The story is still told locally of how Halifax’s astonishing Piece Hall, the 18th century Italianate piazza in the heart of the town originally built for trading cloth pieces, was very nearly demolished a generation ago to make way for an Arndale-type shopping centre.

By the skin of its teeth it survived, and, following recent restoration, is now home to independent shops, cafés and bars as well as open-air gigs in summer. This Easter Monday, the Piece Hall will also open its gates to the 500 runners taking part in what promises to be the first event of its kind in Britain, an ‘urban trail’ which will see the participants weaving in and out of the town’s other historic buildings. 

In the course of a 10K race, runners will meander through the aisles and nave of medieval Halifax Minster, into the Council Chamber of the Town Hall (designed by the architect of the Houses of Parliament), through Halifax’s Victorian Borough Market, and into and out of the Crossley Art Gallery at Dean Clough Mills. Also included in the race route is an underground passage at Shibden Hall, the home of 19th century businesswoman Anne Lister who was featured in the recent TV drama, Gentleman Jack.

One of the first runners to sign up, Helen Hodgkinson from Todmorden, says she was attracted by the opportunity to run through buildings not normally open to the public. “I’m most looking forward to a peek around Shibden Hall,” she says. “The challenge will be to keep running and to resist the temptation to linger.”

The idea of this sort of ‘urban trail’ may be new to Britain but is well known in France where many of the country’s cities and towns now stage similar events. In fact, the inspiration for the Easter event in Halifax (and, as one of the organising committee, at this point I had better declare an interest) came from the provincial Breton town of Fougères where an annual ‘trail urbain’ sees many hundreds of participants run around the ramparts of the 1,000-year-old chateau, into the local theatre, through the local secondary school and finally via a disused railway tunnel. It is, as you can imagine, a memorable event, and some of us from the Calder Valley who experienced it a couple of years back felt that it was too good an idea not to introduce to British runners.

Though the textile industry which helped to found Halifax (and gave it the Piece Hall) has more or less disappeared, the town has been fortunate in preserving many of its fine town-centre buildings. Runners taking part from down south who may think of Halifax as another post-industrial northern town probably in need of some serious regeneration are likely to be in for a surprise. But even local participants who feel they know the town well will see the insides of buildings they never knew were there.

You might imagine that not everyone responsible for these buildings would be prepared to open their doors on a Bank Holiday Monday to 500 runners with their muddy running shoes and sweaty bodies. However, without exception, all agreed. The Halifax Urban Trail is, we’re pretty sure, the first event of its kind in the North. Not surprisingly, places are filling up fast. With a couple of months still to go, approaching 400 of the 500 places have already been taken.

The Halifax Urban Trail is run by a newly established charity (another declaration of interest needed here, since I’m one of the trustees), and we’ve decided that the proceeds from the race will be passed to our local hospice Overgate which is in the throes of an ambitious new building project. Generous sponsorship has already been received from within the Halifax business community and we confidently expect to be able to pass several thousand pounds to the hospice after the event. 

It could be that the French idea of trails urbains is ready to take off with runners in Britain. Manchester has its Marathon and the Great Manchester Runs, of course, but remember this: it was Halifax that was first with the urban trail.

By Andrew Bibby

Main image: © Ellis Robinson/The Piece Hall

 

More information about the event (including entry details), which takes place on April 6, 2026, is available on the website https://halifaxurbantrail.org.uk