Huddersfield's traditional industrial strength has been in woollen textiles, engineering and chemicals, but also includes retailers' headquarters and distribution and a growing number of media businesses.
Castle Hill overlooks the town, which has fine architecture, including a grade one listed railway station and an award-winning stadium, the home of Huddersfield Town football matches and Huddersfield Giants rugby league games. Huddersfield was rugby league's birthplace. The area also has Britain's tallest free-standing structure, the TV tower at Emley Moor , and the country's longest, highest and deepest canal tunnel, the Standedge Tunnel on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, which reopened in May 2001. A millennium pie was the latest in a succession of world's largest pies to be made at Denby Dale, near Huddersfield.
The town has an international reputation for its music. The surrounding area is also well-known to television viewers through Last Of The Summer Wine, filmed principally around the nearby town of Holmfirth, and Where The Heart Is, filmed in Slaithwaite.
Huddersfield is close to M1 and M62 motorways, the latter rising to the west of the town to the highest point on England's motorway network. Manchester airport can be reached by rail in 56 minutes and York can be reached in about 50 minutes.
The town is well-served with internet sites. Some internet search sites will only list around 1,000 Huddersfield sites, but there are very many more waiting to be found through more specific searches. These include educational and hobby sites, personal home pages, Huddersfield Town football fans' pages, sites run by local organisations, the media, the Huddersfield-based Kirklees Council and a growing number of business sites. Together they offer a huge range of information about the town and the services it offers.
[1] Based on ONS 2001 figures, ie. excluding new 2009 unitary authorities named as and covering most of the counties of Cornwall, Durham and Wiltshire.
