The Race Route

🏁 Start: Shibden Park

You'll start the race alongside the ornamental lake at Shibden Park, climbing steadily through the parkland. A subterranean passage and a spiral staircase will see you emerge directly in front of Shibden Hall.

🏰 Shibden Hall

Shibden Hall is a Grade II starred listed house, originally dating back to the 1400s and with a fine Tudor half-timbered frontage. For over three hundred years it was in the hands of the Lister family. Anne Lister (1791-1840), the central character in the recent TV series Gentleman Jack (partly filmed at Shibden), was a landowner, traveller, scientist, diarist and lesbian. She inherited the hall from her aunt. The hall was gifted to Halifax Corporation in the 1930s and since then it has been a museum.

🌲 Cunnery Wood to Beacon Hill

You'll leave the Shibden Hall park through a short tunnel into next-door Cunnery Wood and gradually make your way on country tracks to Beacon Hill viewpoint, where (weather permitting, of course!) the town of Halifax will be spread out below you. From here, you'll descend by minor roads and footpaths towards the old industrial area of the town alongside little Hebble Brook. You'll pass Hargreaves Foundry where many of Sir Antony Gormley's sculptures have been cast and the Nestle factory where Quality Street chocs are made before entering through the South Door into Halifax Minster.

⛪ Halifax Minster

Halifax Minster was built during the fifteenth century on the site of a Norman church, with some of the Norman stonework incorporated at the time into the new building. You'll be running past pews in the Nave which date back to the 1630s and, as you leave the Minster by the West Door, will be passing the fifteenth century wooden cover of the font. Halifax Minster is a Grade I listed building.

🏛️ The Piece Hall

From the Minster it's only a short distance to Halifax's Piece Hall.

What can we say about the Piece Hall? This magnificent building was opened in 1779 as a place for the buying and selling of worsted and woollen 'pieces' of cloth produced locally – Halifax was for centuries the centre of the handloom weaving industry. Astonishingly, it was very nearly demolished in the 1970s to be turned into a modern shopping arcade. Phew, in the nick of time the proposal was turned down. The building received funding for its complete renovation in 2010 and reopened in 2017 and is now run by a local charitable trust. Enjoy this highlight of the race!

🏪 Borough Market

Leaving the Piece Hall by the West Gate, you'll find yourself in one of Halifax's main shopping streets.

The race route makes a short sashay into Borough Market, an impressive late Victorian building which has recently been restored. High above you, as you run through the market, is Halifax's strange 'Street in the Sky', a complete street of abandoned Victorian terraced houses above the market roof.

🏛️ Halifax Town Hall

From the market you'll run through the centre of Halifax to the Town Hall.

Halifax Town Hall (another Grade II starred building) was designed by Charles Barry, who was responsible for the Houses of Parliament building at Westminster. It's been described by Architecture Today magazine as one of the ten most spectacular Town Hall buildings in Britain. It remains today the centre of local democratic life for Calderdale.

🏭 Dean Clough Complex

You'll leave the shops behind as you make your way under the busy A58 towards the Dean Clough complex, entering into Mill F.

The collection of factories which make up Dean Clough was once one of the largest carpet factories in the world, half a mile long. This was home from the 1840s for well over a century of Crossley's famous carpet works. When the weaving of carpets stopped in the 1980s the whole complex was bought by a consortium led by the musician and businessman Sir Ernest Hall, and under his inspired leadership it was converted into both a centre for the arts and for business. It's an enormously impressive example of urban regeneration. Our race route takes you past the main reception in Mill D, and through the Crossley Art Gallery.

🌳 Final Stretch

Leaving the Dean Clough complex will mean, yes, another flight of steps to take you up to Old Lane and then up to the Haley Hill area of the town. Just off the race route is the model village of Akroydon, built another nineteenth century industrialist Edward Akroyd for his mill workers, and Akroyd's large house, now Bankfield Museum (somewhere to visit later, perhaps?). A little way to your right is Akroyd's church, All Soul's, now preserved by a national church charity.

You'll run through Akroyd Park to emerge into quiet suburban streets for the final part of the race. Shibden Park isn't far away. Don't give up now!