Gomersal is a town in
Kirklees
Kirklees is a local government district of West Yorkshire, England, governed by Kirklees Council with the status of a metropolitan borough. The largest town and administrative centre of Kirklees is Huddersfield, and the district also includes ...
in
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...
, England. It is south of
Bradford, east of
Cleckheaton
Cleckheaton is a town in the Metropolitan borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is situated south of Bradford, east of Brighouse, west of Batley and south-west of Leeds. It ...
and north of
Heckmondwike
Heckmondwike is a town in the metropolitan borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England, south west of Leeds. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is close to Cleckheaton and Liversedge. It is mostly in the Batley and Spen pa ...
. It is close to the
River Spen
The River Spen or Spen Beck, in West Yorkshire, England is a tributary of the River Calder. It rises north of Cleckheaton, runs through Liversedge and flows into the Calder to the south of Dewsbury at Ravensthorpe. The average rainfall for th ...
and forms part of the
Heavy Woollen District
The Heavy Woollen District is a region of textile-focused industrial development in West Yorkshire, England. It acquired the name because of the heavyweight cloth manufactured there from the early 19th century.
The district is made up of parts o ...
.
History
Gomersal was attested in the ''
Doomes Day Book'' (1086) with the name Gomershale. *''Guthmers Halh'', is a supposed place-name, not attested in any written document, hence marked with asterisk in ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names''. The location was at a bend in the brook which passes through the valley bottom before joining with the
River Calder. This land became an Anglo-Saxon burial ground and most likely was the location of a Celtic temple site before the Roman Conquest. It became the site of the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul, now known as St Peters. The brook formed the ancient boundary between Gomersal and Birstall.
The Luddite riots, that occurred in the area in 1812 provided
Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë (, commonly ; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature.
She enlisted i ...
with material for her novel ''
Shirley
Shirley may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Shirley'' (novel), an 1849 novel by Charlotte Brontë
* ''Shirley'' (1922 film), a British silent film
* ''Shirley'' (2020 film), an American film
* ''Shirley'' (album), a 1961 album by Shirley Bas ...
''. Gomersal was the hometown of her friend
Mary Taylor who lived at the
Red House which she renamed ''Briarmains'' in the novel.
The Taylor Family also lived in Spen Hall, a residence in the Lower Spen area of Gomersal. Spen Hall has been divided into several houses but retains a 16th-century mullioned window, a tennis lawn and a water spring which, according to myth, is a tunnel (now flooded) leading to the Old Saw public house cellar nearby. The cellar was apparently used to hide priests fleeing persecution.
Clay pipes were found in the earlier Old Saw premises in the walls and chimneys but, once exhumed, disintegrated. A glazed drinking cup found in the foundations survives after being carefully reassembled and preserved by Harry King, the former owner of the cottage. The cup still requires dating. A hand-made brick-lined pit deep was also discovered on the site. Its uses are disputed, with suggestions that it was a cockfighting pit or meat storage vessel.
Gomersal also has many fine and historic houses which climb the hill of Spen Lane and along Oxford Road towards
Birkenshaw. Houses such as Spen Hall, Spen House (now demolished and rebuilt, except the Coach House), High Rising (High Royd, another Taylor Household) now The Gomersal Hotel, Tanfield House, Firdene (currently on the market for £1.25 million), Hilltop House (now split into two homes with apartment buildings in the grounds), Gomers Hall (apparently, originally Gothmers Hall, which was demolished to build an electricity sub-station), Pollard Hall (home of the mill owner Thomas Burnley), Red House (now Red House Museum), Broadyards, Croft House, Sigston House, Gomersal Hall, Peel House, West House (the last three still privately owned).
The Roundhill Mill site in the Cliffe lane area of Gomersal is known for the sighting of the (pronounced Skrayty), a legendary Norse spirit supposedly observed by a son before the death of his father and characterised by a cold and apparently sourceless light which moves erratically. The old name for Cliffe Lane was Scrat Lane.
Gomersal was heavily wooded up to the late 19th century with Swinley Great Wood, Lanes Wood, Scotland (Fusden) Wood containing the Taylor family burial ground, and Church Wood between the Hill Top and Monk Ings.
During the Second World War, Gomersal had a number of public air raid shelters, with quite a few remaining in 2007 at Birkenshaw roundabout Park, Gomersal First School, Hill Top. This was likely due to the semi-underground control bunker for the anti-aircraft guns in the West Riding, protecting Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield and Halifax. The bunker was in the grounds of Oakroyd Hall, making this a target for the German Luftwaffe; Oakroyd Hall is now the headquarters of the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.
There was also a
Royal Observer Corps
The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) was a civil defence organisation intended for the visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain. It operated in the United Kingdom between 29 October 1925 and 31 Decembe ...
"Orlit" type surface observation post on the Popeley Fields around from the Gomersal Cricket ground. This was active throughout the war and manned day and night. In the 1960s on the same site a nuclear-blast-proof underground bunker was constructed as a monitoring post, one of over 1,500 constructed in the UK, for use in measuring direction, strength of blast and fallout in the event of the UK coming under nuclear attack. The ROC stood down during the late 1980s with the reduced threat of the Cold War and the bunkers were abandoned and sold or given back to the land owners.
Railway
The Lower Spen area of Gomersal had a railway station, Cleckheaton Spen on the
LNWR
The London and North Western Railway (LNWR, L&NWR) was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the L&NWR was the largest joint stock company in the United Kingdom.
In 1923, it became a constituent of the L ...
railway line diversion loop linking
Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...
and
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
and improving the main line capacity between
Huddersfield
Huddersfield is a market town in the Kirklees district in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confluence into ...
and Leeds. The line was constructed between 1894 and 1902 and opened fully to passengers in 1904. It had some spectacular civil engineering for the time, including rail viaducts at
Mirfield
Mirfield () is a town and civil parish in Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is on the A644 road between Brighouse and Dewsbury. At the 2011 census it had a population of 19,563. Mirfield ...
and
Heckmondwike
Heckmondwike is a town in the metropolitan borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England, south west of Leeds. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is close to Cleckheaton and Liversedge. It is mostly in the Batley and Spen pa ...
, a pedestrian road
viaduct linking Cleckheaton town centre with the station and goods yard. The Gomersal Tunnel is long and around deep, directly under the Shoulder of Mutton pub in Oxford Road at Great Gomersal (the LNWR bought the pub in 1897 in case it fell into the tunnel workings) and then the line opened into Gomersal Station in Moor Lane, a four-minute train ride from Cleckheaton Spen.
The railway closed to passengers in 1964 and goods in 1966, having had all the buildings and structures repainted and new track in 1963. In 1952, Sir
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
, then Prime Minister, slept at Cleckheaton Spen sidings overnight in a special train with a heavy security cordon during election campaigning.
Places of worship
Gomersal has a number of places of worship given the size of population, including Gomersal St Mary C of E Church (1851), the Methodist Wesleyan Chapel, Latham Lane 1827, Grove Congregational Chapel in Oxford Road, the Methodist Free United Chapel (off Reform Street), the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Moor Lane, the Moravian Chapel in Little Gomersal and Little Gomersal Methodist Chapel on Town Hill. Most are still in use.
John Wesley preached in Gomersal. One of his closest lay assistants John Nelson was involved with lay preacher Edward Brooke who initiated the construction the Wesleyan Chapel in Latham Lane in 1827. Its unusual bow front led to it being known as the "pork pie chapel".
Street and locality names
Gomersal also has some interesting street and place names, for example Mazy Brook (Mazebrook), Drub, Birdacre, Bleak Street, Wood Nook, Throstle Nest, Egypt, Worlds End, Fusden Lane, Monk Ings, Nutter Lane, Muffit Lane, Garfit Hill, Nibshaw Lane to name a few.
Pubs include The Peacock (demolished for the M62 Motorway), The Scotland, The Bankfield, The West End, Shoulder of Mutton (now permanently closed), White Horse (Demolished for
Sainsbury's
J Sainsbury plc, trading as Sainsbury's, is the second largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom, with a 14.6% share of UK supermarket sales.
Founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane, London, the company ...
building), The Wheatsheaf, Bulls Head, The Old Saw (The Saw), and The California.
Clubs include Gomersal Cricket Club, Spen Victoria Cricket and Bowling Club, and Drub Working Men's Club.
Gomersal also has a football club,
Gomersal & Cleckheaton F.C., ranging from ages 6 to 17 and their traditional colours are red and black stripes.
Gomersal was once home to Burnleys Textile Mill, which was a landmark in the
Spenborough
Spenborough was, from 1915 to 1974, a local government district in the administrative county of Yorkshire, West Riding, England.
Spenborough was created as an urban district in 1915 by the merger of Cleckheaton, Gomersal and Liversedge urban ...
area. However, this has been demolished to make way for a new housing development of up to 300 homes. Gomersal has two primary schools; Gomersal Primary School and St Mary's First School.
Notable people
The composer
Arnold Cooke
Arnold Atkinson Cooke (4 November 1906 – 13 August 2005) was a British composer.Biography by Eric Wetherell, British Music Society/ref>
Education
Cooke was born at Gomersal, West Yorkshire, into a family of carpet manufacturers. As a child, ...
was born in Gomersal in 1906.
Gomersal is the birthplace of novelist
John Barlow, who has set several works of fiction in the village.
Appearances in media
Gomersal was the filming location for a number of scenes in the long-running period drama ''
Heartbeat''.
See also
*
Listed buildings in Liversedge and Gomersal
Liversedge is a town and Gomersal is a village, and together with the surrounding area they form a ward in the metropolitan borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England. The ward contains 63 listed buildings that are recorded in the National ...
Location grid
References
External links
Gomersal railway stationGomersal and Cleckheaton FC5th Spen Valley, Gomersal, Scout GroupWebsite of Mike Wood, the village's Member of Parliament
{{authority control
Villages in West Yorkshire
Heavy Woollen District
Geography of Kirklees