Huddersfield TOWN with Nicholas Crane

I've seen towns explode into cities,

I've seen towns with their hearts ripped out.

Every town has its own tales of triumph

and catastrophe - all of them face challenges.

Smaller than a city, more intimate, much greener,

towns are where we first learn to be urban.

Harbour towns, market towns, island towns, industrial towns,

collectively, they bind our land together.

As a geographer, I believe towns are communities of the future.

This time I'm in Huddersfield,

a Yorkshire mill town with a history of rugby, rebellion,

and high-quality cloth.

The town even invented a dog breed. The first Yorkshire terrier

was a champion ratter named Huddersfield Ben.

Hey! Uh-huh.

Here, I'll be discovering how an out-of-the-way village

transformed itself into a manufacturing metropolis.

We're the only town in the world that can add value to fabric by having

its name on the edge of the cloth. I'm very proud of that.

I'll see what brings one of Huddersfield's most famous sons back home every year...

What brought me back to Huddersfield was what brought me back to England.

..and why this town might revolutionise the textile industry again.

-I feel as if I'm watching a Star Wars movie.

-It's not far off, actually.

-Unbelievable.

-But in Huddersfield!

Join me on a journey to discover the turbulent past,

the startling present, and the dynamic future of towns.

I'm in Yorkshire, God's own country.

Behind these hills hides a young town, a town that only

found its feet in the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago.

A town known for its high quality textiles.

A town built with the profits of cloth.

And a town that nobody seems to want to leave.

-Huddersfield is home.

-I love Huddersfield.

-I couldn't see myself living anywhere else.

Very friendly. They actually make you welcome.

-Always been here. I always plan to stay here as well.

-Home's home.

-Nice Place.

Huddersfield was in the front line of the Industrial Revolution.

Right here on the eastern side of England's mountain spine,

industrial towns sprang up with the mechanisation of textile production.

The Industrial Revolution triggered an urban boom

in this part of Yorkshire, the West Riding.

There was plenty of coal and water to power steam engines and mills.

Scores of workers created canals and railways.

Country villages exploded into bustling hubs of industry.

All this in the space of a century.

Huddersfield was one of the great new towns of England's

lucrative industrial north.

This town is big. Industrial-sized.

There's even an urban myth in these parts that Huddersfield

is the biggest town in Britain, or the largest in Europe.

In actual fact, it's the 11th biggest town in the UK

after giants like Swindon and Reading.

Now here's the really odd thing -

with a population of 146,000,

Huddersfield is larger than more than half the cities in Britain

and yet it's never applied for city status.

It must be happy the way it is.

Huddersfield isn't a town that was built by the Romans, Saxons or Normans -

it's a town that's a product of the last couple of centuries.

It's full of Victorian architecture, 19th-century mills,

and 1960s tower blocks.

This town was built by an army of modern brickies,

not ancient craftsmen.

Huddersfield was a new town - it was part of a new industrial world.

But today, there are no working mines in the district,

and most of the mills have shut down.

Huddersfield sits in one of the most important areas for manufacturing

in Britain but unemployment is above the national average.

I want to find out how Huddersfield has coped with the massive changes

it's had to face. What has kept this town going through thick and thin?

What's the true spirit of this place?

In the spring of 1793, a public meeting was held in Huddersfield

to discuss the building of a canal and a canal tunnel.

This was a project designed to put Huddersfield on the map, to

connect it to the rest of Britain's industrial network, and help

this town export its cloth to the booming markets of the wider world.

The Huddersfield Narrow Canal would pit man against mountain.

Blasting solid rock, engineers and navvies would cut a navigable

waterway through England's mountain backbone - the Pennines.

It was an incredibly ambitious project - a 20-mile canal

with no less than 74 locks and the longest canal tunnel

that anyone had ever attempted to build in the UK.

The Standedge Tunnel is three miles long and burrows deep underground.

It's more than three times deeper than the deepest line

on the London Underground - the moorland is 600 feet above my head.

And because the horses that pulled the canal boats couldn't fit

through the tunnel, the boats had to be legged through like this.

It's a gritty job, too. Every time you put a foot on the tunnel roof

a rain of dirt falls on your face and creeps up your trouser legs.

Most uncomfortable.

The canal took 17 years to build.

50 men were killed during its construction.

But the mill owners of Huddersfield wanted to get their textiles

to market quicker and that's what they achieved.

This town didn't let anything - not even a mountain range -

stand in its way.

Huddersfield may be a town born of the Industrial Revolution,

but it's also an archetypal Pennine town.

It grew up with its back to the hills, facing the rising sun.

Built with golden Yorkstone from local quarries, the town has

a handsome face.

It's warm, welcoming, hewn from the hills.

Walk the backstreets

and you feel this town is trying to tell you something.

Because the land is so steep,

the form of Huddersfield is forced to take its cue from the gradients.

So most of the larger buildings are way down there

in the valley bottom where there's a bit of flat land,

while houses cling onto man-made terraces built on the valley sides

and many of the houses have three floors on their lower side,

two floors on their upper side.

Roads, pedestrian short cuts like this, are built like Alpine mountain passes.

The message is - if geography won't work for you,

work with geography. Adapt.

From the air, Huddersfield looks like the hub

and spokes of a spinning wheel, the town radiating out into every neighbouring dale or valley.

Everywhere is connected, woven into the fabric of the place, included.

But where did it all start?

What set this town on the road to greatness?

Who were the first investors in the Huddersfield brand?

To answer that, we have to go back to the 16th century,

when Huddersfield was a rural hamlet,

a backwater, off the beaten track.

But in 1599, a local family named Ramsden

bought the manor of Huddersfield from Elizabeth I.

The Ramsdens were typical Yorkshire folk - shrewd investors,

hugely ambitious, with a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve.

And they lived here - at Longley Old Hall in Huddersfield.

The Ramsdens were smart operators.

They'd made their money in the wool trade, through property dealing,

enclosing common land and by marrying some of the wealthiest women in the county.

They were adept social climbers.

By the end of the 17th century, they were baronets.

After the Ramsdens bought Huddersfield,

things started to change around here.

They wanted to turn the village into a full blown town.

The Ramsdens knew that a town without a market

was like a cart without a wheel - it just wasn't going anywhere.

So in 1671 they applied to the Crown for the right to hold

a weekly market here in Huddersfield.

And this magnificent document - a letters patent - is what they were after.

Up here you've got a portrait of King Charles II

and here's the family name of Ramsden in the document.

Armed with one of these,

you could promote a humdrum village into a thriving town.

If you were a townmaker, it was a game changer.

The Ramsdens made Huddersfield the main market hub for miles around.

The Ramsdens saw potential in Huddersfield,

this out-of-the-way village.

They liked a project and they liked making money,

so they made Huddersfield their focus for the next 250 years.

With its own market, Huddersfield flourished

and successive generations of Ramsdens kept building.

They constructed waterworks, built even more markets,

paid for the Huddersfield Broad Canal.

They came up with the grid streetplan for the town

and funded the building of St George's Square.

They were instrumental in bringing the railway to Huddersfield.

You could almost mistake the station for a stately home.

While the Ramsdens had been building up Huddersfield,

something else had been happening - the population had been booming.

From a village of 650 inhabitants in the 1670s,

Huddersfield had swelled to 7,000 by 1801.

By 1870, that figure had reached 46,000.

And the reason for the population boom? Cloth and coal.

From having been a remote village,

not on a particularly big river, and not on a major thoroughfare,

Huddersfield struck gold when it came to the Industrial Revolution.

It was on the edge of the Yorkshire coalfield

and it had soft Yorkshire water, perfect for washing wool.

This town became the land of dark satanic mills.

And some of them are still here.

WT Johnson is one of only four cloth finishers left in Britain.

They're a Huddersfield institution and have been on this site

for a hundred years, finishing cloth to the highest standard.

Paul Johnson's great-grandfather started the business

and four generations on, the family are still running it today.

What exactly does finishing mean?

Finishing is the processing between weaving and garment making.

When a cloth has been woven, it's not in a condition that you and I

would recognise as being able to be made into a suit.

And where does water come into the whole process?

Fabric's got to be cleaned, it's got all these impurities from

previous manufacturing processes and they need to be removed.

But as well as the washing side to get clean,

water and the scouring process which is what we call the cleaning,

actually develops the handle of fabric and helps the drape and the softness to the touch.

And do you make anything of the fact that this finishing process

is done here in Huddersfield?

Yeah, absolutely.

Textiles have been manufactured in Huddersfield for a long time

and quite some time ago, Huddersfield took the decision to go up the value chain.

So now, they've become very well known for the finest fabrics

which go into luxury items and in actual fact we're the only

town in the world that can add value to fabric by having its name

on the edge of the cloth and we're very proud of that.

So do tell me, what's the secret of surviving as an industry

in what many people think is a kind of post-industrial Britain?

You know, we've got a couple of golden rules that we live by.

We understand that we're trying to add value to people's fabric

and we're trying to make it special, and as long as we keep training

our people, we keep investing in the most modern machinery.

And I think also the fact that we're a family business,

and we've been able to take the long view

so we don't have to look at short-term returns all the time.

When times are tough we can rein it in a little bit,

and we invest when times are better.

Forgive me for asking, but is there some process here that I can just have a go at?

Yeah, I've got just the thing. Come with me.

This is the scouring area where all that cleaning process happens.

It smells like a hothouse down here.

Sure is, so this is James.

-Hi, James.

-Nice to meet you.

He's going to show you how to go on.

In at the deep end! What do I do, James?

-You might need to roll your sleeves up first.

-OK.

What's this machine been doing?

This has just scoured, got these cleaned. Been developing.

-A bit of softener in there to make the fabric feel a bit soft.

-Give us a quick demo.

-Right.

Obviously, control buttons. Squeeze it. Ready to go.

And that's all we're doing. Take it off nice and steady away.

Nice long loops. Just straightforward. It's pretty simple.

OK. I'm really... Whenever someone says it's really straightforward,

it's terribly simple, I know that I'm going to mess it up!

Off we go.

This fabric has been carefully washed in Yorkshire water.

I'd better not drop in on the floor.

I can't...I can't get that kind of effortless flip that you manage.

I feel like I'm trying to lob cricket balls, rather than...argh!

Something's going badly wrong.

Keep going.

Seeing a successful British textile manufacturer like Johnson's

makes me feel incredibly proud.

But there's a more complex history behind the great mills of Huddersfield.

There was once a time when these machines were seen as new and dangerous,

and Huddersfield became a hotbed of revolution.

Until the early 19th century, cloth finishing had been a manual trade,

carried out by highly skilled craftsmen called croppers.

But the cloth-finishing machines of the Industrial Revolution -

machines known as shearing frames - were taking their jobs and their livelihoods.

The cloth finishers took up arms against the machines,

attacking the mills and smashing the frames with hammers.

They were known as the Luddites.

Nowhere was more famous for Luddite rebellion

and rebellious spirit than Huddersfield.

It was also the town where the Luddite rebellion was finally crushed.

I've come to meet ex-miner and Luddite historian Alan Brooke.

Today, Alan belongs to a group of radical historians

and activists who publish an anarchist paper.

He keeps the tradition of radicalism alive in Huddersfield

and the Luddites have been his greatest inspiration.

Why did radicalism flare up in Huddersfield?

Well in 1812, it was a combination of numerous factors.

Of course, there'd been the war going on against France for a long

period of time and as a result there was rising unemployment,

increasing prices, there was a growing national debt and general

dissatisfaction with the government. But also, there was the decline

of the domestic industry where small workshops like this were run

by small manufacturers and craftsmen. They were increasingly

being threatened by the growth of what became known as the factory system.

What did the Luddites do about it?

Well, initially they tried the legal method.

They lobbied parliament but they found the appeals rejected.

So as a result of that some of the small manufacturers

and small craftsmen, particularly the cloth finishers, they thought

they'd no recourse now but to use direct action to stop the machinery.

CROWD NOISE

They actually functioned as a guerrilla army

and they went at night, with masks or their faces blacked,

armed with firearms and with big hammers.

They actually went to the workshops and smashed up the machinery,

which they saw as a threat to their livelihood.

-So quite destructive?

-It was destructive.

But you've got to see it in the context of the times,

that the people saw that their way of life was under threat.

And what tipped them over the brink from reasoned argument to violence?

They thought that jobs were going to be lost,

but more importantly, it was skilled jobs that were going to be lost.

And again it was a way of life that had existed for hundreds of years.

And they saw that now being eroded by this new monstrosity,

the factory system.

Do you think they had a point?

Well, I think they certainly did. They called into question

the role of technology. Which comes first - human beings or machines?

And they called into question the whole idea of progress.

If you get a bigger and bigger factory,

better and better machines, I mean does that make life any the better?

The Luddite attacks started in Nottingham in 1811

but they quickly spread to Yorkshire.

The attacks were particularly violent around Huddersfield

where the cloth finishers were highly organised and had the complete support of their community.

The government sent troops to quell the uprising.

It's said that in 1812 there were more troops in Yorkshire

than Wellington had in Spain.

Sending soldiers into mill towns was like dowsing fire with petrol.

The Luddites carried on smashing frames and evading capture.

Then they started raiding the armouries.

Desperate, the government brought in the death penalty for anyone

found guilty of frame-breaking.

The owners of the larger mills, never keen on the Luddite cause,

were forced to protect their factories with troops.

There were clashes. Luddites were killed.

One local mill owner, William Horsfall, bragged that he would

"ride up to his saddle girth in Luddite blood rather than capitulate to their demands".

On the 28th of April 1812,

Horsfall was making his way home from Huddersfield cloth market.

His route took him up this long, steep hill to Crossland Moor up here.

It was a bleak place - a few low walls,

a plantation of trees - it was a perfect place for an ambush.

Waiting for him were four croppers -

George Mellor, William Thorpe, Thomas Smith and Benjamin Walker.

They were armed with pistols.

Horsfall was hit in the thigh and the stomach.

The mill owner who'd sworn to ride his horse through

lakes of Luddite blood died the following day of his injuries.

In the months that followed, Huddersfield became an armed camp.

Anyone suspected of being a Luddite was arrested

and interrogated here at Milnsbridge House.

In October 1812, the four men who had ambushed and killed Horsfall

were taken into custody and questioned behind these walls.

One of the men, Benjamin Walker,

was persuaded to give evidence against his fellow assailants.

They were tried in York in January 1813,

where they were found guilty of wilful and deliberate murder.

All of them, apart from Walker,

were condemned to death by public execution.

On the 8th of January, the three condemned men were taken out

and hanged and their bodies sent away for dissection.

Eight days later, another 14 Huddersfield Luddites were

also executed for their part in attacking a Huddersfield mill.

The Luddite uprising was over.

The York executions marked the end of the Luddites but a legacy

of rebellion and radicalism had taken root in this town.

Huddersfield's independent spirit grew.

It became known as the Metropolis Of Discontent.

Looking back at the Luddite struggle,

it might seem to have all the anguish, all the futility,

of a lost cause -

a lone wail drowned by the relentless thunder of mechanisation

that grew into globalisation with its multinational companies,

its cheap mass-produced goods, its trains, planes and automobiles,

hypermobility, trashed environments and teetering economies.

But we shouldn't forget the Luddites, though,

for their cause embraced ideals that for many have renewed meaning today -

dignity in the workplace, brotherhood of man,

small is beautiful, rather than big is better.

In Huddersfield, once the spirit of rebellion had been ignited,

it continued to spread.

The townspeople went on to campaign for parliamentary reform,

votes for Catholics and votes for women.

They opposed the Poor Laws

and got Factory Acts pushed through parliament.

One of Britain's most famous Labour prime ministers, Harold Wilson,

came from this town.

The spirit of self-belief burns bright in Huddersfield.

And it wasn't just in the mills and in politics where Huddersfield

showed its rebellious streak - it was also on the sports field.

One of the greatest rebellions in sporting history -

the birth of Rugby League - started here in Huddersfield, too.

Today, more than 700,000 people play Rugby League worldwide.

Top professional players can earn around £200,000 a year,

and there are more than five million supporters worldwide.

It's been a huge legacy from Huddersfield to the world.

But I wonder if the Huddersfield Rugby League team,

the Huddersfield Giants, still feels like a local team.

-Where are you all from?

-I'm from Huddersfield.

-Castleford, myself.

-How far's Castleford from here?

-About 20 miles.

I'm from Huddersfield as well.

I'm from Dewsbury, about eight miles away.

-So all pretty local.

-Yeah, pretty much local.

What's the support like from Huddersfield town, from the local population for the Giants?

-They get behind us.

-There's a great football side here as well.

So we're drawing quite a lot of numbers throughout both of the teams

but we'd obviously like to improve on that as well.

We've got a beautiful stadium, a great team, and we're always trying to attract new fans.

Today, the Huddersfield Giants play in the multi-million pound European Super League.

But the entire sport began with one moment of rebellion

at the George Hotel in Huddersfield in 1895, when 21 Northern clubs met

and decided to break away from Rugby Union.

Huddersfield sports fan and historian Rob Light

knows exactly how it happened.

There was a culture of reward for success in sport.

Professionals were paid to play cricket in the 18th century,

football went professional in the 1880s.

So, that tradition of payment for success was something that

was very strong in the urban industrial areas

like Huddersfield and in the regions of Yorkshire

and Lancashire where most of the clubs that broke away came from.

So by the 1880s, 1890s, teams are looking to recruit

the best players from the area and starting to pay them,

the Rugby Football Union start to react against that,

new laws are drawn up, players are suspended for receiving

payments, and also whole teams start to be suspended for paying.

Today, the players may be well-paid, but they still know their history.

And what's the difference between Rugby League and Rugby Union as a player?

The rules were exactly the same until 1906,

and there were two major differences brought into the game.

In Rugby League we brought in the play-the-ball instead of the ruck,

and basically that was just for the spectators just so they can

see exactly what was happening, see the game a bit more clearly.

And then the other one was change it from a 15-man game to 13

and that's just to open the pitch up and encourage more tries.

Did the Rugby League players who were splitting think, "OK,

"this is a last desperate measure to make the sport work," or were they

thinking positively, rebelliously, that, "Yeah we've got a great idea,

"we're going our own way and this is going to be even better than Rugby Union"?

I think it's a mixture of the two, in a way.

I think initially there's a determination from the Northern

clubs to try and form a compromise with the Rugby Football Union.

And the Northern clubs go to the Rugby Union with this offer that they

will only pay players for time spent away from work. Because a compromise couldn't be reached,

the Northern clubs got together in 1895 here in the George Hotel,

formed the Northern Rugby Football Union, and Rugby League developed from that.

-You ready, guys?

-Yeah.

Because of play-the-ball,

has a particular kind of tackle developed for Rugby League?

Yeah, I think the mentality is to slow it down as much as possible

and that involves putting a bit of wrestle technique in there.

So you normally get a couple of guys going up top,

just to make sure they wrap up the ball so they don't offload

and then a third man will come in and just put their legs together.

Can you show me in slow motion how one of these kind of smother tackles works?

-Yeah.

-All right.

So I'm going to run at Earl. He doesn't know what's about to hit him!

-Shall I look after them?

-I left a will in the back seat of the car!

Oooh!

HE LAUGHS

Bloody hell!

LAUGHTER

Where's the nearest hospital?

Rugby League took off so quickly in the north of England

that matches were regularly attracting crowds of more than 40,000 spectators.

And the game spread to France, Australia and New Zealand, too.

It's still the most-watched sport in Australia today.

Rugby League is a game of hard knocks, no question -

you've got to be able to pick yourself up and press on.

It's also a lot more confrontational than I'd expected but maybe

that's appropriate, because this game was born out of a confrontation,

a rebellion by Northern working-class players against rules

that were probably better suited to Southern middle-class players.

The game they devised here in Huddersfield was fast,

it was exciting - it demanded absolute fearlessness, too.

It was a new game for a new town,

a town that wasn't afraid of writing its own rules.

In 1920, just a few decades after Huddersfield had rebelled in rugby,

the town achieved another great coup.

The Ramsden family who had owned Huddersfield

since the 16th century decided to sell up.

And the highest bidder was Huddersfield Corporation,

which went on to become Huddersfield Council.

So Huddersfield became the town that bought itself -

truly independent.

The first seeds of this town's growth came from a market.

That's what set Huddersfield on the path of expansion

from tiny village to bustling town.

And Huddersfield has remained a town of commerce.

From one market, many grew.

Today, a surprising number of markets survive in the town

and still seem to be thriving.

This is Queensgate Market and it's rather wonderful.

First thing you notice when you walk in here is the grid of neat

and colourful stalls selling absolutely everything under the sun

rather like a traditional open market.

Second thing is this incredible roof.

technically it's an asymmetric, hyperbolic, paraboloidal roof

and it's the only one like it in the world.

There are 21 concrete mushrooms or umbrellas.

The concrete's raw so it looks a bit like stretched fabric.

Then between these umbrella shapes,

you've got vertical glazing which lets natural light spill into the

market, rather like the gaps between the awnings on market stalls.

It's an intimate space on a huge scale.

In this market I want to conduct my own market research.

I want to find out if markets are still the hub of Huddersfield.

-Hello.

-Hi.

-have you got a couple of minutes for a chat?

I have, yes. I've got all day.

How long have you had a stall here?

My wife's been here 36 years.

-What!

-36 years. And I've been here about 25.

I've worked here about seven years.

And the stall? How long's the stall been here? Fruit and veg?

My dad worked here when he was a young boy, about 14, 15.

And he's 53 now.

-We opened on the 28th of April, so...

-Recently?

Yeah, really recently, yeah.

-It's a new venture.

-How's it going?

-It's going OK, yeah.

It's, um...it's growing month on month now. It's sort of getting people to know about the shop.

If you could, would you rather have a shop or a market stall?

Market stall. It's friendly.

In a shop, people only come for special...for certain things, I would say.

In the market, some people might be from another town, just walking,

see something, they just buy on the spur of the moment.

But a shop is a particular thing where you go in to buy stuff.

So market's better.

What are the best-selling sweets?

We sell a lot of voice tablets cos those have been going donkey's years.

The names are amazing, aren't they?

Some of them read as if they've come out of a Harry Potter film.

I think I might buy some raspberry fizz balls.

Why did you decide to give the market a go rather than a shop?

Because it's a risk, like any business.

They have a limited...like a six-month lease term that

I could take up, so it was a sort of, "Hope it works, I want to be here for ever!"

But if it goes wrong, six months is not as long as three years to be tied in to something.

What d'you think of the building with this funny roof?

I don't like it, personally but...no.

It's the only one like it in the world.

I can imagine!

THEY LAUGH

They won't make two of these, will they?

This is an awful lot more than a market.

People come in here to shop, but also to have a chat,

see their friends, maybe have a cup of tea as well.

It's also a great place to get on the first rung of the business ladder.

A lease on a unit in here is far less expensive than a lease on a shop.

Huddersfield was founded with a market,

and markets are still the beating heart of the town.

I can't help noticing in Huddersfield that everything

seems to be here for the locals. It's a town's town.

I've yet to find a tourist information office

and there isn't an open-top bus tour in sight.

I wonder - has Huddersfield been missed off the tourist map?

This battered guide lives on my bookshelves at home.

As you can see, it's fairly well-travelled.

But look in the index under H, and Huddersfield,

one of England's largest towns, just doesn't exist.

Here's another guidebook from home.

Again, Huddersfield has been cold-shouldered by tourism.

There's not a single English Heritage or National Trust

property in town. If it wasn't for the AA road atlas or the football

results, most of us wouldn't know that Huddersfield existed.

But there's a harmony in this town which I'm impressed by.

This is an incredibly interesting town.

I don't really understand why it's been left off the tourist map.

I'm beginning to think Huddersfield may be one of Yorkshire's best-kept secrets.

And this gruff Northern town has another secret side to its character.

Huddersfield may be married to manufacturing

but it's had a long-running love affair with music.

Huddersfield Choral Society is one of the most famous choirs in Britain.

The town has its own orchestra,

hosts Britain's largest contemporary music festival,

and every bandstand seems to be occupied.

I'm hoping Huddersfield musicologist Lisa Colton can tell me why.

Huddersfield has always been very musical

and particularly in the 19th century with the growth of industry,

there were factories and mills around here that encouraged

music-making and then also the Methodist Church encouraged

music-making as a way to get people to come to services -

rather than preaching, they got them in with music.

So why were the factory

and mill owners behind music? What was in it for them?

Well, it was a great form of advertising.

You can imagine that if you've got a number of mills

in a particular village, it's really important to have the BEST band,

and for your band to be the most prominent, to have

the shiniest uniforms and buttons and to play the best competitions.

And bands didn't just stay in their local area, they also travelled to contests.

You know, the northern bands would go to London and people in London

would remark upon the quality of the Yorkshire bands and the way that they looked, but of course

they were also wearing clogs because they were mill workers as well.

And it helped show what an excellent workforce you had, it helped to show

what a benevolent philanthropist you might be, as well as a mill owner.

So it was a really sort of win-win situation for the mill owners.

Was there a social agenda behind all this music making?

I think there was. You can imagine within Victorian society,

the idea of trying to come up with forms of recreational

activity that were in some way improving was a big thing.

So they called it rational recreation.

And the idea was, if you gave something moralising

and good for them to do, it would keep them out of trouble.

And if they're doing those sort of activities,

they're not in the pub drinking and they're not out gambling

or womanising, then they're in somewhere where they can

have their activities sort of monitored, and show some discipline.

Are you talking about a social glue in an otherwise disparate community?

That was the idea.

I mean the realistic side of the situation was somewhat different.

You can imagine a lot of bands played in big social occasions,

events and festivals where alcohol WAS involved,

and a lot of reports of particular band members often being fined for

drunken behaviour or, you know, playing under the influence or whatever.

So the history of brassbanding and alcohol is quite a rich one.

Drunk in charge of a tuba, that could be quite an offence.

You could do some damage!

Music and manufacturing have been a great source of pride for this town.

And if we're talking about what else you need to make a town proud,

any town worth its salt needs a football team.

Huddersfield Town Football Club have faced unending adversity for most of

the 20th century, but somehow their supporters have stuck with them.

# Thousands loudly cheer them on their way

# Often you can hear them say

# Who can beat the Town today? #

What's so special about Huddersfield Town?

Huddersfield Town? We've not had a lot of success, not in our lifetimes.

I mean, they're more renowned for their success in the 1920s.

We won the league three times on the trot. That's never been beaten.

And ultimately, I don't know, we just feel, it's almost like it's a mission.

So what's the ultimate goal? To go the whole way to the Premier League?

I've always said, give me one season in the Premiership,

that's all I want, one season.

Why only one season? Cos in my lifetime I want to go to

the Emirates and Old Trafford and Anfield to watch my team and if I only get one season,

then fine, I'll worry about everything else afterwards.

And why don't you just go down the road and support Leeds instead?

-THEY BOO

-Excuse me!

Nick, if you weren't already aware, Leeds are our main rivals.

We call 'em noisy neighbours from t'other end o' t'M62.

OK, so Leeds are not very popular in Huddersfield.

I won't talk any more about Leeds, then.

It's the same fans that's followed Huddersfield for years.

When we go to football matches, you know

who you're going to see.

You know who're going to be there.

You know. And you can say "Are y'all right, Scoffer? Are y'all right, Totty?"

Everybody knows each other.

What is it about Huddersfield that makes you all so loyal?

Lost cause!

There's a photo somewhere where we're all anywhere between 13

and 17, in the old cowshed, as it were then.

You were surviving on paper round money. Do you know what I mean?

You used every penny that you had to get to these destinations.

I know one guy that cycled to Port Vale to go to see a game.

You know, these people...and I think it were...I'm not saying it were a select bunch

cos there's thousands upon thousands of Town fans out there

but there were a hard core. There were a hard core of people,

some of whom now who we still see, who are very successful

businessmen, doing very well yet you still see 'em.

Having a beer, having a laugh with t'lads.

And that's what it is.

I think somebody once said, you know you can change your house,

you can change your car, you can change your religion,

but you can't change your football team. Don't matter where you live, that's your team,

you're stuck with it, good or bad.

And that is why these guys and many other thousands besides 'em follow a local club.

Yeah, true.

-Or change your wife.

-Yeah. Two or three times!

Huddersfield Town sunk as low as the fourth division in the 1970s.

But last season they won promotion to the Championship -

one division beneath the Premier League.

Dave's dream might just come true.

And just as Dave and his mates have stuck with their team, nobody has given up on this town.

People want to be part of Huddersfield.

It feels like a town you'd be proud to call home.

Somewhere that would always draw you back.

One lifelong Huddersfield Town fan who has been drawn back

is Sir Patrick Stewart.

Renowned Shakespearean actor, Hollywood movie star

and Star Trek captain,

he's also been Chancellor of Huddersfield University since 2004.

And this week he's in town for the graduation ceremonies.

What was it like growing up in this part of the world?

It was perfect in many respects because we had

the industry and of course in those days the industry was thriving.

But it wasn't all industrial.

It wasn't as though you were stuck in a huge conurbation

where you never saw any green fields or trees.

Once you left the bottom of the valley and went up the sides,

it was semi-rural environment.

How did you get into acting?

I went to a secondary modern school.

I was not academic at all.

And as there is always,

invariably lurking in the background of an actor like me who spent

a lot of time doing classical theatre - an English teacher.

"Who first gave you Shakespeare?" "An English teacher."

And it was the same with me. Cecil Dormand, my English master,

I got him in my second year at the modern school.

And in that second year, I was 12 years old, he put

a copy of Shakespeare into my hands and he pushed the desks against

the wall and instead of just sitting reading we performed the scenes.

What is it about Huddersfield? I mean there's something going on here. What keeps bringing you back?

What brought me back to Huddersfield is what brought me back to England.

I lived for 17 years in California, Los Angeles, Hollywood.

I went out there to shoot Star Trek The Next Generation

and seven years later, my life focused entirely around Hollywood.

But increasingly I was less happy, variety of reasons,

but basically I wanted to be right back where I'd been in 1965,

which was I wanted to go back to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

And then I got a letter from the university and the then

Vice Chancellor, John Tarrant, asking,

"If you were approached, would you consider becoming Chancellor of the university?"

I remember that weekend thinking there is

a significance in this, it's like being called.

They want me to be Chancellor of Huddersfield University,

when I left a secondary modern school in Mirfield at 15?

They're telling me something.

So I accepted and it was the springboard that brought me back to the UK.

How do you think young people find the university as a place to study?

Well, now I'm going to put on my Chancellor's hat

and boast a little bit, because Huddersfield is ranked along

with the very highest and classiest universities in a variety of areas.

But the one that I think the Vice Chancellor

and the staff are so proud of is in student satisfaction.

And here, there is a passionate belief in the availability of higher education

to everyone, so we attract a lot of local young people,

and a lot of the courses are very much geared to local industry and so forth.

Work experience and job placement is very

high on the list of the university's ambitions.

And it is reconnecting me with my roots and my background.

I think reconnecting with the stone and mortar of this town

and with the people, and once more sharing their perspective on life.

Can you still rustle up a Huddersfield dialect?

Huddersfield has got a very particular sound to it.

Every Christmas, my mother's sister, my Auntie Annie,

used to recite a poem.

"I were sitting by t'ashes last evening

"My mother and father were off

"Cos they'd heard that my old aunt Susannah were laid up in bed with a cough

"She has some brass has my old Aunt Susannah That's reason she's looked after so

"If they've nowt, well, they're nowt but a bother

"There's a sample - me old uncle Joe."

-So that's pretty much how I talked.

-Didn't understand a single word!

That's how I talked. Not just accent but dialect.

Somebody said to me not long ago actually, it was at the Huddersfield Town ground,

I'd said to him, "What did you think of the game?" and he said, "Eee, it were like suppin' hot lead".

-Lovely turn of phrase!

-It's poetry!

Just as a local English teacher saw the potential in a young Patrick Stewart,

this town likes to seek out opportunities for its youth.

Huddersfield is a young town, and it needs prospects for young people.

In the middle of town

is an engineering firm that's decided to reinvest in youngsters.

They're a famous name, David Brown - world leaders in building gears

for everything from tanks to wind turbines.

The firm started in Huddersfield 152 years ago

and they're still here today.

I've come to meet production leader and

apprentice mentor Tony Allison and some of the 32 apprentices on site.

How long have you been at David Brown's?

I started in 1980 so it will be 32 years in September.

And did you join as a graduate, or how did you get here?

I came straight from school when I was an apprentice.

I was trained as an apprentice turner.

And it was a four-year apprenticeship.

What triggered David Brown to take up the apprentice programme again?

About five years ago, we did a study,

and looked at the age profile of the workforce.

We had 43 people with in excess of 40 years' service.

So that's quite a sizeable chunk.

So you decided you needed some younger people coming in?

Yeah. For this business to carry on and keep going forward,

we have to make sure that those people

that have got 40 years' experience can pass that on to the younger people.

So we're using their experience to train the young people up.

Next week there'll be 38 apprentices on site.

The scheme just keeps on growing.

Hi, you look a happy bunch.

Course! Always happy.

So what's it like being an engineering apprentice?

I think it's excellent. Any young person should do it.

This route is a lot more fulfilling, you know, in terms

of the skills that you learn, not only in fitting or machining

but you also get your confidence from talking to people.

Vicky, what's the best thing about being an apprentice in an engineering works?

What I enjoy most is the people I work with.

I couldn't probably do this job without them. They have inspired me.

They've been here, most of them, 30-40 years, so it inspires me

to stay here, to progress and do well.

And when you're walking the streets of Huddersfield, what does it feel like to be an apprentice

when instead you could have perhaps have been a student?

I think it's better, definitely better,

because people that know you say, "Oh, you work at David Brown's,"

and they know that it's a reputable company, so people knowing

that you work at David Brown's know that you're onto a good career,

not just a job which other people find when they leave school.

You're in a career that's going to take you further in the future.

-Would you describe yourselves as ambitious?

-Definitely, without a doubt.

I think at Brown's I'm going all the way.

I'm not going to stop till I'm managing director.

What an inspiring bunch!

They'd all taken different routes to that engineering works

but once they were in there among the gigantic gears,

something happened, it's as if the cogs began to turn.

Apprenticeship isn't just about spanners and micrometers

and milling machines, about learning practical skills.

It's about something far bigger. It's about learning to be confident,

learning to be positive, about an attitude to your fellow workers,

about acquiring knowledge from the older generation

and passing your enthusiasm on to the younger generation.

It's about self-belief.

And I have a feeling that's what built Huddersfield.

This town has always had the knack of making its own future

through innovation and manufacturing.

Technical ability seems to be part of the Huddersfield psyche.

The town has a Textile Centre Of Excellence hidden

away on an industrial estate

where I'm told they've invented a revolutionary new method

of treating fabric with gas plasma and laser light to make

it fire resistant, water resistant or antimicrobial and easier to dye.

And all without the use of water or hazardous chemicals.

-Hi, Graham.

-Hi, Nick.

-Nice to meet you. This place feels a bit like a James Bond set.

It's huge. We've got all sorts of things. We've got the technology over here.

Graham Downhill, one of the inventors of this top secret process

has agreed to show me how it works.

Well what this is,

it's the only one in the world, it's a state-of-the-art process

and what it's designed for is the treatment of fabrics.

So whereas at the moment, certain things like waterproofing

and fire retardancy are achieved through conventional processes,

which are very wet, use a lot of heat, are very costly processes -

what we're doing here is using laser and plasma and new technology

to bring those processes about and realise those processes at a

fraction of the cost and a fraction of the environmental impact.

It all looks incredibly hi tech.

Shall we fire it up and see what it looks like see how it works?

If you look at the screen at the moment, the textile's running through and you can see a plasma.

It looks like a flame.

It is like a flame. It's like having a very low-power welding beam but it's across its full length.

So what that's actually doing now is affecting the fabric.

If we bring the laser in now, at a low pulse rate

so as you can see, what's actually happening there is that the laser now

is pulsing within the environment.

As we increase the pulsing,

there you can see now that the laser now has totally taken over

the process, so it's now working in conjunction with the plasma.

The gas plasma and laser light alter the surface chemistry of the material.

This could be the greatest leap forward in textile manufacturing

since the Industrial Revolution. It is absolutely mind-boggling.

When you think of traditional textile finishing done with wooden rolls

and splosh, splosh, splosh all over the place,

and here you've got flashing light, plasma, it's just incredible.

-It is very, very exciting.

-Feels as if I'm watching a Star Wars movie.

-It's not far off, actually.

-Unbelievable.

-But in Huddersfield!

But does it actually work?

-If you drop a drop of water on that one, it soaks straight in.

-Yes.

-You saw that?

-Totally absorbent.

Totally absorbent, and if I drop it on there, it just sits on the surface.

And now this is pure wool.

-Really?

-Yeah, this is pure wool, so that normally...

-Wow! That's amazing!

-So this is waterproof wool?

-Yes.

-It's just sitting on the surface?

-Yes.

But this is going to have so many applications. It's incredible.

So the wool itself hasn't been changed at all in terms...

No. If you feel...I mean, the feel of the wool is identical.

That is remarkable. That is really remarkable.

What's it going to mean for Huddersfield as a town?

Well, I think it just again shows that Huddersfield has got this

innovative streak and that they see an idea and they want to embrace it.

The whole Industrial Revolution started around textiles,

and to actually be in a position that Huddersfield is saying "Here's a technology we believe in",

let's take this to the next level and see what we can achieve.

And where this will end up, we don't know yet.

It's new, it's innovative, state- of-the-art, it's the first one...the only one you'll see

until we start building a few more.

It's there and it's putting us back,

it's putting Huddersfield back where I think it belongs.

Another revolution in the textile world taking shape in Huddersfield.

This town reinvents the future once again.

Made in Huddersfield, dreamt up in unit nine of an industrial estate.

It's my last weekend in Huddersfield

and tonight the biggest festival of the year begins.

It's the embodiment of creative competition in this town - the Huddersfield Carnival.

# Don't stop the music. #

How did the festival get started, Carlyn?

Huddersfield Carnival started 30 years ago in the Mayor's Parade.

It was one float in the Mayor's Parade, which celebrated

the entire Huddersfield and that's how we got started.

And what's going to happen this evening?

Tonight is the beginning of our festival weekend -

Freedom, Friendship And Love - which is the Carnival Royale Show.

And at this show, we've got all the kings, the queens,

the prince and princesses from all the other bands

and they are performing as a competition to win.

Whoever wins tonight will lead the parade off tomorrow.

And how many people are going to show up tomorrow?

In the region of 30,000.

And we've also got our masqueraders and people on floats.

-That's fantastic.

-Yeah.

Like most industrial towns, Huddersfield is very multicultural.

And it's a harmonious mix.

In the 19th century, Irish immigrants came to work on the roads, canals and railways.

After World War II, Polish workers were recruited and Huddersfield

aimed to attract immigrants from India, Pakistan and the West Indies.

A spirit of creative competition is clearly celebrated in this town.

Huddersfield doesn't do anything by halves - it's big,

it's multicultural, it's a town full of surprises.

Next morning, in the spirit of getting involved,

I'm heading to Carnival HQ.

And Carlyn tells me that she has a surprise for me.

-So, I've got a costume for you!

-Have you? What am I going to be dressed up as?

Right. We are doing the Diamond Jubilee

so you're Emperor of the Diamond Jubilee.

I'm Emperor of the Diamond Jubilee? So is that for the head?

You need to get ready because the procession is soon going to start,

so you need to get ready and get in the van and then off we go.

As a rule, I don't do dressing up or dancing but how can you say no?

This place just carries you along.

This is the last thing I expected to be doing in Huddersfield.

Before I came here I was thinking, mill chimneys, the industrial

north, maybe some real ale and a flat cap - not a massive carnival!

Huddersfield is a revelation.

Looking back over Huddersfield's history and all that I've seen here,

it's the people of this town that have made it great.

From the Ramsdens who took Huddersfield from a village

to a town, to the Luddites who campaigned for workers' rights,

to the Johnsons who keep their cloth finishing works running today.

The old, the young, every colour and creed come together here.

Huddersfield is perfectly woven, as high quality as its cloth,

it's a beautiful piece of modern Britain.

This town grew from a village to a manufacturing metropolis

in two short centuries.

But it's no post-industrial ghost town.

It's a young town, with the energy, the ideas to adapt.

The vigour, the innovation that put Huddersfield in the vanguard of the

Industrial Revolution are propelling it forward into a new age.

Huddersfield is used to making things

and right now it's making its own future.

"Made in Huddersfield" is a brand to watch.

Next time, I'll be in Enniskillen where I'll be discovering how

a castle stronghold remains a traditional town,

what tricks Enniskillen has in store for jockeys,

and why this town in post-troubles Northern Ireland is fighting a new threat.

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