Why was the name "Kirklees" chosen in 1974?

[jimobasa55]

AFAIK, prior to 1974, there was no town/village bearing the name of Kirklees.  There was merely a 12th Century priory and a 16th Century estate.  Surely the name has no relevance to the 20th Century and unlike most other local government districts, its name gives no clue to its location.  If you asked a person who had never visited Yorkshire to point out the Kirklees area on a map, they'd be totally lost.  There is nothing wrong with a double barreled name (London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, for example).  Huddersfield & Dewsbury Council would have been a good name as it pinpoints the precise local authority area, more so than the chosen name.
Ready to be shot down by irate West Yorkshire folk.

[deerfold]

Sept 27, 2019 16:02:06 GMT 1 jimobasa55 said:

AFAIK, prior to 1974, there was no town/village bearing the name of Kirklees.  There was merely a 12th Century priory and a 16th Century estate.  Surely the name has no relevance to the 20th Century and unlike most other local government districts, its name gives no clue to its location.  If you asked a person who had never visited Yorkshire to point out the Kirklees area on a map, they'd be totally lost.  There is nothing wrong with a double barreled name (London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, for example).  Huddersfield & Dewsbury Council would have been a good name as it pinpoints the precise local authority area, more so than the chosen name.
Ready to be shot down by irate West Yorkshire folk.

I suspect calling it Huddersfield and Dewsbury would have been opposed by the representatives of all the other, smaller, areas that were to be included.

[gooderson1]

I recall listening to a talk some years ago on the history of "Kirklees". The speaker suggested that when the new council was proposed prior to 1974 it was given or took the name "Kirklees" from a priory, the remains of which, are close to Brighouse. The speaker suggested that the reason for the name was that the priory was "somewhere" near the middle of the newly created council area and was a neutral name rather than risk the wrath of one area's residents if their area name was not used in the new council's name. I do however stand to be corrected if someone knows better.

[resolution]

The metropolitan district of Kirklees lumped together two previously quite unrelated areas - Huddersfield and the Holme and Colne Valleys on the one hand and the Heavy Woollen District towns on the other. There was no logical name for such an agglomeration; the Heavy Woollen folk felt, with some justification, that 'Huddersfield', which was the most rational choice, felt like a takeover and refused to accept it. Kirklees Priory, most (in fact solely!) famous as the traditionally-accepted site of the grave of Robin Hood, lies on the boundary between Huddersfield and the Heavy Woollen District and was suggested as a compromise which actually satisfied nobody, least of all the landowners of the Priory, which is actually in Calderdale! Suffice it to say that after months of argument no-one could come up with anything better, so Kirklees it remains to this day! The two halves of the district are no more homogeneous now than they were in 1974 and remain an absurd piece of balkanisation imposed to its detriment upon this part of West Yorkshire to satisfy London-based political statisticians.