Close to it is the former Cloth-hall, a Gothic building of 1325.
The municipal museum, founded in 1869 and located in the old cloth-hall (Laeckenhalle) (1640), contains a varied collection of antiquities connected with Leiden, as well as some paintings including works by the elder van Swanenburgh, Cornelius Engelbrechtszoon, Lucas van Leiden and Jan Steen, who were all natives of Leiden.
The cloth-hall dates from 1784, when it was erected as a clothiers' emporium.
By the beginning of the 18th century Huddersfield had become a "considerable town," chiefly owing to the manufacture of woollen kersies, and towards the end of the same century the trade was increased by two events - the opening of navigation on the Calder in 1780, and in 1784 that of the cloth-hall or piece-hall, built and given to the town by Sir John Ramsden, baronet.