Brockholes

Brockholes is a small village in West Yorkshire, England in the administrative area of Kirklees Metropolitan Council and Holme Valley Parish Council. It is within the Postal district of Holmfirth.

The A616 route between Huddersfield and Penistone passes directly through the village and the A628 Woodhead Road passes down the valley on its westward side. Central to the village is a small green set back from the A616 by some terraced housing, and overlooked by a church, a chapel and the village hall, formerly the village school. A more modern junior and infants school now exists a little further up the road to the local Railway station, which has a direct link between Huddersfield and Sheffield on the Penistone Line.

It is a semi-rural area mostly consisting of farms with a large housing area, some of which has been built on the former premises of Rock Mills which was only one of several large textile mills. There was also a spinning works, shoddy mill, and a textile machinery engineering works, though now only the latter still exists.

It was once home to [http://www.brookcrompton.com/pages/history.htm Brook (Electric) Motors] , which was acquired by the Hawker Siddeley Group. The factory produced the motors to turn the gears, made by David Brown Gears in Lockwood, which turned the revolving restaurant at the top of the Post Office Tower in London. The factory has now closed down and the buildings have been divided up into a number of smaller units. Other former businesses included Ben Shaws, a soft drinks manufacturers, the old K&M Candle factory, taken over by shoe polish manufacturer Kiwi, and eventually closed down, and Norton Scientific Instruments. It has two Public Houses: The Rock Inn and the Travellers Rest, plus some small general village shops, a post office, and a number of larger businesses springing up in the industrial units of the old Rock Mill site. These include caravan sales, an electrical wholesalers, and a car registration plate business. More recently the local fuel station has been bought out by a national chain and refurbished to include a mini supermarket.

Village folklore purports that the village was named after the extensive network of badger setts that used to exist in the surrounding woodlands, Brock being an old English name for a badger. Today just a few, well-hidden setts still exist, carefully watched over by a local badger protection group.

The village of Honley borders to the immediate north of the village and New Mill a mile to the south. According to the 2001 census, Brockholes had a resident population of 1,861 in 764 households. [http://www.kirklees.gov.uk/community/statistics/census-by-settlement/KS02settle2003.xls]

Photo gallery

K&M Candles