The New International Encyclopædia/Huddersfield

HUD'DERSFIELD. A manufacturing and market town in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, on the Colne, 16 miles southwest of Leeds. It has excellent facilities for intercommunication by railway and canal with all important commercial centres, and is the chief seat of the English cloth and woolen manufacture (Map: England, E 3). Coal-mining and stone-quarrying are also profitable industries. The town is well built, with spacious thoroughfares, and fine ecclesiastical, public, and commercial buildings. The town hall and market hall are noteworthy. It has a proprietary college affiliated to the London University, a collegiate school, and other educational institutions. Its municipal government is of a high order and the corporation has been a pioneer in several economic features. Artisans' dwellings were established in 1853 for married couples, and for single women as well as for bachelors. Huddersfield was the first to own and work its tramways; it owns its gas, water, and electric works, and several beautiful parks; maintains free public libraries, an art gallery, public baths and wash-houses, slaughterhouse, markets, technical schools, fire brigade, a hospital, cemeteries, and a modern system of refuse and sewage disposal. It was the first town to adopt an eight hour labor day. It is the seat of a United States consulate. Although a town mentioned in the Domesday Book, its importance dates only from the establishment of the woolen manufacture in the eighteenth century. Population, in 1891, 95,400; in 1901, 95,000.