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D F E Sykes was a gifted scholar, solicitor, local politician, and newspaper proprietor. He listed his own patrimony as ‘Fred o’ Ned’s o’ Ben o’ Billy’s o’ the Knowle’ a reference to Holme village above Slaithwaite in the Colne Valley. As the grandson of a clothier, his association with the woollen trade would be a valuable source of material for his novels, but also the cause of his downfall when, in 1883, he became involved in a bitter dispute between the weavers and the mill owners.

When he was declared bankrupt in 1885 and no longer able to practise as a solicitor he left the area and travelled abroad to Ireland and Canada. On his return to England he struggled with alcoholism and was prosecuted by the NSPCC for child neglect. Eventually he was drawn back to Huddersfield and became an active member of the Temperance Movement. He took to researching local history and writing, at first in a local newspaper, then books such as ‘The History of Huddersfield and its Vicinity’. He also wrote four novels. It was not until the 1911 Census, after some 20 years as a writer, that he finally states his profession as ‘author’.

In later life he lived with his wife, the daughter of a Lincolnshire vicar, at Ainsley House, Marsden. He died of a heart attack following an operation at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary on 5^th June 1920 and was buried in the graveyard of St Bartholomew’s in Marsden.