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Welcome to Golcar Ward.

This website should help you to find out about the local area.

The Golcar local authority ward (i.e. the area that votes in the Golcar local elections) is in the West Riding of Yorkshire & covers the villages of Longwood, Salendine Nook, Paddock Head, Milnsbridge, Cowersley & Golcar around the lower Colne Valley: part of Kirklees.  We also welcome people from the surrounding area, and have much in common with them. 

50 years ago the area benefitted from the textile industry, but as manufacturing has moved abroad fewer people work in the ward, which has good bus and road links to surrounding towns. It has a wealth of history, which can be seen in the Colne Valley Museum and out of doors in the built environment including the canal, which was renovated in recent years and now provides an easily accessible amenity for wlkaers, cyclists and anglers.

Nearby are the larger population centres of Marsden, Holmfirth, Huddersfield, Halifax; Brighouse; Wakefield; Leeds & Manchester. Further a field is 'Bronte Country' in Haworth and Thornhill. Several famous people have their roots in this area: the late Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and actor James Mason. Sir Patrick Stewart and Simon Armitage are two of the better known current characters, but there is also Anita Lonsbrough (the Olympic Gold medallist swimmer), Gordon Kaye (the actor), Ed Clancy (the cyclist) & the Whitaker family (show jumpers).

The area itself came to wealth from the water powered textile mills along the local streams & rivers. The soft water was ideal for woollen manufacturing & traditional weavers cottages remained busy even when the cotton mills had been built in Lancashire as the skills of the locals were still in demand. 

The Luddites were active here almost exactly 200 years ago and there are events planned for this bicentenary, which will be advocating a reassessment of the Luddite movement, which was far from the mere machine breaking of popular knowledge. It is also where Richard Oastler worked towards reforming labour laws - especially for Factory Reform (restricting children to just 10 hour days in the mills) and the anti-Poor Law Movement.

The area also has older history - the area is mentionned in the Domesday Book - the name St Guthlac who preached locally.

The Golcar Ward is fortunate in that it has good people in it, who are proud of the heritage of the area & want to see it continue. The key element to this is the community spirit. There are a host of events that go on around us, but not everybody knows about the variety of them - this connecting project aims to let more of us know about more of them: hence it will be easier to participate.

A community is a two-way thing; if we all contribute to it - it will become a better place for all of us! There is a lot of pride around here, some examples of great work already being done - lets build on it...