Calderdale history timeline 1900 - 2000AD
Towards the Present
By
1900 much of the present distinctive landscape of Calderdale had been
formed. In Halifax, subsequent building activity supplemented and
modified the late Victorian townscape, but made no fundamental impact
on the urban plan that had evolved during the period 1750-1900. The
‘conurbation’ had expanded to cover the larger part of
the ancient township and adjacent areas, and its population had risen
to over 100,000.
Since
1750 Halifax had undergone a dramatic transformation – from
that of a pre-industrial market town at the heart of a domestic woollen
manufacturing district to that of a major urban centre engaged in
a diverse range of factory-based activities – and the social,
cultural, commercial and municipal dimensions of this industrial revolution
received their most striking visual expression in the rich and varied
architecture and rapidly changing topography of the late Victorian
mill town.
In
spite of the survival of red-brick housing estates from the 1930s,
slum clearance and urban renewal programmes from the 50s, high-rise
flats and supermarkets from the 60s, and fly-over and motorway construction
from the 70s, the physical shape and layout of the area can be seen
largely as the product of commercial and industrial activity which
had lost its momentum before the first world war.
Although
machine tools, quarrying, confectionery manufacturing and other enterprises
had extended Calderdales commercial and industrial base, the 20th
century was a period of relative stagnation and decline, and this
often left ugly scars on the landscape: derelict empty buildings,
drab and unimaginative new developments, and pockets of depressing
urban wasteland once occupied by architecturally striking edifices.
Since
the 1980s, however, there have been signs of genuine attempts to arrest
the process of decline and decay by combining and linking efforts
to revitalize the local economy with efforts to improve the quality
of the local environment, and by situating both of these objectives,
where appropriate, within the framework of a heightened awareness
of Calderdales built and natural landscape heritage. Many of the distinctive
elements of change and continuity within the areas rich industrial
and architectural legacy have survived intact, and have attracted
the attention of increasing numbers of cultural heritage groups and
recreational planners, who saw the need for at least some of Calderdales
future commitments to be more rigorously geared to the active conservation
and effective exploitation of its past.
The
creation of conservation areas, stone-cleaning, canal restoration,
the rehabilitation of redundant buildings, and new environmentally
sympathetic human-scale planning mark the first tentative steps towards
the formulation of a radical and coherent strategy for change and
regeneration which views economic, environmental and community interests
as mutually interdependent.
If such a strategy is to be successful and sustainable into the future, however, it will need to be bold and imaginative. It will need to draw heavily on the values of self-help and co-operation which made such a vital contribution to positive change in Calderdale in the past, and which made such a dramatic impact on the local landscape over the centuries.
