Column: Looking Back with Alan Burnett

Built at a cost of £9,692. 0.11 and a half in 1779 (those Georgian merchants knew a thing or two about looking after their half-pennies), it has for almost 250 years been repaying the foresight of its original backers, whether as a wool trading hall, wholesale market, or spectacular venue lined with shops, restaurants, bars and cafes.

Its original purpose was to provide a central meeting place for traders in woollen “pieces” to buy and sell their produce.

From its very beginnings, the project was driven by those two great aspirations of all Yorkshire folk, beauty and brass.

A special song, written for, and performed at, the opening ceremony in January 1779 sums the situation up perfectly:

Now our Desires are crowned by Hope,

We’ll be no longer seen

Dispers’d around in ev’ry Street,

As heretofore we’ve been;

But to a Hall whose beauty vies

With Palaces of Old,

Our Handy-work shall now be brought

And straight be turned to gold

My own photographs of the Piece Hall start in the 1960s, when the building was still a busy working wholesale market, full of sheds and wagons and sacks full of spuds.

In those days, it’s architectural beauty was hidden behind a commercial veneer and its proud gates were reduced to providing a useful point to hang lines of washing from.

There are also some photographs from the mid 1970s when the building was sad and empty, awaiting news of its fate or future from the powers that be.

By the late 1970s, the rooms were beginning to be converted into shops, and market stalls were springing up in the cobbled central square.

By the end of the twentieth century the building was once again beginning to look tired and retail trends were leaving many of the rooms empty.

The conservation and transformation of the Piece Hall into the venue it is today was proof that the foresight and belief in the blending of beauty and brass is as alive in Halifax today as it was 243 years ago.