6 April 1970 |
Queensgate Market Hall officially opened. The Huddersfield Daily
Examiner editorial read: "Architecturally, the new Market Hall is one of the most interesting buildings to have
been erected in Huddersfield for many years." |
28 August 1975 |
Architectural critic, Ian Nairn, praised the market hall: "The one
place where modern architecture has really thought about the inner Huddersfield is in the new market hall. The
designer here had a really difficult problem. It was a sloping site in which he had to fit this market hall.
Although the outside was a bit glam, he really went to work on the inside. The firm was J Seymour Harris who do
a lot of town centre schemes up and down the country, and whoever was the designer in that firm really did
Huddersfield proud here. To cope with the slope and to fit everything in he used concrete mushroom columns at
intervals - mushroom because they splay out at the top and this could have been a structural gimmick; but here
that are used to define spaces, to relate them, to bring the light in from the top so that you at one with the
building itself. That combined with the fact that the stalls are not regimented has made it a marvellously human
place, the opposite of most indoor shopping centres. It is in-fact, and this is pretty rare in Britain - a real
modern market." |
July 2003 |
Kirklees Metropolitan Council announced seven options to redevelop
the Queensgate area. Some of these options involved demolishing Queensgate Market Hall and Huddersfield Library. |
February 2004 |
The Twentieth Century Society applied for listing for the Huddersfield
Library and Queensgate Market Hall. |
20 June 2004 |
Huddersfield Gem was established to promote the market hall. |
21 June 2004 |
The Twentieth Century Society published a list of very recent buildings
it felt were threatened in some way. Up there along with airports, cinemas, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in
Stratford and Battersea Power Station was Huddersfield Market Hall, the only building in Yorkshire to make the list. |
6 September 2004 |
Heritage Minister Andrew McIntosh announced that he intended to list
the market hall at grade II but as it is a post-war building there would be three months of public consultation. Note 4 |
18 November 2004 |
Professor Neil Jackson PhD FSA RIBA, Hoffman Wood Professor of Architectural Engineering, University of Leeds,
in a report on the market hall commissioned by Kirklees Metropolitan Council: "On visiting it for the first time...
it was immediately apparent to me that here was something special." |
4 August 2005 |
David Lammy MP, Minister of Culture announced the listing of the market hall at grade II. He said, "Huddersfield's
Queensgate Market is the best surviving example of a retail market from the 1960s and 1970s. It is an imaginative
structure that combines innovative technology of its time to produce a dramatic space full of natural light with
the striking focal point of the roof." |
10 October 2006 |
Kirklees Council announced £200M plan to build a shopping centre and mall that would mean the demolition of 8
of the market hall's 21 roof shells to allow excavation for underground car parking. |
2 November 2007 |
Queensgate Market Hall awarded the Concrete Society's Certificate of Excellence for a mature structure.
The society’s president announced that, "The 21 hyperbolic concrete shells of the Queensgate Market Hall in
Huddersfield are iconic in their structural form.
"In many ways the method of construction was significant and the forerunner to several other structures.
"In the opinion of the judges, Queensgate Market Hall is a remarkable and splendid building in very good
condition." Note 2 |
October 2008 |
In Acapulco, Mexico, the
International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures gave an enthusiastic reception to a talk on the design
and engineering of the market. Note 3 |
February 2009 |
Queensgate Market was Building
of the Month.
|