Savile Town Marina, Dewsbury, South Yorkshire

Morning rain kept us indoors as it does most people who have no urgent plans for the day. Breakfast television featured for longer than I generally care and we did pop out to the supermarket. One positive that came out of all this inactivity was booking ahead for the days immediately after we leave Yorkshire.

But after lunch of toasted sandwiches and delicious maple pecan pastries, just the thing to eat on such a sedientary day, we decided the rain had diminished enough to allow exploration of Dewsbury, this town we have spent nearly a week camped in and seen little of.

Dewsbury has a population of nearon 65,000 people and as such is the largest town in the Heavy Woolen District, a clutch of small wool towns. The town was caught up in the industrialisation that pervaded the area through the late 18^th and 19^th centuries, but  stood out from the others by its political stands against the establishment. 

In the 19^th century, Dewsbury was a centre of Luddite opposition to mechanisation in which workers retaliated against mill owners who installed machinery, smashing the machines which threatened their way of life. In the 1830s, the town was a centre of Chartist agitation, and hit the headlines in 1838 when a mob of between five and seven thousand people rioted. Troops were engaged to quell the trouble, and again in 1870 when the mobs rose again.

The mills were family businesses and continued manufacturing even after the wool crisis in the early 1950s when Australian sheep farmers raised their prices. Recovery of the late 1960s was stalled by the oil crisis of 1973, and spelled the end of the textile industry, with only bed manufacturing remaining a significant emplorer.

Today as we walked about we were surprised by the extent of the shopping area, although much of it quite shabby. Most of the average franchised businesses feature, but little by way of smart shops, there are several outlets selling eastern clothing and more than its fair share of money lenders. The shoppers out and about were mainly made up of down-at-heel white folk or more swarthy types clad head to toe in dark robes, the women’s heads in full niqab, their sequin clad shoes peeping out from under their hems.

We were surprised to discover the extensive market, which operates four days a week and not on Mondays. There are apparently four hundred stalls here and it is reportedly the busiest market in Yorkshire. While the produce and items for sale are probably the same old, same old, it would indeed be interesting to see the seething masses of such a cosmopolitan population, many apparently arriving by the busload.

There are several grand old buildings about, most looking rather out of place in this has-been town, a place where real estate is some of the cheapest in the country and there appears little to redeem it. The Town Hall built in Renaisance Revival was opened in 1889 and the seven hundred seat concert hall still offers entertainment and any other activity that might suggest life.

The Minster is more impressive, not so much from its exterior which was originally built in the 13^th century, then rebuilt in 1895, but the more recently remodelled interior. Today the space mostly used for regular church services is a mere portion of the original and the rest of the interior is divided into other useful rooms. The two elderly ladies manning the reception were delightful and kept us entertained with the more recent history of the church.

Outside we discovered a plaque with a few important facts about the Minster, and more interesting and given our recent travels, the fact that Patrick Bronte, father of the Bronte novelists, was curate here from 1809 to 1811.

We retreated to the large retail outlets on the edge of town, and shopped for clothes and towball covers, as you do, then headed home with our booty; hardly an energetic day.