Photos from the visit of Salts FC to Littletown FC for a Yorkshire Amateur League Championship fixture on 9th May 2026.
The game finished 1-1 and Salts FC finished the season as champions.
Beck Lane was formerly home to Heckmondwike FC that was one of the earliest Rugby Union clubs in West Yorkshire. The club’s origins appear to have been church related (CoE) in the early 1870s with rugby fixtures contested from around 1875. In November 1878 the Beck Lane ground staged a floodlit game with Bradford Albion (one of a series of exhibition floodlit events in the north that year, including a game involving Bradford Zingari in Frizinghall, Bradford).
Proximity to the former Heckmondwike railway station was a major advantage and I suspect that the adjacent railway embankment was used as a vantage by spectators much in the same way as at Bowling FC’s Usher Street ground. My guess is that there would have been an open ‘grandstand’ on the side where there is now a roofed cover, the other side bordered by Spen Beck. Conceivably the ground could have provided capacity for two to three thousand.
Heckmondwike FC had a respectable record, defeated in the 1880 Yorkshire Challenge Cup Final by Wakefield Trinity and both Manningham FC and Bradford FC played games at the ground.
Heckmondwike players made a total of 15 appearance for England before 1895 including the celebrity player Dicky Lockwood who joined from Dewsbury in 1889 and John Sutcliffe. The latter was a former member of the Bradford FC team in 1886 and was one of the first to make a name for himself as a soccer professional. After a brief spell at Park Avenue, he moved to Bowling and later Heckmondwike. In 1889 – when Heckmondwike FC was suspended following allegations of professionalism – he joined Bolton Wanderers where he played as goalkeeper. With Heckmondwike and then Bolton, Sutcliffe represented England once at rugby and then five times at association football.
Sutcliffe returned to Bradford with Bolton Wanderers for friendlies involving a West Yorkshire League XI at Park Avenue in September, 1896 and then against the Bradford & District FA select XI at Valley Parade in September 1901. He also played for the English League against the Irish League at Valley Parade in October 1903 and in October 1907 returned to Park Avenue with Plymouth Argyle for a Southern League fixture. After the First World War he was appointed coach by Bradford City.
Heckmondwike FC struggled financially and in 1894 there was an aborted merger with Liversedge. In 1896 it joined the Northern Union but converted to association football in 1903 – predating the formal decision by Manningham FC to abandon rugby by four weeks.
In April 1905 Bradford City Reserves defeated Mirfield United in the West Yorkshire Cup final at Beck Lane.
Latterly the ground was acquired by Huddersfield Town for reserve and junior games and since 1960 has been the home of Littletown FC.
Historic information from my books ROOM AT THE TOP and LIFE AT THE TOP (Bantamspast History Revisited)
Wool City Rivals 