Castleford

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Arms of the former Castleford Borough Council

Castleford is one of the five towns in the Wakefield borough, in the county of West Yorkshire, England, near to Pontefract, with a population of 37,525 according to the 2001. To the north are the River Calder, the River Aire and the Aire and Calder Navigation. To the west and south is the M62.

1 History
2 The town today
3 Trivia
4 Location Grid
5 Local Sport
6 External links

[edit] History

Castleford is built upon the site of a Roman army settlement that was named Lagentium or Legioleum. Funeral urns dating from the time of the Romans have been found there. The modern name of the town is derived from the fort, Castle (referring to the fort) and Ford (referring to the River Aire which runs through Castleford.)

Castleford started as a quiet village, but between 1811 and 1891, its population increased from 890 to 14,143, due to the Industrial Revolution. Many people worked in coal mines and in the glass-making, chemical and textile industries. The Castleford area was worked extensively for coal by a combination of shallow open-cast mining and deep mining for over 150 years. The main collieries were at Fryston, Glasshoughton and Wheldale. Castleford Pottery is still famous amongst avid collectors.

The sculptor Henry Moore was born in Castleford, the son of a miner; some of his work can be seen at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park at West Bretton. The main church is called All Saints. The local MP is Oxford-educated Yvette Cooper for Pontefract and Castleford.

Castleford was established as an urban district, in administrative county of the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1894 under the Local Government Act 1894, with an urban district council. Whitwood and Glass Houghton were added to the district in the 1930s. The urban district was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1955. It was abolished on April 1, 1974, becoming an unparished area in the Metropolitan Borough of Wakefield in West Yorkshire.

[edit] The town today

Castleford's favourite sport is rugby league. The local team, Castleford Tigers, were relegated from the UK's top division, Super League, after the 2006 season. The Tigers play at The Jungle.

The town is home to Burberry, the clothing manufacturer and retailer. The company has two factories in the UK - one is in Castleford making the firm's signature raincoats, including its Pink Leather Trench Coat, modelled by Kate Moss. Nestle has a factory on Wheldon Road, near the Castleford Tigers' ground, making popular sweets like Toffee Crisp and After Eight.

Some areas of Castleford are poor and run down. In part, this is because of the closure of the town and its surrounding area's collieries in the 1980s and 90s. Official male unemployment rates reached 20% in the mid-1980s. According to the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2000, Castleford Ferry Fryston ward falls today within the top 5% of most deprived wards in England. According to the Child Poverty Index, over 45% of 0-16 year olds living in Castleford are living in families claiming means tested benefits.

Despite a decline in industries such as coal mining and textile manufacturing, significant economic and employment growth has occurred in recent years in service sectors, especially in the retail and distribution sectors. This includes the Junction 32 Outlet village (formerly known as Freeport) and Xscape leisure complex, Europe's largest indoor real snow slope, which has turned the periphery of the town in to a mecca for UK snowboarders. Developments such as these have taken place because of the town's easy motorway accessibility and twenty-minute rail connection to the regional city of Leeds. Distribution companies include HI Group Plc, Tibbett & Britten Ltd and Argos Distributors Ltd.

Castleford town centre and several residential neighbourhoods are improving as part of a unique program of revitalization known as the Castleford Project. This started in 2003, founded by City of Wakefield, English Partnerships, Yorkshire Forward and Channel 4. It is delivering over £10m ($17m) of improvements to the town's public spaces and involves community leaders, residents, local business and a creative team of designers and visual artists from UK and overseas.

The Project has acted as a trigger for a larger programme of urban renewal in the town, a project programme now valued at over £200m ($350m) and including new retail and residential development, an £11m ($20m) architect-designed library and art museum and £14m ($25m) bus/rail transport interchange.

The work of The Castleford Project and revitalization of the town will be the subject of a major series of television shows on Channel 4 in 2007/08, produced by TalkbackTHAMES and presented by Kevin McCloud of the series Grand Designs. The Project is increasingly considered an important, innovative example of civic regeneration — and for this reason has featured in conferences and exhibitions in the UK, Hong Kong, Moscow, Philadelphia and Beijing in 2006. One of the Project's key qualities has been the powerful and innovative participation of local community groups in the programme of regeneration.

Castleford offers the nearest available shopping for residents of the new Allerton Bywater Millennium Community, now under construction just to the west of the town. This is a development of commercial and community space and over 500 homes, some of which will be built using innovative and modern off-site manufacturing techniques. Allerton is the second development in a Millennium Community program which started at Greenwich Peninsula, London.

In addition to the Tigers, Castleford also has several football teams that play in the Castleford & District Sunday FA League.

Castleford has its own newspaper, the Pontefract and Castleford Express.

The town is in Wakefield District [1] and is covered by three wards: Altofts and Whitwood, Castleford Central and Glasshoughton, and Airedale and Ferry Fryston.

[edit] Trivia

Castleford is the name of a fictionalised version of the English university city of Cambridge in the children's books of Philippa Pearce, most notably "Tom's Midnight Garden" and "Minnow on the Say".

In the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are? it was revealed that the ancestors of writer and broadcaster Jeremy Clarkson lived in Castleford and ran a factory producing Kilner pottery.

Sir John Harman, Chairman of the UK Environment Agency was born in the town.

There is a town in Idaho, USA called Castleford.

Viz Comic of Newcastle has two contributors from Castlford - Andy Hepworth and Carl Hollingsworth. Interestingly enough, one of Viz comics main artists is Pontefract's Simon Thorp.

Castleford has frequently featured as the fictional town of "Denton" in ITV's A Touch of Frost, starring David Jason, often using local businesses and staff as extras.