1924: New ‘classy’ Cleckheaton bar opens in town centre

1924, which replaced what was previously known as Chaos on Albion Street, held its grand opening night last Friday, June 9.

And the bar is the ‘perfect’ fit for owner Michelle Hunt in what is her first business venture.

The 37-year-old, who is in partnership with her mum, Marie, said:

“I had always wanted a pub or a bar and I had been looking for the last 18 months and had not been able to find the perfect one. This just happened to pop up and I jumped on it.

“It’s right in the centre of town and it’s just the right size; it’s not too small and it’s not overly big either. We can get what we need out of it.

“We are trying to go for a more classy vibe so people can come and relax and have a drink but also, on a weekend, when we are open until 2am on a Friday and Saturday, it is more of a party vibe, where we are trying to get a good mix, so it is suitable for anybody.

“The town is definitely changing and it has needed something a bit different and I suppose the more bars we get in town, the better, because more people will come to the town for a night out or day-drinking instead of going to Leeds or Brighouse.”

The opening night fell on the same weekend of the sixth-year anniversary of Michelle’s grandma’s passing - her grandma being the inspiration for the bar’s name. She said:

“It was a brilliant night. Before it was full-on days and weeks of hard work getting it right. Even on the Friday morning, everybody said, ‘you can’t open yet’, but by five o’clock it looked like how we had imagined it. We did it!

I was really close to my grandma, Kathleen Goldsmith, and we named it after her birth year. We went through loads of names and it was my mum who came up with 1924 and it just stuck. It seemed perfect.

“We didn’t plan it to open that weekend, it just happened to fall like that. It moved me when I realised.”