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Weaver to web

From Weaver to Web: Online visual archive of Calderdale History

Welcome to the online visual archive of Calderdale history. It gives you access to over 23,000 images, with supporting historical information.

The Calderdale area includes the towns of Halifax, Brighouse, Elland, Hebden Bridge, Sowerby Bridge and Todmorden.

From Weaver to Web provides access to a wide range of materials. These may be very useful to local and family historians interested in this area.

You will find photographs, postcards, maps, trade directories, handbills and many other types of historical sources.

Archive feature

Wainhouse Tower, Halifax.

Wainhouse Tower, Halifax. Situated between Skircoat Moor and King Cross, the Rocks have been used as recreational land since at least Victorian times. Albert Promenade, designed to allow the people of Halifax to view the Rocks and the Calder Valley, was opened in 1861.




Wainhouse Tower can be seen in the distance. It was built by John Edward Wainhouse (1817-1883) in 1871. Wainhouse inherited the Washer Lane Dye Works, together with a large fortune. After the Smoke Abatement Act of 1870, legislation meant that smoke had to be taken out of the valley. Admiring the work of R. H. Watt of Knutsford, Cheshire, Wainhouse decided to build a tall chimney also. In 1871 plans were drawn up by the architect Isaac Booth for a chimney to carry the smoke from the factory by pipeline. In 1874 Wainhouse sold the works to his manager, who refused to pay the costs of finishing the chimney.




Wainhouse decided to keep the tower for himself and convert it into 'a general astronomical and physical observatory'. Completed in 1875 by architect Richard Swarbrick Dugdale at a total cost of £14,000, Wainhouse Tower stands 275 feet high with the top decorated in a neo-renaissance style.




Wainhouse Tower is linked with the owner and his feud with neighbour Sir Harry Edwards, Industrialist, Freeman and Justice of the Peace. Arguments started from one small incident in 1873, and after Edwards misused his position as the Justice of the Peace, things went from bad to worse and Wainhouse became tangled in a war of words until his death.




It has been suggested that Wainhouse built the tower to keep an eye on his neighbour's activities, so Wainhouse may have kept the structure to antagonize his neighbour.




W.E. Dennison [1866-1926], Chairman of Halifax Courier Limited, ran an amateur radio station - known as 2KD - from Wainhouse Tower, sometime between 1912 and 1919. Around this time, it was also used as an ARP observation post.




Still standing 2003. The tower is a Grade II* Listed Building; the following is from Calderdale Council's description:




1871-75. By I Booth completed by R S Dugdale. Belvedere tower built for J E Wainhouse to serve also as a chimney for his nearby dyeworks. Very tall, octagonal, stone structure on square base. Elaborate top with bracketted gallery and lantern in 2 stages the upper one open with ogee cap. Included as a curiosity and very prominent landmark.