the handsomest by far of all the factory towns in Yorkshire and Lancashire

Friedrich Engels

In hindsight, it was perhaps inevitable. Brought to this town by a Wolf(f) and a Cow, (1) the animistic world was transmitting subtle messages within seconds of walking out of the station.

Directly opposite the grandiose railway building, that could easily masquerade as a town hall, a lion prowls the rooftops, frozen in time since 1853.  Those Victorians loved their symbols of Empire and the earthbound relative of our rooftop dweller, gazes out imperiously from the entrance to Lion Chambers.  A small winged dragon sits above on the keystone. Possibly a symbol of Victorian industriousness or, as Ruskin would have it, a more sinister, ‘satanic’ motif of rampant industrialisation. Or perhaps the dragon is simply hiding from St George.  I have just walked across a square that bears his name.

I find out later that the present rooftop lion is a fibreglass copy of the original which was made in Coade stone, a ceramic stoneware popular with Victorian and Edwardian architectural sculptors. Other Coade stone lions and decorative statues can be found at Kew Gardens, Buckingham Palace and Westminster Bridge, the present home to London’s Red Lion a.k.a The South Bank Lion.

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Minutes later I turn a corner to come face to face with the Emporium Dog. All eager eyes and panting tongue. I half expect him to bound up on hind legs to his full height – “Buy Me, Buy Me, Buy Me”.

I pass him a few times over the weekend. Always looking happy, as dogs invariably are, when outside in the fresh air. Locked up for the night, he takes on a melancholy countenance, looking out wistfully from his glass cage under the red neon.

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I imagine taking him out for the day, navigating on and off trains and buses. A window seat obviously, top deck right at the front. Squeezed into the passenger seat of a car, head out of the window, licking the breeze.

 

These transmissions from the non-human world became a feature as I wander through Huddersfield over the next few days. I walk up a street named Beast Market and regularly see magpies and crows flitting around the small grid of Victorian streets, perfectly at home in their urban environment.

Above what is now a nightclub bar called Sin, two fine horses catch the eye. Even with the stone weathering you can see that one is elegant, poised and groomed with a manicured mane.

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The other is wild and untamed. Encased in its stone alcove since the 1840s, you can sense its desire to break free and run.

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I find out that the building was originally built as a military riding school in the late 1840s and was the headquarters of the 2nd West Yorkshire Yeomanry Cavalry.  It subsequently became a music hall in 1905, aptly named the Hippodrome which must have made our wild horse dream of running around the racing stadiums of ancient Greece.  Perhaps our groomed stallion was more suited for hippodrome chariot racing. I wonder what our horses make of the carnivalesque ambiance of the nightclub bar. Passing outside at night, the dull, techno thud-thud conjuring up the Taraxippus – or ‘horse disturber’ – a ghostly presence blamed for frightening horses at the hippodromes throughout ancient Greece. The current ‘To Let’ sign on the building must create future uncertainty for our equine friends and in a town bristling with the fading lions of Empire, the horses must always remain vigilant.

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One thing quickly becomes apparent about Huddersfield. Walk in any direction from the centre of the town and you will soon find that it is completely encased in a ring of traffic.

On a Saturday afternoon and with a bit of time until the next concert, I manage to break through the A62 ring road and head down towards the old industrial mill district, passing the winged lioness and griffins of the Gothic Milton Congregational Church on the way:

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I’m drawn to a fairly nondescript, light industrial building. Shuttered and silent it’s a colour which has a kind of luminosity, casting light on the road. A premonition of blue?

I’m heading to Bates Mill to see Carlos Casas‘ audio-visual installation Avalanche:

Exploring the interrelation of landscape, soundscape, music and ethnography, Avalanche is an audiovisual meditation about a village and its traditions on the way to disappearance. One of the world’s highest inhabited villages, Hichigh is located in Tajikistan’s mysterious and fascinating Pamir mountains, home to many archaic and well-kept traditions. The film depicts Hichigh at a time of literal and figurative dusk: on the cusp of becoming a ghost village, just before its stones and mud houses are eaten by the mountain again.

It is a powerful and poignant piece, with the multi-screen environment enhanced by a Phill Niblock score. Depicting a culture barely surviving at subsistence level, they are clinging on to existence on the side of this high mountain landscape and yet, life goes on.

Standing in this space, you cannot help but reflect on the building where this is being exhibited. This old textile mill where the skills, traditions and culture of the yarn spinners was slowly eroded by globalisation, lower cost labour and the flight of international capital. Yet, life goes on. It is good to see Bates Mill now being reinvented as an arts venue, incubator space and photographic studio.

It is late afternoon, drizzly and overcast when I exit Bates Mill. I can hear the River Colne nearby and head off for a quick look. Walking through a deserted car park, a corner of graffiti and greenery, topped off by the pedestrian bridge, punches some colour into the monochrome light. Bizarrely, it looks like the wall has been partly rebuilt, with new bricks erasing part of the original graffiti.

I need to get back to the University where the next event will take place and notice a sign for the Narrow Canal Towpath. How can this be resisted? It feels as if it will take me in the general direction of the University so I enter the narrow opening, casting off the distant traffic sounds with each step as I descend on to the towpath. Looking underneath the arch of the road, which runs overhead, it’s no surprise to see the place has been tagged. The water, a still pool of black ink.

I’m heading in the opposite direction. It is so quiet and there is barely any movement on the water as the grey blanket of dusk descends. The phone in my pocket starts to ring and I have barely answered when I’m hit by a jolt of blue at the periphery of vision. Surely not. For I second, I wonder if I’ve imagined this, when it happens again, like a razor, scything through the twilight which descends to alight barely 10 feet away on the canal bank. A twitching ball of nervous energy, curious. It appears to pull in all the surrounding light and radiate it back. The illuminated blues of lapis lazuli, golden orange, red flecks. A shape-shifting intensity of colours.

“I’ve just seen a kingfisher, will phone you back”

Of course, it disappeared again as quickly as it had appeared and I was once again left wondering whether I had just imagined this. Up until this day, I had never seen a live kingfisher. I had certainly tried. I had gone to spots along The Water of Leith, in Edinburgh, where there had been sightings and yet they remained elusive. One day I sat on the banks of the Lyne Burn in Fife for hours like a fisherman without a rod, waiting for a glimpse. Anything … Nothing … Funny thing is, I doubt if I would have done this for any other bird. I’m not a birder and have little real knowledge of birds, yet they always captivate and fascinate when I stop to look at them. However, the kingfisher has always exerted a strange magic. The name itself – king – fisher – flitting between land and water with a display of colour that shouldn’t really belong in this world. As if it this small bird has escaped from a cartoon or wandered in from some exotic climate by accident.

Yet here, today, alongside an old industrial canal I had finally seen one. Of course the bird was long gone but this is where it happened:

Any lingering doubts of having imagined all of this were dispelled when it reappeared one final time. Flying low down the middle of the canal, barely above the water. It almost seemed to be a gesture to confirm its existence. A life enhancing presence in the most unlikely of settings.

Those animistic spirits had clearly been working in my favour.

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Now playing: Lyndsay Cooper – Rags

Reference:

Huddersfield Heritage – Leaflet produced by Huddersfield Local History Society, Huddersfield Civic Society and Kirklees Council.

(1) In town for the fantastic Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. On this particular weekend two of the major events were concerts featuring Christian Wolff and Henry Cow. Christian Wolff is the last surviving member of the composers who came to be called The New York School alongside John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. Wolff is also the person who gave John Cage his first copy of the I-Ching.  Henry Cow and associated musicians reformed to celebrate the music of composer and multi-instrumentalist Lindsay Cooper (1951 – 2013).