ALMONDBURY CONSERVATIVE CLUB

​

Almondbury (or Ambry) originated around 625 BC with an undefended hut settlement on the commanding viewpoint of Castle Hill.  Ancient packhorse trails and later turnpikes brought London buyers via Almondbury to northern England’s sheep-rearing areas.  

​

By 1475 Almondbury market’s cloth sales ranked fourth out of seventeen in Yorkshire.

Almondbury was originally mentioned in the Doomsday Book as Almondberie or Almondburie in 1086.

Before the Industrial Revolution it was a much larger and more important place than Huddersfield as a major centre of the woollen trade and Henry de Lacy was granted a Market Charter by Edward 1 in 1294.

Many old cottages in the village were built in the 1700s with their upstairs widows facing south in order to light the looms.

​

Almondbury Conservative Club currently occupies Wormall Hall which is one of only six surviving Tudor buildings in Huddersfield. It displays a stone on its frontage dated 1631, however this frontage was added by Isaac and Elizabeth Wormall/Wormald in 1631, The building itself being much older and estimated to be around 1400 although more renovations and rebuilding were done in 1868 as testified by other inscriptions on the building, with the half-timbered frontage being revealed after removing some of the plaster during renovations in 1877.

​

During this time both Isaac and Israel Wormall made charitable gifts to the poor and infirm with the “Wormall’s scholars” receiving free education.

The Wormall’s charity was wound up in 1880, with its asset’s transferred to the King James’s Trust

The charity still being evident today as part of King James’s Grammar School foundation to offer young people under the age of 25 who either live or study in the village of Almondbury encouragement to develop their skills and talents, this being administered by Kirklees Metropolitan Council.

​

A branch of the Working Men's Conservative Association was formed on 14th May 1868 in Almondbury with around 14 members. Its formation had been proposed by Edward Dyson a few weeks earlier and a meeting was held at the Woolpack Inn, Almondbury, which was the home of Richard Noble, to discuss the matter.

The proposal received great support from the working men of the village.  It was stated that the reason only working men had been invited to form the Association was to forestall the “scurrilous comments made by the radicals” as a consequence of several manufacturers and other gentlemen attending the first meeting. Several of the working men addressed the meeting and gave their views and concerns about current issues of the day.  

Ultimately the resolution was unanimously adopted that a Conservative Working men’s association be formed in Almondbury. There were 30 people who enrolled as members on the night.  

​

The association received an unexpected degree of enthusiasm from the working men of the area with numbers rising to 140 members in the first few weeks after its formation. 

The association rented a “commodious suite of rooms for mental and ethical improvement” on a five-year lease.  Edward Dyson was elected as president as he was seen as a “zealous” Conservative and the belief was that there was a bright future for the success of the association in Almondbury.

​

When they met in June 1868 Dyson chaired the meeting and congratulated the members upon “the accession of their new rooms” stating that they were neat and well adapted for their purpose remarking that they now had a public room where working men could “resort and spend their evenings profitably perusing papers, periodicals and mutually interchanging opinions, political and otherwise.”  

​

The secretary had noted that the numbers of members had increased and called on them all to “exercise moderation and the strictest regard to propriety and good behaviour.”   Led by the success of the Conservative Club the Liberals of Almondbury had decided to form a Liberal Club in the village and it was hoped that this would be a good thing allowing political differences but not dividing friendships.  

 Dyson had been reluctant when the idea of a Conservative Association in Almondbury, and him being it’s President, had been suggested to him, his feeling was that Almondbury was too radical a place for it to be successful.

​

He asked for time to consider the suggestion and after came to the conclusion that if he took on the responsibility of such a development that he would be improving the lives of the working men of Almondbury both “morally and socially.”  

​

He was soon convinced that he had made the right decision when numbers had increased so rapidly that the initial set of rooms could no longer accommodate the members.

By February 1869 the club premises were inadequate as they could not accommodate the 140 members. Consequently, the committee searched for a larger building which would be more suitable.  They applied to lease a building from a Mr Lee in Northgate and by March this had been secured were secured, again on a five-year lease, and an opening meeting with tea, took place for people to view the facilities.

​

The committee had aimed to improve the facilities in order to encourage the members to develop “morally, socially, and intellectually” believing that these clean and comfortable new rooms would enable this. The large room of the premises was crowded with 250 people, working men with their wives or “sweethearts” who sat down for tea before the meeting started.  The tea was provided by the Wool Pack Inn. This room had been decorated on its walls with scrolls, bearing the names of Derby, Stanley, Disraeli, Northcote, Stanhope and Starkey, Sleigh, Oastler and other statesmen.

​

After tea the tables were cleared away for the meeting with songs and glees being performed by the Parish Choir alongside the speeches. The secretary Ephraim Mellor described the expansion of the club as the reason to find larger premises to accommodate members and the aims of the Association.  The new rooms had a committee room, newsroom and a large room for meetings.  

​

These rooms were supplied with daily and weekly newspapers “Standard, Times, Guardian, Yorkshire Post, Leeds Mercury, Manchester Courier Huddersfield Chronicle, Observer, and the Examiner, Gardeners' Chronicle, Illustrated London Times, the Rock, Record, Punch, Judy, and Will o' the Wisp” were also supplied. There were also games such as chess, draughts and other “innocent games” as they were referred to in the news report. This was to dispel the rumour which had been spread at the time that the club was going to allow gambling in the rooms.

​

The following day a knife and fork tea was provided for the oldest inhabitants of the village to attend. The average age of the visitors was 71 and they had received invitations to tea some days previously. Sixty-five people, men and women, attended and enjoyed the afternoon.  

​

 The first annual meeting of the association was held in June 1869 with Edward Dyson stated that although the anniversary date was really the 14th May they had held the anniversary as close to the Whitsuntide Festival as they possibly could.  Dyson referred back to the formation of the association twelve month prior when speculations had been rife in the village as to the ultimate prospects for the club, none of which had been very flattering or encouraging in character.  He felt that they had met every opposition against their success by working to develop and grow the association.

The President, Edward Dyson, recalled the prophecies that people had made when the association was formed in Almondbury in 1868.  The Radicals of the area, whilst acknowledging their existence, did not expect Conservative numbers in Almondbury to grow above 20 nor to be “long or strong, and was not to exceed three or four months.” The association was proving this prediction wrong having existed for two years and with a membership of over 200.

The club marked the end of the year with a banquet held in their large room, which had been decorated for the occasion. On a scarlet banner at the lower end of the room opposite the chairman’s seat was inscribed the initials “A. W. M. C. A.” (Almondbury Working Men’s Conservative Association) surrounded by a light border. The main purpose was to honour the outgoing president Edward Dyson with a portrait of himself

In April 1874, the association invited seventy-six of the oldest inhabitants of Almondbury to a knife and fork tea in the large room of the club. The tea was provided by the club president Charles H. Taylor and was followed by a social meeting for the guests. The church choir was invited to provide the entertainment for the evening which consisted of a selection of songs, glees and recitations which was a popular format at that time. The united age of the guests was reported as being 5,552 years with an average age of 73.

 

By 1877 the club was looking for new, larger premises and they made the move to Wormall Hall, in the summer of that year. The hall was fitted up with “every convenience” including a reading room, smoke room, and billiard table. The exterior was covered with plaster when the club acquired the building. The members set to restore the faced to its former Tudor beauty.  In addition, they cleaned the paint from the oak panels on the interior walls.  The Conservative Association designed a committee room and had it panelled with original oak beams.

Initially the club did not sell or allow alcohol, and this was seen to be in keeping with sound Christian principles and also to give wives, girlfriends and mothers assurance that there would be no intoxication on the part of their men folk at the club.

​

Despite the comfortable surroundings of the club premises at Wormall’s Hall, in 1882 the rooms were unable to accommodate the numbers attending the annual meeting and so they sought permission to hold the meeting in the upper room of the Central National School in Almondbury. Two hundred and fifty members and friends attended the annual tea in the afternoon at the school, which was followed by the evening meeting, which had an even larger attendance. 

​

Education and access to information were provided on the club premises through daily and weekly newspapers and periodicals and by 1885 a library had also been formed at the club. By 1887 it was seen as one of the best features of the club.

In May 1892 the club celebrated the first Conservative from Almondbury to ever have been returned to a representative body.  They held a supper at the Rose and Crown in the village to celebrate the return of Joseph Dobson

Garden parties also became a feature of the club annual diary with members and their families enjoying the event

One time club president, John Arthur Brooke, often hosted such events at his home Fenay Hall, Almondbury.  Over 200 people attended the party in 1901raising enough funds to cover the cost of extensive renovations to the billiard room at the club.

Whist drives held at the club included not only the members but also their wives and female relatives.  In 1909 a Whist drive at the club saw the winners of the ladies competition presented with prizes – silver sugar tongs won by Mrs Joseph Dobson and a silver hat pin won by Mrs John Clark.  The ladies’ names were always their husbands name and never their own first name. 

 

A Spring Fair was held in the Almondbury National School in April 1927, with the intention of raising funds to build two tennis courts.

Another celebration was held in 1931 when the club marked the 300th anniversary of the building that housed their club. 

In later years the club obtained a bowling green and bowls were enjoyed by the members.  Once again, they competed against other teams in the area and hosted events organised by the Huddersfield Amateur Bowls association.

Competitors on the Almondbury club green in 1946 included B. Longbottom of Cleckheaton who was the British Crown Green and Yorkshire Merit Champion and W. Geldard the Leeds Merit Winner.   

When the club advertised for a new steward and stewardess in 1936 an essential requirement was stated as having “a knowledge of bowling.”
 

In August 2012 Almondbury Lib Dem councillor Phil Scott objected to a plan to put a sign up at the site, but this was overthrown

In July 2013 further work in conjunction with English Heritage and Kirklees Council’s Listed Buildings Service was carried out to ensure we try and preserve the heritage of the club.

In April 2015 A proposal to convert an empty workshop and barn next to Wormall Hall, one of Almondbury’s oldest properties, triggered controversy.

The King James Trust, an independent body which oversees property owned by the former grammar school in the village, was behind an application to turn the buildings at 3, 5, and 7 Westgate into two pairs of semi-detached houses.

Planning permission was eventually granted and in total there were seven homes developed on the old car park area next to Wormall Hall / Almondbury Conservative Club.

To the northern side of Westgate is All Hallows’ Church built in the 15th century and restored in 1872, where the village stocks were relocated from Wormall Hall in 1903. These can now be seen in the southwest corner of the church yard.

The current membership amounts to approximately 400 with an active social committee holding various events throughout the year, (e.g. quiz’s, karaoke, wine and cheese evenings, treasure hunts, live acts). Any suggestions for future events would be most welcome.

Where possible we try and organise events that could take place outdoors in our relaxing beer garden – obviously subject to the great British weather!

There are also pool, darts and snooker teams, all playing in current Huddersfield divisions.

The club can also cater for various functions, please speak to Sam, our stewardess, for further details.