Stuart Forster visits the Piece Hall in Halifax, West Yorkshire.
Disclosure: Some links below and banners are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
The Piece Hall, in Halifax, is the United Kingdom’s only remaining 18th-century cloth hall. Following restoration and renovation, the Georgian building reopened to the public on 1 August 2017 – Yorkshire Day.
Halifax Piece Hall
The Piece Hall originally opened on 1 January 1779. At the time, fewer than 6,000 people lived in Halifax. A vast crowd gathered and watched as a pigeon carried a flame that ignited a grand fireworks display. Concerns over animal rights and health and safety mean that would not be replicated today.
Developers predicted that the revamped Piece Hall would attract 1.6 million visitors a year. It has surpassed that. On 1 August 2024, it recorded its 16th million visitor since reopening.
The Piece Hall Transformation Project cost £19 million, funded largely by the local council and a £7 million Heritage Lottery Fund grant. The Garfield Weston Foundation and The Wolfson Foundation also helped fund the restoration.
The Piece Hall
A sloping, cobbled courtyard once stood at the centre of the collonnaded Piece Hall. That was levelled ahead of the 2017 reopening.
The water feature symbolises the flow of water on hills in the Yorkshire Dales. Stone benches allow visitors can sit.
When the sun shines, it’s no exaggeration to say that the Piece Hall has an appearance akin to a Mediterranean piazza.
Clothiers long ago sold 30-yard lengths of handwoven woollen cloth, known as pieces, in spartan units around Halifax’s Piece Hall. The revamped units now host an array of independent boutiques and businesses.
Jitterbug Jean sells colourful, rockabilly-inspired clothing for women. Loafers is a hybrid between a vinyl record store and a café. The Book Corner is a bookstore.
There’s also an escape room, The Escaporium, is on the second floor of the Piece Hall.
The Trading Rooms restaurant serves food and drink. The Piece Hall’s food outlets also include The Deli and La Piazza. The Hop Yard and The Wine Barrel serve alcoholic drinks.
History of The Piece Hall
Remarkably, trade was conducted for just two hours each week when the Piece Hall first opened. That business was undertaken from ten o’clock until noon on Saturdays. A bell, housed below the Piece Hall’s weathervane, announced the beginning and end of the strictly regulated trading.
Clothiers paid a subscription of £28 each for a unit in the Piece Hall, which cost £9,692 to construct.
Nobody knows for sure who designed the Classical building. Some people think it may have been Thomas Bradley, the architect of the neighbouring Square Chapel. That building now forms part of an arts centre.
Local landowner John Caygill provided the land upon which the Piece Hall stands at the low rent of just five shillings. It’s thought he wanted to attract merchants to Halifax.
That history is told in The Piece Hall Story, on the ground floor of the three-level building. It is part of a learning and interpretation centre.
The Piece Hall Story
Audio-visuals, in one of the former trading units on the middle level of the Piece Hall, convey how business was conducted during Georgian times.
On the top floor, a map room with interactive displays conveys the Piece Hall relationships with international trade routes.
Hardwearing cloth produced by local weavers was ideal for British Army uniforms. A wooden handloom stands among the exhibits in The Piece Hall Story.
Within three decades of the Piece Hall opening, industrialisation meant that cloth was being produced on powered looms. By 1850, mechanisation meant production was centred in 24 mills in and around Halifax, which by then was a town with 25,000 inhabitants.
The Piece Hall was designated an Ancient Monument by the Ministry of Works in 1927. It was the first commercial or industrial structure to be awarded that status.
In 1954, the Piece Hall was designated a Grade I Listed Building.
Historic buildings in Halifax
Ahead of the restoration that was completed in 2017, LDN Architects was awarded the contract to restore and partially redesign the Piece Hall. Calderdale Council instructed the company to “do as much as necessary but as little as possible”.
That meant repairing and preserving stonework ravaged by decades of air pollution and acid rain. Lifts make all three levels of the Piece Hall fully accessible. New toilets and baby changing facilities were introduced.
“I think it’s very beautiful. It’s a very well-loved building by local people. It’s hard to imagine Halifax without the Piece Hall,” said Wendy Carter, the Head of Development at the Piece Hall.
Halifax is a town with several eye-catching buildings.
Travel to Halifax
Halifax is under three hours by rail from London. A direct Grand Central service runs between London’s King’s Cross and Halifax.
Regional trains offer connections from Leeds, 39 minutes away. Halifax is a 12-minute rail journey from Bradford Interchange and 45 minutes from Manchester Victoria.
Leeds Bradford Airport and Manchester Airport are both well placed for visiting Halifax from abroad.
Halifax can be accessed via the M62 and A58.
Accommodation in Halifax
Holdsworth House (Holdsworth Road, Halifax, HX2 9TG; tel. 01422 240042) is a four-star hotel in a 17th-century country house on the edge of Halifax. It has been used as a set for the television drama Last Tango in Halifax and hosted The Beatles in 1964.
Books about Halifax
Planning a trip to Halifax? You can get the following books from Amazon.co.uk:
A-Z of Halifax: Places, People, History by Trish Colton
The Piece Hall: A Souvenir Guide.
Halifax History Tour by Stephen Gee.
Further information
The Piece Hall (Blackledge, Halifax, HX1 1RE; tel. 01422 525 200) is open seven days a week. The website has details of opening times, businesses operating in the Piece Hall and events.
For more about tourist attractions in and around Halifax, see the Visit Calderdale website. The Piece Hall is near Square Chapel Arts Centre and Eureka! the national children’s museum.
See Welcome to Yorkshire and Visit England for ideas about things to do elsewhere in Yorkshire.
Photos illustrating this post are by Why Eye Photography.
If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for the free Go Eat Do newsletter. It’s a hassle-free way of getting links to posts once a month.
‘Like’ the Go Eat Do Facebook page to see more photos and content.
A version of this post was initially published on Go Eat Do on 31 July, 2017.
Enid Reed
July 31, 2017 at 21:43Thank you for all the information. Excellent.
Alan Machin
August 4, 2017 at 13:14Good write up, but Yorkshire was long divided into the Ridings, before the 1972 Act.
Stuart Forster
August 4, 2017 at 14:37Thank you Alan. Yes, you’re correct and I appreciate your feedback. Yorkshire was, of course, already divided into the North, West and East Ridings, and York formed a separate county. The details of the subsequent changes are complex and, for the purpose of this post, have only provided an outline.
Visit Calderdale
August 4, 2017 at 14:06Thanks very much for the hyperlink to our website 🙂
Stuart Forster
August 4, 2017 at 14:39I’m happy to do that as I think readers enjoy finding out what cities and their surrounding areas offer when they are planning on visiting an attraction.