Yahoo News 'I lived at Storthes Hall in 2004 - shutting it down is breaking my heart'
It’s strange. Whenever I think of Storthes Hall, the silhouette of a canoe being held high over a punk’s Mohican is the first thing I think of.
It’s 2004 and the first night of Huddersfield University Freshers Week at Storthes Hall. The lad with the canoe is Kenny and the mob behind him would go on to become my best mates and fill-in family members for the next year at least. Two people in the crowd would go on to be bridesmaids at my wedding and I’m affectionately known as “Auntie Faye” to their children.
I still to this day do not know where Kenny acquired said canoe from but it was the perfect ice breaker on that first night of nerve-wracking small talk. After the ‘where are you originally from and what course you taking?’ obligatory questions (Grimsby/ English Language), my just-turned-18 brain had switched into awkward mode and I had run out of things to say.
Enter my mate Kenny, his canoe and some Dutch courage and all shyness was replaced by laughter at the absurd scene of the crowd surfing boat, now complete with its own drunken sailor inside swaying merrily after a few £2 triple vodkas from D-Bar (now called The Venue, I’m told).
I can still see the scene playing out as I stood looking nervously down from the kitchen window of Myers A, Flat 3. This parent-free zone, a village essentially run by 18-year-olds, a bubble of booze with zero responsibilities, was to be my home for an entire year. I was free - and a bit scared.
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From that same window, we later displayed make-shift Halloween lanterns made out of potatoes and apples because we couldn’t afford pumpkins. We’d smoke fags (can you even think of anything worse in a communal kitchen?!) out of it, shout down to our mates from it, have water fights from it, watch the latest break-up unfold from it.
I yelled up at it at least once a week having lost my keys and bag on yet another night out at Visage or Camel at 4am (sorry Becky and Lauren!).
When my husband and I took a drive up there just two weekends ago, he said the most predictable observation anyone who’s done a stint at Storthes Hall will recognise - “It’s a bit far out isn’t it?!”.
It’s been speculated that this might be why there’s been dwindling numbers of students moving into the Kirkburton digs, resulting in its imminent closure on July 13. The end of an era news that has prompted me to take a nostalgic look back at my year there.
For those of us who have lived there, most will say that the five-mile, 18-minute long journey from Huddersfield town centre campus to Storthes Hall is a great trade-off for the utter freedom and yet security it offers.
When I moved in, it had its own shop (which gave me a job), a DVD hire (yes, I am that old), a sun bed studio (because why the hell not), a laundrette, and of course, the then iconic D-Bar, now called The Venue.
It was before Wi-Fi was a thing. Internet access was expensive but who needed it when you had physical friends on tap to hang out with. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok did not exist. Photos were taken on disposable plastic cameras.
The security guard was always on shift making sure we got back to our flats safely after a night out and turning a blind-eye when “it was the incense sticks honest!” set the fire alarms off at 2am.
If it weren’t for those pesky lectures and seminars, we literally didn’t need to leave our leafy, youthful haven. The bus ran every hour until 11pm and was free of charge. Yes, dragging our beer-weary souls down to the bus stop for that early-morning lecture was close to torture but if you were doing Arts and Humanities like me, eight hours a week was more than achievable (even if it wasn’t some weeks).
As a nervy 18 year old who grew up in a small village near a small town, Storthes Hall provided me with the perfect compromise. I wasn’t ready to be catapulted into a city miles and miles away from home.
Storthes made me feel safe, nestled in the hills and surrounded by fields but with a busy social scene at the centre which helped me come out of my shell. I even affectionately named a sheep I always saw from the bus window 'Martin' and looked out for him every day.
My flatmates adapted a little better than me and I was firmly taken under their wings in the first few homesick weeks. Russell, who drove a “Champagne brown” Citroen AX, took me to Ikea so I could splurge a chunk of my student loan on some home comforts and make the kitchen feel cosy.
The blow-up sofa lasted a week - who knew it wasn’t compatible with cigarettes - but our friendship is still going strong.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, they’d tolerate me watching Corrie on the communal TV. The iconic tune of the trumpets was an instant comfort when I was missing home. They fed me when all I had was rice and cheese.
After a particularly nasty bout of flu which left me bed-ridden, my flat family taped Lemsip and paracetamol to a remote control car and delivered it into my room from a safe distance. These mini stories are just a handful of moments where barely adults ourselves, we all looked out for one another.
Yes. If you’re lucky, most - whichever uni they go to and wherever they end up living - will have similar stories of blossoming friendships and hilarious “you had to be there” anecdotes.
But, I don’t know… there was something about Storthes Hall that made it special and different to the rest. We were on our student, soundproof island with only each other to lean on. Perhaps it made us all a little closer and I am genuinely sad to think future students will not get to experience it.
They’ll never carry out the rite of passage midnight trip inside the ruins of the hospital, with its graffiti-stained padded rooms and rusty old wheelchairs and beds still on site. Nor will they get snowed in when the bus can’t get up the hill and down to university (naturally the only thing we could do was have a booze-filled all-day snowman building competition - sod studying).
The D-Bar seshes every Tuesday were epic. £1 pints and £2 triple vodkas. Kings of Leon, Libertines and Razorlight on a loop. The safe five-minute walk back to someone’s flat for the afters with enough spare change to grab a bag of crisps from the vending machine en route. What more could we want?
Leaving home can be a really hard transition for some. I know I struggled with it. But Storthes Hall, while “remote” in some ways, was the centre of student life. It was a vibrant, loud, fun, punchy place to be for an 18 year old about to be launched into the big, bad world.
And friendships were not confined to the flats we were thrown together in because of the spelling of our last names. They spanned from Myers to Jenkinson, Boothroyd to Laycock. From propping up the D-Bar to riding the late-night bus to Visage.
We were all there, loving life and looking after each other and I know without Storthes Hall, I probably wouldn’t have lasted my first term. It was the perfect limbo for on-the-cusp of adulthood living.
Of course, over the past two decades (insert scared face emoji here) a lot has changed. The university has shut down courses, staff are facing redundancy and the number of student digs now available in the town centre are bound to make people question if Storthes Hall is still the first choice place to live.
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But for me, the memories of my time from September 2004 to June 2005 rival some of the best moments in my life and it might sound corny as hell but it’s not only where I found friends for life but I found myself in many ways too.
I just hope that whatever is next for Storthes Hall, the people who live there create a million more memories for years to come.
