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The Village of Edgerton
 Just a short drive from Huddersfield town centre is the leafy elegant suburb of Edgerton, home to a host of grand houses originally owned by the area’s wealthy mill owners.
Today many of these former ostentatious houses are now home to local businesses including financial experts, solicitors and health services which use the previously grand rooms for modern commerce and business.
Edgerton has also become a student area of Huddersfield, the former grand homes having been split into self contained units for students at the town’s university. Many of the other former residences have been converted into homes for the elderly, allowing older people to spend their remaining years in grand homes with large attractive gardens.
The hamlet of Edgerton was first referred to in 1311 but it’s meaning `Ecgheard’s farmstead’ suggests it is a much older settlement site, probably of Anglian origin. For centuries Edgerton appears to have been just one dwelling house and remained a small place until the start of the 1800s.
The impressive facades that were to be built in the mid-1800s however still remain as a reminder of how Edgerton used to be in days gone-by. Driving out of the town centre and along Halifax Road, it’s easy to imagine how this area of Huddersfield must have looked in it’s hey-day.
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 Mill owners who ran the world-renowed wool industry in Huddersfield would escape the mill surroundings of the daytime to a grand evening retreat, a world away from the looms and noise of wool production.
The town built an enviable reputation based on a first class textiles industry and fine woollen worsteds sent to customers all over the world. This boom provided a rich legacy of fine Victorian buildings, including many within Edgerton, and also the railway station, once described as `the finest façade of any such building in the country.’
Architecturally the town boasts an incredible 1,660 listed buildings – the third highest in the country.
Records from writings of the time about the Edgerton area observe: `a large number of handsome villa residences in the most varied style of ornamental architecture – Grecian, Gothic – and several others present a very imposing and elegant appearance’.
The Halifax Road area of 1850 was said to contain many large houses and it was along this road and from this period that Edgerton began to develop as the home of the wealthier manufacturers. Evidence of this prosperity can still be seen in the homes of the earlier textile magnates of Edgerton where coats of arms still adorn the doorway of many a mansion built in Gothic, Roman or Italianate style.
Edgerton was definitely the abode of the elite and records from the mid-1800s show that 62% of the homes in Edgerton had one or more servants. Professional families began to move from their town centre homes into the new villas in Edgerton, Greenhead and Marsh.
Many large villas were built in Edgerton between 1855 and 1875 with the smaller semi-detached villas being confined to land at Gledholt. By now Edgerton was definitely the most fashionable area in which to live.
Many of the deceased mill owners who lived in Edgerton are buried close-by in the equally grand Edgerton Cemetery which lies on land between Cemetery Road and Blacker Road. This Victorian style cemetery opened in 1855 and is laid out in a symmetrical design. A look at some of the headstones shows the strong connections with the historical Huddersfield woollen industry.
Neatly enclosed, it is tastefully laid out and planted, with a central avenue spanned by an open arch with an ornamental spire. On either side are two chapels. At the time it was created, it was regarded as one of the prettiest cemeteries in England.
 Take a walk around Edgerton Cemetery and its grandeur is instantly apparent. Large ostentatious headstones are everywhere and some people would say it has rather a spooky, unnerving feel to it. It certainly has a feeling of a by-gone era and a sense of history is everywhere.
Headstones record the deaths of yarn manufacturers, merchants and cloth finishers to name but a few. However one of the most distressing graves within Edgerton Cemetery is the communal grave containing numerous people, most women, who die in Booth’s clothing factory blaze in October 1941. Some 47 people died and the majority are buried at Edgerton.
At one time the local meteorological instruments were kept at Edgerton Cemetery but a decision was taken to establish a new weather station in Huddersfield’s Ravensknowle Park in 1876 and record the high’s and low’s of local weather. While at Edgerton records show the instruments recorded a particularly intense frost in 1860.
A look at old maps show a vast difference between the rich and the poor. In the Edgerton area there is mention of an Edgerton Villa while only a short distance away was the Union Workhouse and the Fever Hospital.
In 1883 Huddersfield became the first authority to operate its own tramway system to replace some of the horse drawn omnibuses. Records show that a tram would run from the Market Place to Edgerton every hour and the new Edgerton route opened in January 1884, later being linked to the Lindley route and running along Holly Bank Road.
Edgerton was also one of the first places in Yorkshire to have a lawn tennis club. In 1881 a small group of enthusiasts began to play the relatively new game of lawn tennis on a small area of land off Halifax Road.
Soon after they formed the Huddersfield Lawn Tennis Club, making it one of the oldest clubs in Yorkshire. After just 12 months around 180 people had become members and in 1884 the club gained affiliation to the Yorkshire Lawn Tennis Association.
Today the Huddersfield Lawn Tennis and Squash Club has a base in Cemetery Road, opposite Edgerton Cemetery and is currently completing a major refurbishment.
The tennis club has several members in their 80s, still playing on a weekly basis. One group of octogenarians play up to three times a week in summer with an early 7.30am start and another group plays regularly on Sunday morning. One club member Colin Graham, who is in his 70s, regular coaches junior players.
Next time you drive along Halifax Road, Edgerton spare a thought for how this area used to be. Wealth oozed from its pores and this area was home to many of the men who made the words `Made In Huddersfield’ famous on cloth and suit lengths across the world
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