Foundry Street History
The Community Centre is a former Wesleyan Mission chapel, a building steeped in history, built in 1881 on the site of a former foundry, by John Atkinson of the textile firm John Atkinson & Sons. Given to the Mission “free of debt” as well as a place of worship, it also provided a soup kitchen to help the poorest local people, establishing it as centre for the benefit of the community from the outset. In the basement is a memorial stone to John Atkinson, erected by his nephew William Arthur Sutcliffe. Both are buried in St Peters churchyard at Sowerby, along with other family members.
The Foundry Street Wesleyan Chapel was surrounded by workers’ housing as can be seen on the plan below, published in 1890, and the area was known locally as ‘Bogden’. The newspaper cutting shows the residents of ‘Bogden’ celebrating King George V’s Silver
Jubilee in 1935. The banner above the group of people reads ‘Long Live the King’ and appears to be fixed to one of the communal toilet blocks in the centre of the street. At the time the area was under threat of demolition in a slum clearance scheme.
Chapel to Community Centre
The chapel continued to serve the community until it closed in 1972, and many people have posted about their memories of those times. Leslie Godfrey(pictured), a local councilor since 1959, persuaded the Sowerby Bridge Urban District Council to acquire the former Foundry Street Methodist Sunday School for £4,000 and convert it into a community centre. Sowerby Bridge became part of the new Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council in 1974, and the Community Centre opened on 22 October 1979, the lounge being named the Leslie Godfrey Lounge in honour of the man who made it happen. In a lifetime of community work, Leslie regarded this as his finest achievement. His 90th birthday celebration and his funeral wake were held in the building in 2012 and 2018.
In April 2010, to mark more than 50 years of service to Sowerby Bridge, Calderdale Council presented him with a citizenship award. The citation reads in part: “The Council of Calderdale Metropolitan Borough wishes to applaud and acknowledge the contribution to the benefit of the community made by Leslie Godfrey for his outstanding service to the community of Sowerby Bridge for over 50 years.”
The new Centre featured a light and airy main hall upstairs, the Lesley Godfrey Lounge, a smaller lounge (later named the Eric Taylor Lounge after the first long-serving caretaker) and a well-equipped kitchen downstairs. In 1993 the basement was converted with help from the Sowerby Bridge Rotary Club to provide another useable space for the Foundry Street Play Group. All areas have plenty of storage facilities, and there are also two offices. The centre was initially run by a committee of people made up of members from the groups and organisations that used it. Sowerby Bridge Shotokan Karate Club was a founding member. This arrangement continued into the 90s, when the centre was thriving with a good number of diverse user groups, such as dance, drama, yoga, badminton, and scrabble, as well as the karate club.
Around the early 2000s, the Council decided that the Centre should be directly run by them, and it was assigned to Children & Young Peoples Services (CYPS) who ran a youth club there three times a week. CYPS did not actively manage the wider community involvement in the Centre and did not seek to replace paying users as groups dropped out. By the start of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown (March 2020) the only remaining users of the Centre were the Karate Club, stretch & tone, ‘Project C’, the youth club, and monthly meetings of the Ladies Probus Club. In summer 2021, Calderdale Council decided to centralise youth services at Orange Box and CYPS withdrew from Foundry Street.
When restrictions began to ease, the Karate Club contacted the Council to seek permission to begin using the Centre again. In early October, the Karate Club was informed that the Corporate Asset and Facilities Management Service had now considered this site against other organisational requirements and found that it was not required. It was therefore recommended for disposal. Following consultation on the proposal to dispose of the building an objection was received from a ward councilor. Council policy required the objection be considered by Cabinet. In addition, a petition was created (led by a member of the Karate Club) which received enormous community support and reached 1,308 signatures, asking that the Council’s Cabinet consider a Community Asset Transfer (CAT). The public response made it clear that there were now many groups that wanted to use the facility.
The matter was considered by the Council’s Cabinet on 17 January 2022. The Cabinet passed a resolution that the Former Sowerby Bridge Youth and Community Centre be offered as a Community Asset Transfer. Additionally, the Council agreed to look at whether it could reopen the Centre to existing users with immediate effect whilst the Community Asset Transfer was explored. A small group of volunteers was set up and a Business Case put forward to take over the running of the Centre. This was finally approved by Council on 31st August 2023, when the Foundry Street Community Centre was re-born.