Castleford

The town of Castleford was originally known as Lagentium, up until around 410AD the romans occupied the area and gave Castleford this name. The romans crossed the river Aire and settled in the area, they then built a fort for protection and occupied the area until they moved on and gave way to the anglo saxons. It was in fact the anglo saxons that named the town Castleford, the word castle was taken from the fortress there and ford came from the old word for river that was situated nearby.

Many roman artifacts have been unearthed in and around Castleford such finds are found in the town’s museum, these include roman coins, pottery and even funeral urns. Channel four’s Time Team even visited Castleford in search of roman artifacts and road boundaries and had a very successful dig, they even quoted that many roman secrets will have to stay underground as it is impossible to dig where it would be most valuable due to buildings and roads.

The first school in Castleford opened in 1804 and had only two rooms all together, the school was only actually large enough to accomodate 100 pupils at full capacity. This was sufficent at the time as it was mostly middle and upper class families that actually sent their children to school, the working class families did not tend to be worried about education as their children were mostly to grow up working in manual labour. This changed due to the industrial revolution in Castleford because from the year 1811 to 1891 the area went from being a small village with only a few hundred inhabitants to being a town with a few thousand residents.

The town then started to build and grow with the coal mining industryand the glass and pottery industry. The first deep mining mine was opened in 1868 at Wheldale and employed a vast majority of the town’s men, also the glass industry in the late 1800′s was one of the largest in the whole of Britain manufacturing thousands of glass bottles a week. Castleford is now the home to the Burberry factory this is only one of two in the whole of the UK and its products include the famous Burberry raincoats as modelled by famous supermodels including Kate Moss.

Castleford was formally recognised as a district of its own in 1894 and it was not until the 1930′s that Whitwood and Glasshoughton were added as part of the Castleford district.

Castleford got its first railway in 1836 not far from where todays railway station is also the first tram network was introduced to the town in 1906. The trams were very popular and ran regulary from Pontefract station to Normanton station via Castleford they were unfortunatly closed down in 1925 to make way for the motor buses. The first bus station in Castleford opened in 1963 and today is still a very busy bus station with buses running towards Leeds and Wakefield.

Queens Park was built in 1897 in honour of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and today is a lovely setting for a day out or a stroll, it features four football pitches, bowling greens, childrens play area’s ad a victorian bandstand. There are also picturesque flower gardens including a wild garden to view at the park.

The market hall was first built in 1880 and was destroyed by a fire in 1927, a new market hall was built in 1929 which housed the town’s stalls and shoppers until when it was last moved in 1991 and built at todays Carleton Lanes shopping centre.

Castleford formed it’s own rugby league team in 1926 and they have always been a very successful rugby team, today known as Castleford Tigers they are only one of three rugby league teams that have always remained in the top division. Castleford in recent years has carried on growing and booming and today is the home of the regions only real snow slope situated at the Xscape.