania; it was an exhibit that made me realise how little I knew about the history of science.
As I wandered around, peering at black and white images, I thought about my own industrial heritage. Whilst my roots do not lie in Yorkshire, I started to question how they might be connected to the industrial revolution.
It was time to go. Steve came looking for us. He discovered us playing with Punch and Judy puppets on the first floor. We put the puppets down, wandered through the final galleries and back on the street.
“Where you going to now?” We told him that we were going to The Cellar Bar. “You be careful! The beer up here is stronger than the beer down south!”
The Cellar bar was different to how I had imagined it. James’s talk of it being a ‘real ale’ pub had generated images of barrels of beer stocked behind the bar. Instead, there were six or so beers on draught. To add to a deadening feeling, loud rock music was pumping from speakers in every corner. Despite a challenging ambiance and the fact that it was nowhere near the town centre, it appeared to be relatively popular; there was a constant stream of visitors.
A young couple, Mark and Nicole, who were on a night out, sat down next to us. I asked them what there is to do in Batley.
“I would go to Leeds if I were you; there’s more to do there. There is this thing called the ale trail…”
Mark’s job was delivering Fox’s biscuits in a van. They were visiting Batley for the night because there was nothing to do in Dewsbury. We asked them about places to eat: there was an Indian restaurant called LaLa’s, or Zucchini’s, the Italian that Dan had spoken about. I called Zucchini’s, but it was all booked up. Nicole had another suggestion: a club called Legends; a club dedicated to tribute acts.
Two pints later, we staggered down the hill, took a couple of left turns and found our way into LaLa’s. LaLa’s restaurant had a dark interior, some unfathomable monochrome abstract art work and the biggest chandelier I had ever seen in my life, all housed in a building that architecturally resembled a used car show room. The service was dramatic; naan breads were dangled vertically from naan bread dangling devices, and waiters were immaculately dressed and faultlessly polite. The food was excellent.
“Do you want to go to Legends?” asked Sarah, offering me a challenge.
“Would you like to go to Legends?”
We didn’t go to Legends.
For the second night in a row, I felt old. Fresh air, novelty, hills, rain, beer and food had all taken their toll. It was time to find our way through slightly familiar streets to the Healey House Hotel.
After I returned home, I gave my Dad a ring. He asked me what I had been getting up to. I told him I had been to Batley.
“You’ve been to Batley?” he replied, sounding confused, since I had no good reason to go to Batley.
I asked him whether he knows that part of the UK. It turned out he did. “We had a night out there once. “Me and your mum, and Jenny and Albert”. Albert and Jenny were a couple that my parents used to know when they were younger. I couldn’t quite believe that my Dad had been on a double date to Batley with Jenny and Albert, and I never knew about this. But then why would I? The opportunity to discuss either double dating or Batley had never arisen.
“We went to this club, a variety club to see a band. It was really famous, back in the day. Morecombe and Wise, and Shirley Bassey played there. I can’t remember who we went to see.” I asked him whether he had been drinking. “Yes, I might have had a few, and that’s why I can’t remember. Your mum was there, she might know, but I don’t think she does. I remember Albert dancing and this woman coming up to me; it was quite funny. She was drunk, and she said to me ‘I’ve got a man! I’ve got a man!’ I think it was a bus trip from Scunthorpe. Yes, that was it; it was a bus trip.”
I later realised that my Dad had been to the Frontier Club; the club that had become a gym; the club next to Zucchini’s.
Batley was full of surprises. I now know where my biscuits are made. I also know where to go to in Yorkshire if I need either a bed or a used car.
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