About the Archive

Kirklees is a Metropolitan Borough in West Yorkshire, formed in 1974.  It comprises the three large towns of Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Batley, as well as several smaller towns such as Cleckheaton, Heckmondwike, Mirfield, Meltham and Holmfirth. As well as these industrial towns (especially famous for textiles), Kirklees includes many areas of spectacular countryside. The Kirklees Image Archive was set up in 1997 following the award of a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The HLF grant was the first ever awarded for a digital imaging project and it provided Kirklees Metropolitan Council with the funding to commence the digitisation of its collection of over 250,000 mainly black and white images including the photographic archive of the Huddersfield Daily Examiner.
 
To date over 60,000 images have been scanned and added to the image database. Public access to the images has been available at four of the main Kirklees Libraries since 1998 but early in 2006 a decision was made to make use of advances in technology and set the entire database up on the Internet to make it available to the whole world.

The collection contains images stretching back to the late 19th century and whilst the vast majority were taken in the Kirklees area, there are significant numbers taken in other areas of the UK, in Europe and in North Africa. Many of the original images are on glass plate negatives and digitisation has provided the only practical means to make these available for viewing.

Copies of the images may be purchased and information on how to order is contained on the Buying Images page.