Holywell Green: Workhouse or Mill?

[Malcolm Bull]

I have received a jpg copy of this photograph for inclusion on my Calderdale Companion website

http://www.calderdalecompanion.co.uk/ph429.html#1

The original is simply entitled HOLYWELL GREEN.  I wonder if anyone would like to share their views as to who the girls might be.  Mill girls?  Workhouse? or what?

[km1971]

Hi Michael

Nice set of photographs. I cannot imagine immates of a workhouse being given flowers. 

Two other points: the headmaster (in uniform) is a Warrant Officer. If you have the original can you rescan just the shoulder title at the highest resolution your scanner can manage?

Also the stones. Could they be parish boundary markers? If you can find their location on a large scale plan they may line up with a boundary.

Ken

[Malcolm Bull]

Ken:

I don't have the originals for any of the photos.  The contributors just send me a scanned image.

I take your point about workhouse inmates not having flowers.  Some of them are smiling, so it doesn't seem that it is a workhouse group of young [and not so young] ladies.  We may never know

Thanks for the response

Malcolm

[gordon5]

Hi Malcolm

I'm sure you've considered it already, but if the Warrant Officer is the Headmaster of Holywell Green School, maybe the group in the first photo are either attending the school or part of the staff of the school?

Having said that, the current Holywell Green Primary School is housed in partly Victorian building. The photos online of the school look to have too many windows and they're too high off the ground to match the ones in your photo. So far as I know, village schools catered to all ages in Victorian times so I may have refuted my own argument - probably not the school so possibly some other local institution.

Feel free to throw brickbats...

gordon5

[Bilge]

Workhouse or possibly Hospital laundry.

I think you will find it is here www.workhouses.org.uk In 1930, the site taken over by Halifax County Borough and became St Luke's Hospital, then after 1948 it joined the National Health Service as Halifax General Hospital. The surviving buildings now form part of the Calderdale Royal Hospital complex.

There is an excellent photograph showing the stone work and low damp course (sorry don't know technical name)

Between 1914 and 1920 the infirmary became St Luke's Military Hospital.

[Malcolm Bull]

Thanks for the suggestions.  Keep 'em coming.

Holywell Green is a distance of about 4 miles from what was Saint Luke's hospital [now Calderdale Infirmary] so that link is a bit tenuous. 

Also the photos on the page came from different sources at different times; the fact that 2 photos - the girls and the soldier - are associated with Holywell Green is only coincidence.

Thanks again

Malcolm

[gordon5]

Is this the right St Bartholomew's?

http://www.stbartschurchripponden.co.uk/history.html

If it is, then the date on the photo is incorrect although the photo could still be of the version of the church before the one that is there at present. I haven't been able to find any other images of the church in Ripponden as yet to confirm that however.

[Malcolm Bull]

Gordon:

As the caption says, the photo is endorsed Saint Bartholomew's, Ripponden, but the absence of the spire made me suspicious.  I haven't found any record of the spire being added later.  All the recorded rebuilding, renovations and refurbishments were done before photography could have captured the photo on my website.

[Addition on 23/2/2010] On second thoughts, the rebuilding in 1867/8 was just about the time that photography [courtesy of Ezra Greaves] hit the district.  It could be that version of the church IF the date [1903] on the photo is wrong.

Perhaps someone could identify this as another Saint Bart's in another part of the country.

Malcolm