Here's an early Christmas present to fellow web server admins -- an analysis of the worst network ranges for AI bot scrapping activity from 3 months of tarpit data (13m+ requests): huddersfield.exposed/files/tarpit... The three columns are: 1) hit count 2) ASN owner 3) parent IP network range

I may have to admit defeat as to why there's a "F. Hill" (believed to be a "Fred Hill") on WW1 memorials for the Netherthong area. There were a few "Hill"s in that township in the mid-1800s but then the surname died out until farmer Sidney Charles Hill (born Herts) pops up in the 1921 Census.

Gah! Why has FindMyPast made their UK newspaper search harder to filter? ☹️ Multiple mouse clicks now to achieve what you could previously do with just one click.

Just added two more names to the WW2 Project who both died on the same day -- Friday 13 February 1942. huddersfield.exposed/wiki/Ernest_... huddersfield.exposed/wiki/Brynley...

Looks like another victim of out-of-control AI bots ☹️ losses.internationalbcc.co.uk

Filed under "Things I did not know until I watched the season 5 finale of 'Only Murders in the Building'" is that New York sanitation workers use the term "mungo" for things they recycle from trash. Presumably it can't be a coincidence that it's also an old Yorkshire term for recycling?

I suspect there can't be too many CWGC records for married couples who both died in service? Muriel "Molly" Clegg married Ernest Leverington at Lockwood on 26 Dec 1932. Ernest died in the sinking of HMS Wakeful and Muriel five years later. www.cwgc.org/find-records... www.cwgc.org/find-records...

Given how unusual they are, there seems to be very little available research into the two WW2 CWGC graves at Edgerton Cemetery (Huddersfield) of Russian soldiers: www.cwgc.org/find-records... www.cwgc.org/find-records... Photos: www.flickr.com/photos/19083... www.flickr.com/photos/19083...

Over the last few months I have had the privilege to be involved in the preservation of the fantastic discovery of historic wallpaper from 1883 during the refurbishment of the Ramsden building on the University of Huddersfield's campus. www.hud.ac.uk/news/2025/no... 1/5

Hoping to hit a milestone on the WW2 Project this weekend by getting to 25%, which means researching at least another ten names. huddersfield.exposed/wiki/WW2_Pro...

To go with the list, there's now a gallery which is mostly newspaper photos. Some survived the war whilst others sadly did not. huddersfield.exposed/archive/sear...

Looks like the AI bots went for a mid morning coffee break at around 10:30am and they've been revitalised to try even harder. On the plus side, whilst they're stuck in my infinite tarpit sucking up endless gibberish, hopefully they're not sending requests to other web sites. 600,000 requests now.

Just coming up on 300,000 requests so far today from AI company bots (mostly since 6:30am). If it carries on, it might break the previous record of 800,000 in a day 🤪🤖 On a normal day, I'd expect to see around 4,000 genuine page requests from human users on the site.

Renewable cat power is the future

Wow... looks like an AI company put 50p in their bot network meter at around 6:30am today. Huddersfield Exposed is currently handling a huge surge in bot traffic, the majority of which is stuck in the site's tarpit and sucking up GBs of randomly generated gibberish text.

A quick repost for the Morning Crowd 🙂

There will certainly be more local names to add to this list as research continues, but this page now shows the chronology of deaths during the Second World War. huddersfield.exposed/s/73943

Just a quick plug that you can see the local distribution of a surname in the 1881 Census here: huddersfield.exposed/s/54320 For example, every one in twenty residents of Golcar township was a "Whitwam" whereas you'd be more likely to find a "Pogson" in Meltham.

Hopefully Pip won't mind me sharing this photo which was emailed with a question about the coat of arms. I'll post the answer in 10 mins, but does anyone else know what it represents? If you need a clue, that is indeed a Liver Bird.

Urgh.... I see OpenAI/ChatGPT now ignores robots.txt. Another AI nail in the coffin of the internet 😠

Sunday afternoons were made for doing web server upgrades 😁 welcome.huddersfield.click/2025/11/02/n...

"Smoking or spitting in these rooms or on these premises is strictly prohibited" Useful advice back in 1910 when going to Penistone library #Museum30 #signage

Pablo Fanque is famously mentioned in The Beatles' Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite, but did you know that he's also buried in Leeds? youtu.be/J0UWoQhg194

This reminds me that Pablo Fanque (he of the Beatles' song "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite") made many visits to Huddersfield. huddersfield.exposed/s/2706

When it comes to ghosts, I'm definitely "Team Sceptic" but, if you ever meet me in a pub, buy me a pint and I'll tell you of the strange figure I encountered one foggy day on the boggy moors above Holmfirth near Top Withins. It'd definitely get a "bloody hell, Dave!" from @dannyrobins.bsky.social 😁

Gather round in the flickering light from the fireplace and let me tell you all the horrifying tale of the Lockwood Scar Ghost *makes "woooOOOooo" sound* 👻 #HalloweenHuddersfield

A lovely traditional Halloween -- we buy some nice sweets and no one comes knocking on our door 😁 Anyone want any some local ghost stories this evening? [spoiler: none of them are actual real life (real dead?!) ghosts]

Back home again

Not wishing to blow my own trumpet, but I received a query this morning from a researcher in the Netherlands for info about Capt. Robert Gordon Hogg and, before the day is out, I've hopefully put them in touch with his only daughter 🙂🎺 huddersfield.exposed/s/77074

Cheers brand new installation of Windows 11, but the search terms I entered were definitely "power button"! It's amazing that a company like Microsoft can spend billions of dollars developing an AI product that can't even tell the difference between "button" and "bottom" 🤪

I spotted a discussion on FB about what the oldest picture of Huddersfield might be. Despite the Kirklees Image Archive dating this photo to 1910, it was actually taken on 27 July 1868 by John Vincent Hatch. kirkleesimages.org.uk/frontend.php...

I don't know if it's just the way my brain works, but sometimes I do my best puzzle solving in my sleep 😴 Woke up this morning and decided, if the jigsaw pieces won't fit, perhaps it means I just need to start again from scratch...

Admittedly, the chances that the chap from Netherthong I talked to at today's hdfhs.org.uk event will read this post is small, I knew that I'd got some information about the unknown 1852 Holmfirth Flood victim buried at All Saints (Netherthong) somewhere. huddersfield.exposed/s/72373

"Here lies the body of Mr P. He was an enigma -- mysterious, complex and puzzling, and utterly impossible to define. In death, he vowed to forever haunt programmers who fail to add sensible defaults to their code."

Another book scan tidied up and ready to go online 🥂

Christ Church, Linthwaite, near Huddersfield was a Commissioners' church which was built with money voted by Parliament as a result of the Church Building Act of 1818. For Christ Church £3,035 was granted. Christ Church was designed by Peter Atkinson Jnr in 1827 & built by Joseph Kaye in 1828 in /1

Spent the last 15 minutes pouring over old maps, but whereabouts "Dark Lane" is (or was) in Shepley has got me stumped.

Thanks to an email exchange with one of George Holdsworth's descendants, I've been able to add more info to this page 🙂 huddersfield.exposed/s/9092

Urgh... definitely not a fan of the trend of using generative AI to create images of what someone might have looked like (i.e. nothing like that). Feels even more disrespectful when it's someone named on a war memorial. IMHO, "good research" should never ever use generative AI.

If old folklore and tales like these are of interest, be sure to check out Philip Ahier's "The Legends and Traditions of Huddersfield and Its District" published in several volumes in the 1940s and available to read online. huddersfield.exposed/s/6743

Along with the Leadboilers, there's also the Marsden Cuckoo (the people of Marsden supposedly tried to trap a cuckoo by building a wall around it) and the Slaithwaite Moonrakers (raking the moon's reflection in the water, which is a story also linked to other places).

Given that it's only 3:20pm now, I'd suggest the delivery issue is that the Evri driver's time machine is b0rked 🤪

Currently scanning a book that's literally full of old Shat.

Always interesting to compare the Halifax Piece Hall with the Huddersfield Cloth Hall (built 1766). The latter was reportedly described as the "ugliest building in Europe" and few were sad to see the long-disused building razed to the ground at the end of the 1920s.

"TO ALL THE L(ANCASHIRE) & Y(ORKSHIRE) TRAINS" 😄

I'm officially calling it and summer is over. I've put on my thick socks on.

Hat's off to our local rag which is currently encouraging readers to buy dehumidifiers whilst also urging them to ditch dehumidifiers since they're a "demon appliance" that costs too much to run.

A few more of 1960s newspaper reproductions of works by local artist Harold Blackburn (1899-1980) have been added to the site: huddersfield.exposed/archive/tag/...

The Queensgate market "conversion" is looking fantastic. This is how the roof should have always been displayed - instead of being hidden behind nondescript shops (externally) and crowded stalls (internally). #Huddersfield #Brutalism

Now that's brutalism!