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The Village of Lockwood
 Drive through Lockwood on your way to work and you could be forgiven for thinking this area of shops and houses is merely a suburb of Huddersfield and home to Lockwood Bar, one of the main traffic junctions taking traffic in and out of the Holme Valley.
At morning and evening rush hour, Lockwood Bar is one of the busiest road junctions in Huddersfield with traffic heading into town to work and then home again to the outlying villages of Honley, Netherton, Meltham and Holmfirth.
The history of Lockwood tells us it was originally called North Crosland and formed part of the Crosland family estate. However, it was taken over by the Lockwood family after a series of disputes between the two families, hence the name.
There is however much more to Lockwood than meets the eye: for example, did you know in the 1800s it was home to a spa baths which was, at one stage, expected to rival the spa town of Harrogate in popularity. The sandblasted stone building, in the appropriately named Bath Street off Albert Street, can still be seen today behind the wrought iron gates of industrial premises.
A notice, dating from 1827, says: “The village of Lockwood is beautifully and delightfully situated in the valley of the Holme in romantic and sheltered country with good roads in every direction. It combines every requisite to comfort, invigorate and strengthen the weak and sickly.
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 The Spa Water is highly esteemed for its medicinal qualities and has been found highly beneficial in glandular, rheumatic, gouty, dyspeptic, scorbutic and all other kinds of complaints. The Baths are without doubt the most complete establishment of the kind in the West Riding of Yorkshire. As a summer retreat Lockwood cannot be surpassed.?
Lockwood Spa Baths was opened in May 1827 and offered a swimming bath, private cold and shower baths, a warm bath and vapour baths. The baths were described as elegant and embracing every comfort and convenience, having being built on the site of an old sulphur well.
The river behind was spanned with a rustic bridge, grounds were laid and a Bath Hotel opened. By the 1860s the spa also offered fumigating and shampooing baths and in the 1867 season it attracted almost 30,000 bathers, being especially popular among the better-off.
The baths were later bought by the council in 1870 but failed to attract enough people to make it a viable business. The waters of the spa were said to have a strong sulphurous smell and taste, containing 35 parts of carburetted and 17 of sulphuretted hydrogen, 7 of carbonic acid, 41 of azotic gas, besides a small proportion of carbonate of lime and sulphate of magnesia sounds like a heady combination!
At the time Lockwood contained many handsome houses and a mechanics’ institute, with every convenience, adapted to the requirements of both sexes, to whom it was equally open. Today the mechanics?institute is still standing, although it has been sandblasted and turned into modern apartments.
In its hey-day, the area would have attracted well-off Victorians, dressed in their finery, promenading along the River Holme to ‘take the air’. It was particularly appropriate in this genteel environment of the Lockwood of a by-gone age that Lord Henry Beaumont opened the nearby 29-acre Beaumont Park in 1883 to improve the quality of life for local people.
 Looking along the park main thoroughfare, which today remains relatively unchanged, it is easy to picture the Victorians enjoy a promenade among the walkways and gardens. The park, which sits on the edge of Lockwood, was created following the success of Hyde Park in London and is a brilliant example of the day contemporary design incorporating waterfalls, caverns, hillside paths, viewing platforms and even today Victorian gothic ruins and a castle which was formerly a refreshment pavilion in days gone-by.
Public parks are necessary to increase the happiness, promote the good health and elevate the minds of the people, said Lord Henry Beaumont.
Originally the main entrance to the park was from Meltham Road, Lockwood. Although this is not often used today, it still offers a splendid introduction to the lower reaches of the park and includes the old Huddersfield to Meltham rail line which closed in the 1960s, but which saw trains passing through Beaumont Park daily during the line hey-day.
Today Beaumont Park is as popular as ever and is the subject of on-going restoration work by the support group, the Friends of Beaumont Park. For more information on the group work, take a look at the website www.fobp.co.uk. The park is considered of no less significance in the North than the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall.
 The park, which is one of the area finest public open spaces, is popular with families, retired people, dog walkers etc. It offers a mix of grassed open areas, a play area for children, woodland walks and spectacular views over the Lockwood area including the impressive 129ft tall multi-arched Lockwood Viaduct.
The intricately arched Lockwood Viaduct, which carries the Huddersfield to Sheffield railway line is situated in a steep valley and spans an area from Hanson Lane, Lockwood across to Woodhead Road, Berry Brow. This amazing engineering feat dominates the Lockwood area and is a landmark for
miles around.
Many tales have been told over the years about Lockwood Viaduct but perhaps the most impressive is that dating back to September 10, 1938 when Armitage Bridge cricket club member Jack Crum threw a cricket ball right over the top of Lockwood Viaduct - all 129 ft of it.
Today the viaduct overlooks the Huddersfield Rugby Union Club, at Lockwood Park, which is situated below and to both sides of the railway viaduct, in the former Bentley and
Shaw’s Brewery.
Timothy Bentley, founder of Bentley & Shaw’s Lockwood Brewery, is the person recognised as the inventor of the Stone Square system of brewing beer. This method allowed high levels of carbon dioxide to remain in the beer during fermentation, helping to give it a unique flavour and smoothness when served. The brewery was taken over by Bass Charrington before it closed down in the late 1960s.
A little further along Meltham Road towards Netherton is the vast Lockwood Cemetery which, according to Kirklees Council, is almost full. As well as being seen from the main road, the cemetery can be seen from Beaumont Park which sits above the cemetery. Sadly, as with many UK cemeteries, Lockwood has suffered in recent years from vandalism but for many years, it has been one of the Huddersfield busiest cemeteries with funerals held daily.
So what else has helped shape the Lockwood area over the years? At one time woollen fabrics were extensively manufactured, and there were large mechanical works, iron and brass foundries.
Lockwood became one of the first areas in the country to have a tramcar transport service. In January 1883 a Huddersfield Corporation steam tram made its way from Fartown to Lockwood and launched the first municipal transport service in Britain.
Later this was converted to trolleybuses and older readers will fondly remember the trolleybus running from Lockwood via Folly Hall into Huddersfield on a regular basis.
The village has its own railway station, still busy today, and located on the Penistone Line between Huddersfield and Sheffield. Prior to the mid 1970s it had its own extensive goods yard, coal yard, sidings and stationmaster house. The goods yards were used to service and supply raw materials to the former engineering works of David Brown Ltd.
This particular division of David Brown’s produced gearboxes for industrial machinery and hydraulic drives, and some military armoured vehicles. The gearbox that turns the top of the Post Office Tower in London was designed and built there.
Lockwood is also the base of the locally renowned Dixon’s Ice Cream and boasts an ice cream parlour in Swan Lane. Historical experts say the Dixon building was the site of the area original town hall?indeed there has been a nearby pub called The Town Hall for
many years.
Lockwood has also been home over the years to various churches including the Emanuel Church, a stone structure, with a handsome East window, erected in 1830 at the cost of ?3,000. It also had a Methodist chapel in Bentley Street (opened 1872) and Lockwood Baptist in Lockwood Road, the latter of which is still open today after Baptists first established a base in the area in 1790.
The Lockwood of today is multi-cultural, mostly residential but with specialist shops and industrial/commercial premises. It has good bus and rail links and every day sees thousands of motorists pass through via the busy Lockwood Bar junction, which is, of course, a former toll point from days of old.
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