On your right, look for the dark stone rectangular frontage with a tall central arch and a disciplined row of windows.
This is Prescott Street drill hall, a Grade Two listed building, which means it is legally protected for its special historic interest. Architect Richard Coad designed it for the Fourth West Yorkshire Rifle Volunteer Corps, and builders finished it between eighteen sixty-eight and eighteen seventy. A drill hall was a military training base, where volunteers learned to march, handle weapons, and move as one. By eighteen eighty-three, this unit had become the First Volunteer Battalion of The Duke of Wellington's Regiment, and by nineteen oh-eight, the Fourth Battalion. Then came August nineteen fourteen... men gathered here and mobilised for the Western Front. If you glance at your phone, the close-up image shows how much of that stern military frontage survives. In nineteen thirty-eight, the battalion became the Fifty-eighth Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery, and after later reductions and reorganisations, the military chapter ended in nineteen ninety-nine, when the hall was decommissioned and converted for residential use. This place holds Halifax's volunteer soldier story in plain sight.
Take one more look here. When you're ready, we can head on to Borough Market.
