Halifax - West Yorkshire

About Halifax - West Yorkshire

The legendary textile town of Halifax is no longer a cluster of mills and cloth caps squeezed into an industrialised valley, but a progressive, ambitious centre of development which has one eye on its heritage and another on its potential.

The Piece Hall, a visually striking reminder of the town's heyday as a wool centre, is a classic example of the way Halifax - historically known as "the town of a hundred trades" - has moved with the times. It was built in 1779 to accommodate more than 300 merchants' rooms. Saved from demolition by a single vote in 1972, the Hall has now become a major landmark for very different reasons - as a centre for trendy cafe bars and contemporary retail outlets.

The Victorian Borough Market which dominates the town centre, the Bankfield Museum, home to one of the finest costume and textile displays in the country, the once derelict Victorian mill of Dean Clough which was transformed into a complex for commerce, industry and the arts, and the Calderdale Industrial Museum which rumbles into life to offer a glimpse into the noisy, mechanical world of the working mill, all contribute to the reshaping of Halifax's image. So, too, do the retired Judge James Pickles, Prince Charles and Britain's biggest building society.

The Prince makes no bones about the fact that he loves Eureka, the innovative and hugely popular award-winning children's museum which is famous for its walk-in body parts and high-tech displays. It was Prince Charles who encouraged the Clore Foundation to base a new children's science museum in the northern town, and who subsequently opened it in the summer of `92 - delighted, no doubt, to be one of the first to get a glimpse of its remarkable exhibition areas.

Judge James Pickles was born and bred in Halifax, and effectively secured the town's position on the legal map by becoming one of the most outspoken and controversial lawyers of his time.

The Halifax PLC, meanwhile, contributes £50 million a year to the local economy and, over the past decade, refurbishment and expansions have generated more than £100 million worth of business for the community in which it was born on February 1 1853. This theme of regeneration and rejuvenation carries on through the entire region of Calderdale, where ancient crafts - like the clog makers of Hebden Bridge and boiled sweet makers of Elland - sit comfortably side-by-side with modern businesses and centres of artistic excellence.

Calderdale itself is a remarkable mix of old and new, towns and rugged countryside, breathtaking views and contemporary activities. The magnificent Calder Gorge, divided by one of the earliest passenger railway lines in Britain, towers over the slate rooftops which characterise the heart of West Yorkshire, and cuts through some of the finest and most celebrated centres of the county's rich industrial past.

The area brims with history and legend, like the tale of the Cragg Vale Coiners, a notorious band of counterfeiters whose leader, "King" David Hartley, was subsequently hanged for murder in 1770, and the story of a milk maid who lost her way and died on Midgley Moor. The standing stone of Churn Milk Joan is a highlight of the Calderdale Way.

Perhaps one of the most colourful sights of Calderdale centres on the hundreds of brightly-painted canal barges which converge on the waterways every summer, particularly in Brighouse, home to the famous Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band, and the former mill town of Hebden Bridge where a horse-drawn canal trip takes in the packhorse bridge of 1510.