Batley

Batley is a small town in Kirklees Metropolitan Borough, in the county of West Yorkshire, England, north of Dewsbury, just off the M62.

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In Victorian times, Batley was the centre of the "shoddy trade" in which wool rags and clothes were recycled by reweaving them into blankets, carpets, uniforms. The owners of the recycling businesses were known as the "shoddy barons" . There was a "shoddy King" and a "shoddy Temple", better known as the Zionist Chapel.

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The large house that is now the Bagshaw Museum in Batley's Wilton Park was built by one of these "shoddy barons".

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Batley Grammar School was attended by Sir Titus Salt, an industrialist who founded the model village of Saltaire, and by Joseph Priestley, a friend of Benjamin Franklin, Josiah Wedgwood and Captain James Cook.

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Batley and its neighbour Dewsbury are part of a special E.U. transformation zone.

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County: Originally, in continental Europe, a county was the land under the jurisdiction of a count. Counts are called "earls" in post-Celtic Great Britain and Ireland - the term is from Old Norse jarl and was introduced by the Vikings - but there is no correlation between "county" and "earldom." Rather, t...

West Yorkshire: West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in England, corresponding roughly to the core of the West Riding of the traditional county of Yorkshire. It borders on Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Derbyshire, North Yorkshire and South Yorkshire....

England: :For an explanation of often confusing terms like England, (Great) Britain and United Kingdom see British Isles (terminology)....