Piece Hall

Opened in 1779, the Piece Hall was where handloom weavers brought their pieces, thirty-yard lengths of undyed cloth, to sell to merchants from rooms arranged around a courtyard of about half a hectare; there are 315 such rooms on three colonnaded tiers, and trading happened only for two hours on Saturday mornings, with the gates locked outside that window. Power looms and the factory system killed the trade within decades and the building went through use as a wholesale market and near-demolition, saved by a single vote of the council in 1972. A restoration completed in 2017 cleared the courtyard back to an open piazza with a rising stone floor and stripped centuries of soot off the sandstone. It is the last surviving cloth hall in Britain of what were once many.

What you actually see

• The 315 rooms - merchants' trading rooms on three colonnaded tiers.
• The courtyard - half a hectare of open piazza on a rising stone floor.
• The two-hour market - the Saturday trading window the building was built around.
• The cleaned sandstone - Georgian masonry stripped of industrial soot in 2017.

When to go

April to October for outdoor concerts and events in the courtyard, which are the building at its liveliest. Entry is free and the courtyard is open daily. Winter markets run in December.

Honest expectations

Most of the rooms are independent shops and cafes rather than heritage displays, and some sit empty between tenants. The courtyard is exposed with little shade or shelter. Concert days close the space to general visitors.

Nearby

Halifax Minster and the Square Chapel are adjacent; Hebden Bridge lies up the valley.