Queensgate Market

Queensgate Market is a market hall built between 1968 and 1970 to designs by the J. Seymour Harris Partnership, with Leonard and Partners serving as consultant engineers. It stands on a steeply sloping site in central Huddersfield, descending from the town centre westwards towards the ring road at Queensgate.

The building is constructed of reinforced concrete with board-marked finish internally to the columns. It is partly clad in local Elland Edge stone and ceramic panels, with extensive patent glazing. The structural system comprises 21 mushroom columns, each supporting an asymmetrical rectangular section measuring 56 feet long by 31 feet wide by 10 feet deep. These sections are formed as hyperbolic paraboloid roofs arranged in four rows of four and one row of five, all facing Queensgate, where the market sits above a delivery bay and car park.

The rows alternate in height from north to south and step upwards then downwards from west to east, creating gaps of 4 feet 6 inches between each roof section. These gaps are filled with suspended patent glazing that forms clerestoreys, hung from the upper hyperbolic paraboloid to allow for movement and fitted with aluminium bars. Further patent glazing covers natural stone walling and expressed framework on the Princess and Peel Street facades, where direct entrances to the market hall are provided via steps from Peel Street. Ventilation is achieved through fixed louvres.

Two entrances from Ramsden Street lead into the market through shopping arcades that were added between 1970 and 1974. The Queensgate facade incorporates five roof sections with patent glazing and is decorated with square ceramic panels designed by Fritz Steller, entitled 'Articulation in Movement'. These panels are set over natural stone cladding and continue across the adjacent shop facades, totalling nine panels, with a tenth larger panel added in 1972. This larger panel is pierced by stairs and an entrance to the market hall. The ceramic panels depict the mushroom shells of the market hall turned through 90 degrees, with abstract representations of goods available inside.

The interior was designed to accommodate 187 market stalls and 27 shop units, which could be rented individually or in multiple. At the centre, at first-floor level, stands a heavily glazed former restaurant with panopticon-like character, reached by steps. Though admired for its views across the town, it is not known whether it ever operated as a restaurant and it is now used as market offices. The interior also preserves a 1935 Jubilee K6 telephone kiosk designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. The shop and stall units display characteristic examples of circa 1970 signage with serif italic lettering. Along the north wall of the hall is a relief sculpture entitled 'Commerce', executed in black painted metal with semi-abstract figures representing agriculture, trade and products, also by Fritz Steller. The Yorkshire Coat of Arms from the old police station that previously occupied the site (built in 1898 and demolished in 1967) has been incorporated into the new building.

The market hall is part of a much larger redevelopment of central Huddersfield undertaken in the 1960s and 1970s on Corporation-owned land, first developed by Murrayfield and subsequently by Jack Cotton and Charles Clore. The novel integration of structure and glazing, developed by Leonard and Partners and refined through tests at Southampton University, both defines the internal circulation and provides a striking modern echo of the Gothic style of the old market building of 1876 by Edward Hughes, which stood on an adjacent site and which the present building replaced.

The technical innovation of Queensgate Market lies in its roof of hyperbolic paraboloid shells, deliberately designed as asymmetrical and rectilinear mushroom columns. In September 1972 The Architect described Huddersfield as the first retail market in Europe to be covered by a roof of this type with vertical patent glazing. The steep downhill slope of the site makes the effect particularly dramatic.

The market is also distinguished among post-war market buildings by its incorporation of works of art. Fritz Steller was a German-born refugee architect who had settled in Stratford-upon-Avon and pioneered the production of large-scale ceramic art. The developer Murrayfield maintained a policy of incorporating public art into their schemes. The project manager for the J. Seymour Harris Partnership in the Huddersfield development was Gwyn Roberts, a friend of Steller. Clifford Stephenson, a Borough Councillor at Huddersfield, was an enthusiast for public art and particularly for modern ceramic sculpture. This combination of circumstances led to Steller's appointment to produce designs for the market hall. The size of the ceramic panels necessitated construction of a special kiln and experimental clay compositions resistant to acid rain and chemicals. The difficulty and expense of producing and fixing the panels led Steller to develop a new method of ceramic cladding called Transform. Between 1969 and 1975, Steller produced numerous ceramic and other artworks, including commissions for the Roman Catholic cathedral in Portsmouth and the interior of the Trustee Savings Bank in Wigan, though very little of his work survives. Queensgate Market remains the largest and finest example of his sculpture.

The adjoining shops, mostly built between 1970 and 1974, are not of special architectural interest.