Normanton, West Yorkshire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Normanton is a town in West Yorkshire, England, lying north east of Wakefield and south west of Castleford. At the time of the 2001 Census, the population of the electoral ward of Normanton was 14,958. The town's postcode prefix is WF6.

1 History & industrial heritage
2 Modern Normanton
3 Normanton on film
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History & industrial heritage

Normanton was originally surrounded by a moat, and in Norman times was the site of an enclosed settlement (chosen for its strategic view points across the surrounding area), and became known as 'Norman - tune', or 'Norman - ton'.

The All Saints Church in Normanton is believed to have existed since at least 1256, and thought to have been commissioned by Roger Le Peytivin of Altofts Hall. It has been re-built a number of times over the last 700 years, and has one of the oldest altar stones in England. The altar stone was discovered during remodelling work, concealed in the floor of the church.

A grammar school was founded in Normanton by John Freeston in 1592, but the town remained very small until it became the focus of several railway lines in the mid-nineteenth century. Construction began in 1837 under the supervision of George Stephenson and the lines were incorporated into the Derby and Leeds Railway. This was soon followed by an addition from the York and Midland Railway and then by the Manchester and Leeds lines which all extended to Normanton thereby giving the town access to much of the country. The Leeds and Manchester lines crossed a 51 mile stretch across The Pennines and at the time boasted the world's longest railway station platform at Normanton - a quarter of a mile long. The station was, for the next ten years or so, the most important in England, employing over 700 people who looked after the stations 700,000 passengers a year. In Victorian times Normanton station was one of the most important stations in the north and can boast that Queen Victoria stopped over in The Station Hotel. The town also served as an important part of the transport infrastructure for national and local industries including coal and bricks, although most of this was lost during the 1950s and 1960s with the last remaining operational brickworks eventually closing in the mid- nineties. There were three brickworks in town and were all built within the small area known as Newland, taking advantage of the abundance of clay from the area. A fourth works was founded in the 1890s by a man named Thomas Kirk from Nottingham who had heard rumours that Normanton was rapidly turning into an important junction on the railways. Both Kirk and his sons used their life savings and formed the Normanton Brick Company at nearby Altofts which is still in operation today.

The coming of the railways enabled the locally mined coal to be sent across the country, demand soon outstripped supply and many more shafts were sunk to reach the rich coal seams under the town. In 1871 Dom Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil visited Normanton with his Empress and gave his name (albeit in a slightly altered form) to the Don Pedro colliery at Hopetown. Today roads in the area of the former colliery retain the name. At their peak the Collieries employed over 10,000 men most of who wanted to move themselves and their families to Normanton. The town enjoyed a boom period with more mines opening and more shafts being sunk in order to meet the increasing demand for coal until most coal seems in the Normanton area were worked-out by the mid 1970s. The disputes surrounding the UK Miners' Strike (1984-1985) meant that many mines across the country were to closed although by this stage, there were no collieries still in production in Normanton. However, the stike still affected any families in the area, as Normanton colliers still worked in pits in neighbouring towns. The area once occupied by the Don Pedro colliery is now part of the controversial Welbeck landfill site which has been the subject of both local and national media attention since it's development as a toxic tip. The site attracted so much negative attention that the group R.A.T.S (acronym for Residents Against Toxic Tip Scheme) was established to halt planning permission for the disposal of toxic chemicals at the site claiming the scheme was an extreme health hazard.

Normanton suffered some decline in the years following the miner's strike. The railway station was in such a state of neglect and disrepair that the decision was made to demolish it completely in 1986 and the section of railway line between Goosehill Junction and Crofton Interchange were lifted the year after. Very little now remains of Normanton's once proud railway and mining heritage with the only telltale signs lying covered in the undergrowth, hidden from view.

[edit] Modern Normanton

Normanton is now a very different place to it was at the turn of the last century. The once bustling collieries and intricate rail network are now long gone and leave little if any clue to their ever being there. The original station is gone, the shunting yards are now overgrown offering few clues to their original purpose and the once lucrative brickworks, with their massive chimneys, now lay in ruins. Despite this, Normanton has become a growing and popular commuter suburb of the emerging 'Greater Leeds' area, and is now favoured for its relatively cheap housing and excellent transport links. The town is still accessible via Normanton railway station and is currently served by a unmanned island platform station with regular trains to Leeds, Castleford, Wakefield and Sheffield Meadowhall Interchange.

The addition and expansion of the Eurolink Industrial Estate at Junction 31 of the M62 helped reinforce Normanton as an ideal place for many national and multi-national corporations to locate their distribution depots due to its envious location. Being centrally located within the UK the town is served by three major motorway networks, the M62 linking Manchester to Hull (west to east), the M1 linking Leeds to London (North to South), and the North of England via a new link between the M62 and the A1(M) at nearby Ferrybridge.

[edit] Normanton on film

The old Normanton brickyard situated just off of the A655 Wakefield Road was used in the late-nineties as the fictional setting of a murder in the ITV series A Touch Of Frost starring David Jason. In the serial a body was found by the Police in one of the factories old kilns.