Town Council returns to its traditional home

Silsden's Town Mayor Peter Robinson (fifth from left) and his deputy, Margaret Croft (next to him), are pictured with town councillors at their first meeting of 2019, held at the Town Hall on January 10th. Left to right are David Loud, David Rushworth, Michael O'Dwyer, Adrian Naylor, who is also a Bradford district councillor, Peter Robinson, Margaret Croft, Rebecca Whitaker, who is also a Bradford district councillor, Richard Barton, Mark Wogden, Darren Edwards and Lawrence Walton. A vacancy is in the process of being filled to bring the council up to its full complement of 12 members. The Town Council has returned to the Town Hall, the traditional home of local government, after a period of self-imposed exile during which it met in a  back room at the Co-op. The council decamped following the £300,000 upgrade of the Town Hall five years ago when the former meeting chamber was turned into a new home for the town's library.

This Will Baldwin photograph of Silsden Town Council in its early days in the 1970s, when it was a parish council, was first published with the names of the members in my blog of December 30th, 2017.

Silsden's local authority up to 1974 was the Urban District Council, which had come into being in 1895. This photograph of the UDC was taken during the Second World War. The chairman, Horace Fortune, is pictured wearing the chain of office. He chaired the council from 1940-43 and served a second term from 1949-52. His wife Nellie chaired the council from 1955-58. The UDC gave way to Bradford Metropolitan District Council in a bitterly opposed nationwide reorganisation of local government.