PRIOR to the opening of an up-to-date municipal abattoir in Hard Ings Road in 1930, these Westgate premises served as Keighley's official slaughter house.

During their last full year of operations they witnessed the killing of 2,392 cattle, 153 calves, 2,086 pigs and 7,059 sheep. A total of 96 cattle and 26 pigs were found to be infected with tuberculosis.

Here boys begged bladders to use as footballs. The iron ring visible in the ground towards the bottom left-hand corner was used, in conjunction with a chain, to pull a cow's head down in order to strike it with a pole-axe.

The Keighley '1920s Boy' artist, the late Stanley R Boardman, described how he and other boys looked over a wall top into this yard with its "sleazy looking, rotten wooden sheds". What they saw and heard made them physically sick, and he suffered from nightmares as a result.

Yet even this represented some advance on the casual slaughtering of an earlier age. In 1847 the Keighley Improvement Commissioners – the local government of that period – had to threaten a severe penalty against butchers "killing and slaying animals in, and adjoining, the public streets, as has been the common practice in this town".