Christopher Waud (1806-66)

Recently a correspondant asked if I could find out any more about a Bradford textile manufacturer, Christopher Waud of Britannia Mills. Although always associated with the Bradford trade Waud seems to have been born and baptised at Leeds in 1806. His father was Robert Waud who, family historians agree, died in 1828.

I have been told that Robert was also involved in the textile trade although the only man of this name in the 1822 Baine’s Directory of West Yorkshire was a brush manufacturer of Bank Street, Bradford. By 1830 his concern, Robert Waud & Son, had moved to 1 Darley Street where as well as brush making they dealt in cheese, butter and bacon. Both he and a Christopher Waud of York feature in a York voters register of 1820. This Christopher implausibly combined the trades of oyster dealer and hair dresser! I don’t think either man relates closely to our textile prince although their surname is uncommon. I’ll leave it to others to pursue any link.

The concern that evolved into Christopher Waud & Co. seemingly owes its origins to a partnership entered into by Christopher, his younger brother Edward Waud (1813-60), and a man called Richard Shaw. Both Waud brothers were young men at the time so Richard Shaw was presumably the senior partner. When the arrangement eventually broke up Shaw was described in the London Gazette as ‘manufacturer of Norwich’. How did the three men meet? There were certainly links between Bradford and Norfolk, the town of Worsted was in that county, and Norwich was long the weaving centre known for the best quality worsted stuffs. Shaw is a common surname but a man named Richard Shaw was one of the many contemporary manufacturers of Norwich shawls. Frankly I have very limited information about this period of Waud’s life. He became a freemason in 1830, and the age of his eldest child suggests that he married his wife Ann Motley around 1834. In the same year he was first mentioned in the local paper, the Bradford Observer, in connection with his political interests.

Christopher Waud & Co. are in existence as worsted spinners in Mill Street by the time of the 1832 Pigot’s Directory. Mill Street was near the Bradford terminus of the Leeds-Liverpool canal spur. In 1836 Christopher & Edward Ward erected Britannia Mills near Manchester Road. At that time Britannia was Bradford’s largest textile mill and boasted a 100 hp beam engine as its power source. The contractors were John & Miles Moulson who were later to be involved with the model industrial village at Saltaire, and Drummonds Mill. Christopher was evidently a coming man. The following year he was elected as a Bradford Poor Law guardian. As I have mentioned the initial three man partnership was dissolved, the year being 1837. Richard Shaw withdrew and the Wauds continued alone. Since Richard Shaw completed a will and died the following year it is probable that his age or illness was responsible for his decision.

In 1839 Waud spoke in favour of the 11 hours working day (9 hours even on Saturdays!) for ‘persons above the age of 11’. A working day of such duration seems almost incomprehensible to modern ears but the introduction of a 10 hour working day, in the Factory Act of 1847, was widely resisted by Bradford textile manufacturers. This was despite the fact that one of themselves, John Wood, had originally promoted such reforms in association with Richard Oastler. Clearly Waud was capable of more forward thinking. In 1843 the Bradford Observer reported that he had produced a fabric, silk warp with silk & alpaca weft, which he had made into waist-coats. The design consisted of bound ears of wheat together with the word ‘Free’. He gave such waist-coats to the major proponents for the repeal of the corn laws: Charles Pelham Villiers, Richard Cobden, Milner Gibson (MP for Manchester) and William Busfeild Ferrand (MP for Knaresborough). Sir Robert Peel himself doesn’t seem to have received a gift, but Bradford’s first public park was eventually named after him. The Factory Acts and Corn Laws were immensely divisive pieces of legislation: the EU referendum of their time.

In 1844 Waud was on the provisional committee of the West Yorkshire Railway Co. along with many other prominent Leeds & Bradford businessmen. By the 1840s Waud Brothers & Co were well established at 6 Brook St & Britannia Mills as worsted stuff manufacturers. The brothers took other associates although I am not sure under what circumstances. The London Gazette reports that in 1847 a partnership with William Barraclough was dissolved. An 1853 patent application for ‘improving wool preparation’ also named a William Busfield. This last named was one of their overlookers, not a misspelling of the MP for Knaresborough who I have already mentioned.

I first encountered Waud’s name because he was involved, as an expert witness, in one of the many episodes of litigation surrounding the patents for wool-combing machines. Mechanical wool-combing was the last part of the worsted process to be satisfactorily mechanised and manufacture of the combs was hugely profitable. This is Waud’s description of the situation in the early nineteenth century: ‘30 years ago all combing was done by hand… the hand combers had come out on strike in 1825…Noble’s first combing machine was patented in 1836. We bought a machine in 1838 supplied by Rawson & Donisthorpe who offered machines on trial. We used four or five and Donisthorpe came to Bradford, and resided there for some months, to introduce them. We now use nine. They have Noble’s eccentric motion and are described as ‘Noble’s Combing Machines’ and they cost £110-120.’

I should perhaps explain that combing makes the wool fibres parallel and separates long wool ‘tops’, which are used for worsted spinning, from the shorter ‘noils’ which are not. Despite their appalling conditions of work Bradford hand-combers had participated in a famous strike in 1825, lasting six months, over a perceived threat to mechanise their trade. Rawson & Donnisthorpe were Leicester manufacturers who bought out the wool-combing patent of James Noble, whom they probably employed. Edmund Donisthorpe eventually moved permanently to Bradford and entered into a rather unsatisfactory partnership with Samuel Cunliffe Lister of Manningham Mills, but that is quite another story.

The later activities of the Waud brothers can be to some extent reconstructed from the Ibbotson Bradford Directory of 1850 and the census records. Edward lives in Portland Street and Christopher at Spring Place, Manningham Lane. The brothers are in partnership at Britannia Mills as stuff manufacturers, but simultaneously Christopher Waud & Co. are mohair, alpaca and worsted spinners of the same address. Census returns for 1851 & 1861 identify Waud living at 24 North Parade, Bradford. In 1851 he is confusingly called ‘Wand’, his wife is alive, and his son George Motley Waud (17) is already a worsted spinner. They have three house-maids. A decade later his wife has died but his return gives the valuable information that he employed 520 hands at his mill. He continued to live modestly with only a resident cook and a maid.

The Victorian historian William Cudworth, whose name occurs frequently in these pages, stated that Waud had been alderman of the Borough since its inception in 1847 (it had to wait another 50 years to become a city). He is described as having a retiring disposition and was succeeded, and politically eclipsed, by his son George Motley Waud (1835-1907), alderman and later Mayor of Bradford in 1876-77. Christopher Waud died in February 1866, having lost his brother Edward six years before. In a surprisingly brief obituary (Bradford Observer 22 February) Waud’s retiring habits were noted as was his introduction of mohair spinning. His knowledge of the local trade was praised, justly since in the last decade of his life he was one of the sources of information used by John James in his History of the Worsted Manufacture in England. Probate was granted with ‘effects under £120,000’. Since the Victorian definition of a ‘man of substance’ seems to have been assets of £100,000 Christopher Waud certainly made it. Waud is not as well recorded as textile titans like Isaac Holden, Titus Salt or Samuel Cunliffe Lister, but he and his son were very important figures in the industrial and political life of the city. They do deserve to be better remembered.

‘Coming the acid’: Leather’s Chemical Works, Bradford

This North Brook Vitriol Works was situated between Wharf Street and Canal Road near the end of Bradford’s canal spur. It claimed to be one of the world’s oldest chemical plants. Its origin lay in the work of John Roebuck of Birmingham, who in 1746 had adapted a method of burning sulphur with saltpetre to form sulphur trioxide within lead-lined, acid-resistant, chambers. The sulphur trioxide resulting was dissolved in water to produce sulphuric acid. These lead chambers were larger, stronger and cheaper than the previously employed glass vessels. The process was essentially in use for the next two centuries. The chambers produced sulphuric acid of 35-40% concentration. The chemists Gay-Lussac and Glover replaced the chambers with towers to obtain a more concentrated product. Sulphuric acid or vitriol was the starting point for the production of the other mineral acids, but was also important in fertiliser production, metal surface treatments, and a cloth bleaching process.

Vitriol and aquafortis (nitric acid) were first made in Bradford at the North Brook Works by Benjamin Rawson. Using the lead chamber process he was certainly in operation by 1792, and perhaps earlier. Shortly afterwards he purchased the Lordship of the Manor of Bradford which he and his daughters held for more than sixty years. By 1802 the works were leased to James Broadbent but were bought outright in 1838 by Broadbent’s son Samuel. Additional chemicals were now being sold: spirits of salts (hydrochloric acid), ammonia and Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate). Samuel Broadbent lived in Northbrook House, which had a garden leading down to the canal. The house was later used as offices. One of Samuel’s daughters married George Henry Leather, a worsted spinner, and he it was who took over the enterprise when Samuel died. After 1844 it was generally known as Leather’s Chemical Works and in due course Leather built the Zetland Mill for his textile interests. In 1854 the works were offered for sale by auction, as advertised in the Bradford Observer, but in fact the family connection seems to have continued.

Leather’s now also sold chloride of lime as a disinfectant, which may have been needed since the smell of the vitriol works, the canal, and nearby tipped human waste, was described in the press as ‘abominable’. Chloride of lime (calcium hypochlorite) was made by exposing slaked lime to an atmosphere of chlorine in brick built sheds. Lime kilns were present on the nearby canal-side which could have provided the slaked lime easily enough. It is a shock to learn that as recently as 1849 this chemical was being used to combat an outbreak of cholera in Bradford. It is also a shock to learn that at one works the employees raked over the lime to hasten its absorption of chlorine with no protection from the deadly atmosphere except face masks. Victorian industrialists were seldom health and safety conscious.

The product of the Gay-Lussac towers was about 78% sulphuric acid. The manufacture of some dyes, and nitrocellulose, required a more concentrated product still which in the 19^th century was still made by the dry distillation of green vitriol or hydrated iron II sulphate. This material could be made by burning the mineral pyrite (iron sulphide) in oxygen, or leaving pyrite nodules exposed to water and atmospheric oxygen for several years. Leather’s adopted the former process in the 1870s, but it was relatively expensive. In the sources I have seen there is a material described called spent oxide. I assume this was the residual iron oxide remaining after the iron sulphate was dry distilled.

Meanwhile ‘back in Bradford’ the family connection with chemicals was maintained. Another of Samuel’s daughters married the Rev John Eccleston Burnet and their son Henry took over when George Leather died, full of years, in 1897. Henry died himself in 1940 when his own sons, David & Ronald Burnet assumed responsibility. The site was still a chemical works as recently as 1970. It was sold to Occidental Petroleum in 1972/73 but shortly afterwards Bradford Council purchased the site for road widening; chemical production was transferred to St Helen’s & Manchester.

The West Yorkshire Archives (Bradford) curate many documents relating to this site of chemical production. They have the monthly output figures for the years 1844 – 1928 with figures being given in glass carboys holding 10 gallons. In the first years the main products were OV (brown Oil of Vitriol), SS (spirits of salts or hydrochloric acid) and liquid ammonia. By 1859 no ammonia was being produced. The basic raw materials were brimstone (sulphur) and nitrate of soda. In 187, for example, over 1200 tons of sulphur was purchased for conversion to acid. Pyrite purchase was first mentioned in 1875-76 (305 tons) and within a year more pyrite than sulphur was purchased. After five more years pyrite was only used in some years, although ‘oxide’ was always bought. I don’t know enough inorganic chemistry to work out exactly what was going on and why.

Other raw material purchases included coal for fuel and the metal copper. Was there a requirement for copper sulphate to be used with lime in Bordeaux mixture against potato blight? It looks as though the company bought in chemical stocks itself when demand exceeded what could be supplied. The problem of getting 100% concentrated sulphuric acid remained. In 1887 Leather’s explored, with the famous company James Fison & Sons of Thetford, Norfolk, the possibility of purchasing a platinum still which cost £5,600. These could apparently be bought from Johnson Matthey & Co of Hatton Gardens. This company is still big today in precious metal products.

Oddly platinum had already provided the solution to the sulphuric acid concentraion problem. in 1831 British vinegar merchant Peregrine Phillips devised the ‘contact process’ in which sulphur dioxide and oxygen were reacted together at a relatively high temperature to produce sulphur trioxide directly. The reaction procedes very slowly unless a catalyst is provided and platinum is one possibility in this role. There were many difficulties in producing a commercially acceptible version of the contact process which was not generally adopted before the early 20^th century. I have no evidence that it was ever used at Leather’s.

The world changes. Platinum has now been abandoned and vanadium is used as the contact process catalyst. But in this changing world two pieces of wisdom still stand as immutable as stone. One is that it is always wise to say on being offered yet another drink to say ‘no thank you I have had quite sufficient for one evening’. The second demands that when diluting concentrated sulphuric acid you murmur ‘add acid to water, never water to acid’.

A Very Different World: Nelson Street and Caledonia Street, Bradford

Describing Bradford’s past in general terms is not too difficult but establishing how a particular area reached its present state is far more challenging. It is clear from an 1800 map that in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century the southern parts of the present city were rural, with fields and scattered farm buildings. Many farm workers, or their families, would have undertaken hand-loom weaving as an additional source of income. Wealthy land owners might live in large houses, Royds Hall and Bolling Hall being examples, and the the lords of the various manors would have water powered corn mills and the rights over mineral resources. I haven’t studied mining in south Bradford in detail but coal had almost certainly been exploited on a small scale since medieval times.

By the late eighteenth century the technology of smelting iron with coke, rather than charcoal, permitted the establishment of blast furnaces at Bowling and Low Moor. This must have been a huge stimulus to local coal and ironstone mining. By the time of the first OS map (1852) the whole area was covered by both working and disused collieries, and crossed by mineral ways supplying Bowling Iron Works with ironstone and coking coal. At the same time it was seen by manufacturers to be more profitable to bring textile workers together in mills; within twenty years steam powered spinning and weaving were also being adopted. Foundries sprang up to supply the machinery, and dye houses to treat the cloth produced. In the period 1800-40 large scale building of industrial premises took place which in turn stimulated quarries and brick works. Bradford became a borough in 1846 and the railways reached south Bradford in 1850-55. ‘Worstedopolis’ was probably at its peak in the 1870s but there was a slow decline in the twentieth century. Many of the mills have been demolished although some have been adapted to residential and other uses. Is any of the older Bradford recognisable today?

If you walk up the side of the rail and bus hub called Bradford Interchange you can turn right along Croft Street. This thoroughfare now crosses the rail tracks at a high level giving a view of the routes to Halifax and Leeds shown in the first image. Note the second bridge and the little white triangle on the right of centre of that bridge. If the date were 1800 you would be suspended in mid-air of course but the view would be of green fields, dry stone walls, and the occasional glimpse of the Bowling Beck. At this date the beck would still be pure and sparkling but within a few years a local textile dyeing industry was established with an almost insatiable desire for water. The consequent effluent would come to pollute the beck to a degree which was remarkable even by Bradford standards. Until quite recently at the end of the Croft Street raised section you would have seen Portland and Britannia Mills but things are very different now.

In 1850 Britannia Mills was operated by a very famous textile manufacturer, Christopher Waud, who worked with mohair and alpaca fibres. The road you can see here, which is running parallel to the railway tracks, is now called Nelson Street. It has been present in some form or other since the 1840s. Today if you turn 180º you can see more of Nelson Street running straight into the city centre. At the end is the City Hall now partially shrouded because of conservation work.

I want you, in imagination at least, to turn again and walk past the demolition site where the workers have sadly barred public access to a truly massive heap of bricks. Health and Safety has once again triumphed over the pressing needs of brick collectors. Walk forwards past the remains of Portland Street and the new Police HQ.

According to the 1850 Ibbotson’s Directory of Bradford in Portland Street Henry Farrand once dealt here in ‘fruit, eggs and herrings’. The ‘silver darlings’ was caught by the million in the North Sea and, cleaned and salted, formed an important food item for the poor. In Nelson Street near the Police station there is a metal cover in the road. From the noise of rushing water that emerges I can be quite confident that this conceals an access point to the now culverted Bowling Beck. The Friends of Bradford Becks are slowly bringing the hidden waterways back into the public consciousness and have an excellent website devoted to this end.

The next left turn is Caledonia Street. This road now crosses the railway tracks by means of the bridge you could see from Croft Street. Below the bridge in Gordon Street you can see, from the position of the street light at the extreme right, that the carriageway is high above you. Bizarrely the wall of a pre-existing building has been incorporated into the bridge abutment. You can easily find three blocked windows.

Caledonia Street existed as early as 1854, when an inquest was disturbed that no barrier existed to stop folk trespassing onto the railway tracks. In 1859 a huge thunderstorm flooded the street, and indeed the whole of central Bradford. At Britannia Mills flood water came a yard up the walls doing ‘irreparable damage’. In Caledonia Street horses belonging to a corn miller were ‘inundated up to their necks’. Residents of Caledonia Street were not from the top draw, as can been seen by their frequent appearances in the borough court. Crimes such as drunkenness, insulting behaviour, ‘drunk & riotous’, robbing a pawnbroker, and ‘stealing from a cloths’ line’ are punished. Remarkably in February 1873 John Jowitt, warp dresser, was given three months for ‘deserting a wife and family’. The problem seemed to be that the family had consequently to be supported at public expense, and the authorities didn’t like it. How things have changed.

No bridge appears in the 1861 borough map and no building exists which would explain the above appearance. In 1871 there is still no bridge present but premises now line the road of which the image shows the last trace. In the 1895 map the bridge has been constructed so clearly in the period 1871-95 there was a major street reorganisation in this area. Remarkably the Caledonia Street Bridge was originally proposed by anonymous letters to the Bradford Observer in October 1869 and May 1871. The corporation and the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Company discussed this change in 1873 prior to an Act of Parliament. In 1875 the company was reported to be planning to proceed to tender for the work, but there at present the evidence trail stops. A number of developments must have been undertaken around this time. After Croft Street a short tunnel used to take lines under Bedford Street and Chandos Street. These were both swept away when the lines were opened up. Caledonia Street was extended over the tracks to provide access as we have discussed. Roads previously called Queens Cut and Cross Street were renamed Nelson Street. The view from the Caledonia Street bridge is interesting. The ‘white triangle’ seen earlier is the Mill Lane Junction signal box.

The lines off to the left are the Leeds line and the train pictured is on its way to Halifax. The Leeds loop once enclosed Pearson & Sons brick works. The signal box is also clearly visible at the junction of Nelson Street with Mill Lane.

The stone piers to the right of the box once supported another railway line connected, with many others, to a coal depot nearby. The difference in height meant that there was no access from the main line at this point. The lines were loops that joined the Halifax line further from Bradford. This is where Nelson Street now ends at a junction with Mill Lane. I shall conclude with two old maps of the area taken from the Local Studies Library reserve collection. The gas works circle on the extreme right of plan 2 is just missing from the left of plan 1. The irregular dotted line marks the course of the Bowling Beck.

The plans are probably from the late 1840s and presumably just precede the construction of the railway. Portland Street and Britannia Mills are visible and we have walked up Queens Cut and Cross Street, now renamed as Nelson Street. On the right of the first plan Queen’s Street is yet to be extended to form Caledonia Street. The course of the Bowling Beck is plotted and its rather irregular course seems to include a visible section.

At the origin of the old Nelson Street near the town centre the beck is certainly open. This may have lent interest to those standing at the back of the Turk’s Head Inn. The effluent from Bowling Dye Works would have ensured that if patrons did stand on the edge of the beck they would have had no cause to linger. If the Inn sold its own brew it is to be hoped that they had access to some less deadly source of water. Actually ‘inn’ may have been a euphemism. The Turk’s Head appears in the Bradford Observer from time to time after 1840 but it is always described as a ‘beer shop’. Later in that year its owner, John Smith, was denied a licence at the Brewster sessions. But the Turk’s Head was open again in 1845 when Squire Auty, constable of Horton, got into very hot water by attending a supper there and, having noticed card playing, did nothing to stop it. It was a very different world.

Bowling partridges and rabbit pie

It is now almost impossible to imagine Bradford as it was nearly 200 years ago. Areas which today are completely covered by roads and housing were then essentially breezy uplands crossed by tracks and streams. Farms with their barns and fields were still plentiful but, if you knew what to look for, the remains of colliery spoil tips were had long provided evidence of the mineral riches available to landowners underground. Rural trades such as spinning, tanning and corn milling had been practiced for centuries but within the last generation or two important new industries, iron smelting and factory based worsted weaving & dyeing, were already transforming the town. Bradford was, geographically speaking, rather a backwater but turnpike roads and a canal spur had recently made the movement of goods far easier, a process that was about to be completed by the construction of railway tracks. I shall do my best to describe a part of the present city at this time using another map from the Local Studies Library as a guide.

This map covers quite a wide area of south Bradford and must date from the mid-nineteenth century. It is written on tracing paper and is not going to last much longer without conservation. There is little internal evidence of its original purpose but I think unquestionably the main interest of its creator must have been the watercourses. I’m ashamed to say that until I started studying such maps in detail I used to talk vaguely about ‘tributaries of the Bradford Beck’ whereas all such watercourses once had their own individual names. The true Bradford Beck flowed from the west into the city roughly parallel to Thornton Road. Now hidden from sight in culverts it turns almost 90 degrees and flows out north towards Shipley, close to the course once taken by the canal, to join the River Aire. Its main tributary, the West Brook (formed from the junction of Horton Beck and Shear Beck) is still visible flowing in front of the Phoenix Building at the University, where generations of archaeology students have noticed it. The West Brook joins the Bradford Beck near the site of the old Beehive Worsted Mills, Thornton Road. But neither of these watercourses are mapped here. What we have are the Low (or Law) Beck to the left which joins the Bowling Beck, to the right, above Bowling Old Mill. The result, called Bowling Mill Beck I believe, then went under Cuckoo Bridge to join the Bradford Beck itself. The map surveyor also recorded goits, dams and sluices and, in use, someone has identified points along the Low Beck with written letters of the alphabet.

Between L & M, near Chapel Green, some map user has written ‘pit quarry’ but in general however the map-maker was not interested in the extraction industries. In reality the whole area would have been covered by both working and disused collieries and quarries, as the first OS map of the area illustrates. The lower part of the map would also have been crossed and recrossed by mineral ways supplying nearby Bowling Iron Works with locally dug iron-ore and coking coal.

Determining the plan’s exact date is quite difficult. The overall arrangement of buildings closely resembles the 1849 borough map. It is odd that St James’s Church (constructed in 1838) is not drawn. Possibly the map-maker used an older original and simply added only those additional features that concerned him. A straight but interrupted line marks the course of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway into Drake Street station (1850), although the station itself is not mapped. The curved track from Bowling Junction to Laisterdyke is drawn as a continuous line. This railway, constructed in 1854, enabled Halifax to Leeds trains to avoid the delays caused by reversing out of Bradford. Drake Street then, like Bradford Interchange today, was a terminus. Plans to construct a line through the city connecting it to Forster Square station, and thus allowing through rail traffic, have always come to nothing. I assume that, since none of the stations or junctions are named, the lines were added after the map was drawn or perhaps when it was copied from an older original. I cannot say why the Adolphus Street station to Leeds line, also opened in 1854, was not included at the same time.

It is interesting to note that although south Bradford is largely rural both Bowling Dye Works and Bowling New Dye Works are present. It seems that soft Yorkshire water was very satisfactory for textile dyeing. Bowling Dye Works had been built at Spring Wood in 1822 but the business had been founded much earlier by the grandfather of a Bradford immortal, Sir Henry William Ripley (1813-1881). An aerial photo of the works, taken by CH Wood, is on the Bradford Museums and Galleries website. What is missing on this map are a huge reservoir and several dye pits which are clearly present at the Bowling Dye Works on the 1849 Borough plan. I’m not sure exactly when the New Dye Works was constructed but it was another Ripley enterprise and was certainly in existence by 1849. Between the two dye works you can see Bowling Lodge, built for Henry Ripely in 1836. But, as a builder, he is most famous for his creation of a model village, Ripleyville, beginning after 1866 and continuing until his death. This was situated between the two rail tracks east of the New Dye Works and included terraced housing and almshouses. It was Bradford’s only industrial village since the world heritage site of Saltaire, built by Sir Titus Salt around 1850, was created in the then independent township of Shipley. Everything in Ripleyville was demolished and redeveloped in 1970, but many people still living remember it fondly.

In the ‘V’ formed by the two railway lines was the Broom Hall estate on which Ripleyville was built. Rather confusingly on this map is drawn what appears to be a large artificial lake and sluice. This is simply an enlargement of the same feature drawn, at a much smaller scale and a slightly different orientation, to its left. The watercourse ends at a Mill Dam overlooked by Ivy House and Bowling Old Mill. A body of water existed in Bowling Mill Field as early as 1839 because a little boy was reported drowned in it. It stood in a field called Mill Holme. The corn mill itself was certainly present a century before this map was made when the miller was one Reuben Holmes. The corn mill here may have had a much earlier, even medieval, foundation associated with the Manor of Bowling. Bradford historian William Cudworth records that a walk along Bowling Beck was notable for the frequency of rabbits and partridges.

To draw the water supply to Bowling Corn Mill twice must indicates its importance to the maker of this map. Could this arise from a notorious legal case around this time? Henry Ripley had some highly controversial plans concerning the profit to be made from south Bradford’s water supply in the area downstream of Bowling Dye Works which he came to dominate. You can read about this dispute, and much else besides, on Bob Walker’s truly excellent Ripleyville site:

https://rediscoveringripleyville.wordpress.com

It’s not easy to envisage all this from a decaying map so I should be grateful if you would please try to ‘piece out my imperfections with your thoughts’.

Who made Sally rich? A study in eighteenth century Bradford.

Much of what I think I know about Manningham history is drawn from William Cudworth’s book Manningham, Heaton & Allerton (1896). To some extent I have been able to augment this Bradford historical giant’s account from modern sources of family history information, but on occasion the evidence points in a different direction. Cudworth’s books are wonderful surveys, but he seldom gives detailed sources for his information and consequently some of his conclusions are difficult to check.

In my last blog I included a map of a house called Whetley Hill in the Manningham district of Bradford. Cudworth wrote that it was built, and first occupied, by a man called Thomas Wilkinson. Trying to tease out the history of the house and its occupants has revealed a Bradford whose inhabitants lived under very different skies from those of today. Their concerns, as I shall explain, included issues such as the nature of the Trinity, famine relief in Ireland, and the future of hand wool-combing. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries places like Heaton and Manningham were semi-rural retreats from the bustle of Bradford itself; they were not to remain in this state for much longer.

There is general agreement that there had been members of the Wilkinson family in Manningham since the seventeenth century. Cudworth calls Thomas Wilkinson ‘gentry’. He recorded that he was a man of property and ‘owned nearly all the land about’ Whetley Hill, together with no less than 23 Yorkshire farms. He wrote that Wilkinson died a bachelor before the end of the eighteenth century and left his possessions to his housekeeper who was called Miss Sally Kitching. I was unable to find out any background information to this remarkably generous bequest.

There are two odd things in Cudworth’s description of the beneficiary. Firstly he puts her name in double inverted commas, “Sally Kitching”. Does this suggest that in some way this was not her baptismal name? In fact I now think it more likely that she was, officially, Miss Sarah Kitching but I’ll continue to use the name Sally unless I’m quoting from records. Cudworth’s second oddity is describing her as ‘a maiden lady of means and some repute in Manningham’. What does he mean by ‘repute’ I wonder? Cudworth does not give any indication of Sally’s age but he seems quite positive that she died in 1822. However I could get no confirmation of her death in the Bradford Observer or Leeds Mercury under this name and year nor, some years earlier, any record of Thomas’s demise. However if you accept that Cudworth occasionally makes errors then things are much simpler.

In time I will argue that ‘Thomas’ was in fact a property owner called Joseph Wilkinson. Sally is a common diminutive of Sarah and there is a record that a ‘Sarah Kitching of Manningham’ was buried at Little Horton Lane Chapel (Independent) in 1827. As I will explain, for many years there was definitely a property owning Sarah Kitching living in Manningham, up to the late 1820s in fact. This is quite likely to be the same woman. What did she and the other worshippers at the Little Horton Lane Chapel believe?

At the turn of the nineteenth century there were only six places of worship in Bradford: the Parish church (now the Cathedral); Horton Lane Independent Congregationalist Chapel; The Unitarian Chapel, Chapel Lane; The Octagon Methodist Chapel, Horton Lane; The Baptist Chapel in Westgate and the Quaker Meeting House in Croft Street. The Catholic, Lutheran and Jewish communities, who were to have a large local presence in the later nineteenth century, were probably not yet in sufficient numbers to require accommodation. The non-conformist chapel in Chapel Lane was Bradford’s oldest independent place of worship and had been established soon after the English Civil War. In 1780 it adopted Unitarian theology after which a group of its worshippers left and founded Horton Lane Chapel (Independent). Unitarians saw God as a single entity and disputed the existence of the Holy Trinity, a fundamental feature of more orthodox Christian belief. This new, separated, chapel in Little Horton Lane was no tin tabernacle. It had been built in 1782 and in due course the first three mayors of Bradford, including Titus Salt, were to worship there. It seems an entirely appropriate place for a lady of property to attend.

Cudworth says that on her own death Sally’s property was left to her nephews and nieces, which indicates that she remained unmarried but had at least one sibling. With such large bequests to leave I assumed that there would be probate records, but I can find none. One of her nephews, Cudworth remarks, was called Will Kitching of the Lower Globe and fortunately he was reasonably well recorded. There were two inns in Manningham called the Old or Upper Globe, and the Lower Globe. They were still functioning until quite recently but were burnt out in the riots of 2001 at which time the Upper Globe was derelict. The Lower Globe was once the more significant. It had been present since the eighteenth century at least and was a convenient place for coach horses to catch their breath prior to the long ascent of Whetley Hill. The Lower Globe was also used for inquests and as a place to transact Manningham township business. Will Kitching belonged to this Lower Globe Inn, but he is also described as a butcher.

Essentially Cudworth says that in 1811 Will Kitching was the owner and landlord of the Lower Globe and that his father was John Kitching. He states that this John Kitching erected a barn in 1748. but this may well be incorrect since I’m very doubtful if only two generations could cover so long an interval. This is especially true since Will Kitching died, Cudworth says, in ‘the prime of life’ which I assume means young. We are not told his precise date of death, nor his age. His widow later married a John Jarratt who by that time kept the ‘Lower Globe’ but confusingly is placed in the Old Globe by the Pigot directory of 1834. The marriage at least is a confirmed fact and it does seem likely that the family moved from one Globe to the other. The records of Bradford Parish Church indicate that:

8 Feb 1817 Mrs Kitching married John Jarratt (LM) of Lower Globe, Manningham

The names are not correctly transcribed and are recorded as Mrs Ketchen, widow & John Janett. If this date, and either of Sally Kitching’s death dates, are correct then Will Kitching the butcher must actually have pre-deceased his aunt. Sally clearly must have had other relatives to enrich. Actually it is quite hard to fit these dates together believably. If John Kitching erected a barn in 1748 he must surely have been an adult. Even if he fathered Will in his 30s his son would have been in his 50s by the time of his death. Surely this would not be ‘the prime of life’ which allowed his widow to re-marry, and then have further children? My feeling is that Will is more likely to have been the grandson of the barn builder. According to Cudworth Mrs Kitching (whose first name he does not record but which I believe was Amy) had children from both marriages.

With Will Kitching there were at least two daughters, Judith b.1803, and Mary Kitching (Oct 1812-1884) who married Edward Whitley (1808-1864) of Bingley and whose father was certainly a ‘William Kitching, Manningham, butcher’. Amy also had a son, John or Jack Kitching (b.1806), who Cudworth describes as a ‘wastrel who died unmarried’. He also reproduces a freeholders list of 1839 which certainly confirms that a John Kitching then owned the Lower Globe Inn and an attached wool-combing shop. So, what was wool-combing?

Combing was part of the process of manufacturing worsted yarn. It straightened the fibres and arranged them in parallel; it also separated the short fibres from the long. The shorter, known as noils, are used elsewhere while the longer fibres, in the form of an untwisted assembly or top sliver, are used in the next stage of worsted manufacture. The process of hand-combing involved fixing or ‘lashing’ a quantity of washed and oiled wool on a heated comb of steel teeth fixed to an iron ‘pad’, and then progressively dragging the teeth of a second comb through the fibres. Around 1850 a hand-comber might produce five to six pounds of ‘top’ weekly, thus earning fifteen to nineteen shillings, although trade depression could drastically reduce income. A large worsted spinning company employed hundreds of hand-combers. Nearly seventy-five per cent of the 20,000 English combers worked in the Bradford area. The combing of wool was the final stage in the worsted textile process to be satisfactorily mechanised. Hand-combing was a miserable job, but it was a job.

With Amy’s second husband, John Jarratt, there was also a child, Edward Jarratt. The only plausible baptism is again at Horton Lane Independent Chapel:

1823 Edward, son of John & Amy Jarratt, Old Globe (b.1822).

Fortunately Edward, his parents, and a sister Clarissa, all survived to the 1841 census so their names are certain.

Eventually a man called Thomas Hill Horsfall purchased the house from Sally Kitching’s executors. Cudworth does not give a date for this but it is likely to be between 1827-28. I estimate he lived there until about 1838. He kept packs of hounds and was consequently called ‘Hunting’ Tom Horsfall. His family were well-known textile men, one of whom introduced power looms to Bradford. Eventually he moved to Thirsk after selling his house to John Priestman. Priestman was a Quaker in partnership with a co-religionist, James Ellis. Initially they were millers and maltsters at The Old Soke Mill, Bradford. But malt (germinated barley) was brewed into beer and John Priestman embraced strict temperance. He and his partner switched to being stuff (worsted) weavers and became highly successful. Priestman lived on in the house, dying in 1866. His widow lived there for a few more years but the house was demolished around 1872.

Priestman’s partner James Ellis had retired early in 1849, at the age of 56. He moved to Letterfrack, Connemara an Irish coastal village. His decision was taken in the light of the dreadful potato famine of 1847-48, which must have been the most catastrophic event to affect any portion of the British Isles in the nineteenth century. In the face of government inertia, and despite their small numbers, the Quakers had undertaken major relief programmes. On their arrival in Ireland James and his wife Mary bought land and used their resources to provide employment and training to scores of men and give schooling to their children. They also set up a lime-kiln and a temperance hotel. Their work lasted nine years until James’s health deteriorated but his name is still recalled with affection in the Irish Republic.

Cudworth records that John Kitching a stone-mason of Whetleys, a nearby house, obtained a lease in 1751 from Ann Bolling of Baildon. This sounds like the sort of man who would erect a barn and who was probably Will Kitching’s grandfather. Other records are:

Parish Church: Oct 1773 William s. of John Kitching of Manningham.

I assume that this is our Will. In 1759 a John Kitching and Martin Hodgson (another famous Manningham name) were indicted at Wakefield on account of some offence involving Elizabeth Farrer and her five indigent children. It appears that they removed the family to Bingley where they were a charge on the rates. Then there are three records from Bradford Parish Church.

Baptism: Nov 1743 John Kitching son of John Kitching of Bradford

Burial: Bradford PC 1761 John Kitching of Manningham

Marriage:John Kitching & Judith Westwood June 1768, Man(ingham).

This last record is highly likely to be relevant to our family since the name Judith was re-used in the next generation.

I hoped to get some indication of the degree of Sally’s wealth by using Land Tax Redemption records. This form of government revenue had existed since the end of the seventeenth century. Payment of this tax qualified you to vote in parliamentary elections, if you were a man that was. I won’t pretend that I know how it was all calculated but essentially each year’s assessment lists land-owners and tenants. The records seem partly to confirm Cudworth’s story but not to match the events exactly. It would need a better local historian than me to reach a definitive conclusion.

In 1781 two land owners called Wilkinson are recorded. One is William Wilkinson and one is simply ‘Mr Wilkinson’. The Kitchings are also present: there is a John Kitching, a Sam Kitching and a Mrs Kitching who has a house and six cottages. The next year, 1782, Sarah Kitching has become an owner and occupier in her own right, and a Mary Kitching is a near neighbour as a tenant. There is also a ‘widow Kitching’ who is both a land owner in her own right and the tenant of one Joseph Wilkinson. Samuel Kitching is a tenant and we now have ‘late J Kitching’ who I assume was John.

In the mid-1780s Sarah Kitching and the widow Kitching still own property but at this time Sarah does not own all the land around Whetley Hill, or anything like it. The big land-owners are Sam Lister, Mr Hodgson and, again, one Joseph Wilkinson. The crucial transition occurs in 1797-98. In 1797 Jos. Wilkinson owned five properties, the most valuable taxed at 13/9, and occupied a sixth as a tenant of Mr Rawson (Lord of the Manor of Bradford & Manningham). Sarah Kitching owns only one proprty (tax value 2/3). Things changed dramatically in 1798. In that year’s assessment Miss Kitching retained her old property at the same tax value, but acquired five more with a tenancy, from the Lord of the Manor. The most valuable property is taxed at 13/9. The name Joseph Wilkinson disappears.

It can hardly be doubted that in 1798 Sarah Kitching inherited the property from Joseph Wilkinson, not Thomas. It is no surprise to find that in April 1798 Joseph Wilkinson of Manningham, Gent, was buried at the parish church. Thereafter Miss Kitching pays seven lots of tax and and acquired a tenant Jeremiah Ambler, a famous Bradford textile name. Her name continues to 1829 in land tax redemption, perhaps finally through her executors if we agree that in 1827 she is buried in Little Horton Chapel. If her fortune was indeed made by a generous bequest she seemingly enjoyed it for 30 years. 

I think you can join everything up but individual elements may not be correct. The piece of crucial information that I lack is Sally Kitching’s birth year. The surname is not common but there are Sarah Kitchings in Manningham, Heaton, Wilsden, Eccleshill and Bradford itself. If she inherited as an adult and, then lived for 45 years, a birth year in 1740-1750 seems likely and several babies of this first name could fit. Even then she would be an unusually elderly lady at the time of her death. Was it that that gave her name ‘repute’? The only likely birth in Manningham itself is:

Baptism: Parish Church, Sarah, the daughter of John Kitching of Manningham Christmas Day 1740.

Another Sarah Kitching was born in Manningham in February 1766. No parent’s name is associated with her which I suppose implies illegitimacy. Could our bachelor Wilkinson have had an interest in such a child? Possibly, but then she would have become a land-owner at the age of sixteen and that seems hardly plausible. This is what I think happened:

c1720 John Kitching I born.

c1739-40 John Kitching I marries.

Nov 1740 Sarah Kitching, his daughter, born.

Nov 1743 John Kitching II son of John Kitching I of Bradford born. Sarah Kitching must be John II’s sister if his children are to be her nephews and nieces but John’s place of residence is recorded as Bradford, not Manningham, which causes me some doubt.

1748 John Kitching I erects barn.

1751 John Kitching I, stonemason, gets lease.

1759 John Kitching I indicted at Wakefield.

1761 John Kitching I dies; buried Bradford Parish Church.

June 1768 John Kitching II marries Judith Westwood.

Oct 1773 William s. of John Kitching II of Manningham born.

1782 John Kitching II dies leaving the ‘widow Kitching’.

1798 Joseph Wilkinson dies leaving Sally several properties.

c1800 William Kitching marries Amy.

1803-1806 William & Amy Kitching’s children are born.

c1815 William Kitching dies.

8 Feb 1817 Mrs Kitching re-married to John Jarratt.

1827 Sally Kitching dies leaving bequests to surviving nephews and nieces. Whetley Hill House is sold by her executors. 

Sally Kitching certainly scooped a pot. Whetley Hill House alone would have been a wonderful gift. Why was Joseph Wilkinson so generous? Was he really so totally bereft of relatives with hearts to gladden? There are certainly other people called Wilkinson in contemporary Manningham. Without documentary proof we shall never know for certain but could the bachelor and the spinster have had some unspoken family connection, or had Sally been something quite spectacularly good in the house-keeping line?

Nineveh and Tyre

As I look at the old maps in the Bradford Local Studies Library I frequently find myself thinking ‘change and decay in all around I see’. This reflection was certainly occasioned by the above plan, which shows a dignified gentleman’s residence about to be replaced by mean terraced housing. But my thought was inappropriate for an archaeologist. In the first place all times, all cultures, and all houses are of equal value. In the second place my own ancestors would have thought themselves incredibly lucky to have owned even a terrace house. What we have is a sale plan for Whetley Hill, Manningham dated 1872. The house was located to the east of the road of the same name just above the important inn known as the Lower Globe.

The house would have provided an excellent opportunity for gracious leisure. The owner had a lawn naturally, and kitchen gardens for fresh vegetables. Some tender plants required heat and I assume the melons and cucumbers grown would have featured at fine dinner parties. Grapes might well have been provided as a dessert on such occasions and it was only proper to have both an early and a late heated vinery so that the dinner guests could enjoy as long a season as possible. Transport needs were taken care of by a stable and coach house, and for relaxation there was always croquet or a game of cricket. All could not be sweetness and light of course. I assume that the ‘soil shed’ was not a repository for potting compost but a storage area for human waste awaiting the arrival of the night-soil men with their cart. Lunch at your gentleman’s club on collection days. The ‘rubbish place’ was a convenient site for dumping coal ashes and broken pottery or glass in the years before a regular collection was provided by the local authority. Some lucky residents presumably now have an unappreciated archaeological treasure house in their back garden.

When was the house in existence, and who lived there? Immediately there is a problem. Two substantial dwellings exist at the same point on opposite sides of the roadway now called Whetley Hill. They are present on both the 1849 and 1871 Bradford maps. In 1849 this house is drawn, but not named. The house opposite is ‘Wheatley Hill’ with an ‘a’. In the 1871 map our dwelling has adopted the spelling of its neighbour, and is itself Wheatley Hill, while the dwelling opposite has become Wheatley House. This is a very thoughtless disregard of the needs of future local historians and I assume that the respective butlers sorted out the misaddressed mail. Such a large residence was hardly likely to escape the notice of Victorian local historian William Cudworth and he records that Thomas Hill Horsfall was the owner of Whetley Hill in 1839, within a list of Manningham freeholders. Confused? You will be since in Cudworth’s History of Manningham, Heaton & Allerton Wheatley House is described together with its owners the Hollings family, except that he once calls it Wheatley Hall. Neither house was exactly a rural enclave. In the mid-nineteenth century there were several neighbouring quarries and Wheatley House must have had a fine view of a brick works.

Where does the name Wheatley, Whetley or even Whitley, come from? It is a common English place name just as Wheatlands is a common field name. The obvious origin is from leah, a meadow or low-lying land, and the name of the cereal. It is slightly hard to believe in waving fields of golden corn in north Bradford, but there you are. An alternative is ‘white land’ with the whiteness being the result of Roman roads or remains. Some places with this name are close to Roman sites the best example being the fort of Whitley Castle, Northumberland. Whetley Hill is in fact a very straight road and is well-placed to be on the course of a Roman highway.

I think that Whetley Hill was built in the late eighteenth century by one Thomas Wilkinson who owned most of the land in the area and much else besides. He was a bachelor and on his death his housekeeper, a Miss Sally Kitching, inherited. Cudworth describes her as ‘a maiden lady of means and of some repute’. I’d like to know more about her and her repute, but so far her life story has beaten my investigative powers. She died in 1822 and Thomas Hill Horsfall (1802-1855) acquired the house from her executors. While he was resident he kept a pack of foxhounds that hunted all around Bradford; he was consequently known as ‘Hunting’ Tom Horsfall. It is pleasant to record that today you would need to take an immense walk to reach the nearest foxhound pack but that we had a fox safely asleep in our garden this week. Eventually Horsfall sold the house to John Priestman (1805-1866) and moved to Thirsk, around 1838 I estimate. It is fortunate that he was visiting his cousin John Horsfall of Bolton Royds, Manningham at the time of the 1851 census. Their ancestor was John Garnett Horsfall who introduced steam power looms to Bradford. The consequent riot beside his mill at North Wing in 1826 led to several deaths when special constables fired on the protestors.

Be that as it may the new home owner was John Priestman and his wife Sarah. John’s brother Samuel Priestman, of East Mount Hull, is a relative by marriage of my wife’s family. John Priestman was a very different man to Hunting Tom. He was a member of a large and distinguished Quaker family being devoted to peace and an enemy to none but strong drink. He was initially a flour miller and then a successful stuff weaver (John Priestman & Co.). After he died, at Whetley Hill in 1866, his wife and sons continued in residence for a few years longer. Cudworth gives the name of the last known resident as John Spink. By this time, he writes, the land below was covered by housing and after the sale ‘all our pomp of yesterday, is one with Nineveh and Tyre’.

‘Heroine of the wreck’: examples of Victorian and Twentieth century courage

Henry Thoreau once wrote that ‘the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation’. He meant, I presume, that inside most of us there is something greater wishing to escape but which is normally denied this opportunity by the conventions that society imposes, or perhaps by the fears and doubts that we impose on ourselves. I want to continue my theme of comparing Victorians with those born in my own lifetime by describing two women who, in the most terrifying circumstances, found themselves to be the possessors of something very much greater.

Finding examples of great courage is not difficult. On this occasion I wanted to avoid warriors, but rather examine individuals whose fights were solely with nature and circumstance. I also wanted to consider those who, having already done enough, found it within themselves to do something more. Finally there seemed no point in recounting the stories of those, like Grace Darling, whose exploits have become part of our everyday stock of knowledge. The two women I have selected are publicly commemorated, and have never been exactly forgotten, yet their names are not constantly on our lips.

Close to the Museum of London is a small, quiet, backwater called Postmans Park. I believe it was opened in 1880 and was created from the graveyard of St Botolph’s Aldersgate church. Certainly some tombstones are still visible propped against its walls. There is a pleasant garden, a fountain, and seats, but twenty years after it came into existence the pre-Raphaelite painter George Frederick Watts selected it as the site of his memorial to the ‘heroic deeds of ordinary people’. Under an awning the names and deeds of the heroic are recorded on glazed tiles. The first tiles were designed by William De Morgan and are the central row in the illustration. Later examples were produced by the Royal Doulton Company. Here you will read accounts of those who died in burning buildings or doctors who contracted diphtheria from infant patients. The stability of glazed ceramic tile should ensure that the names remain legible for several centuries yet.

One of those commemorated was a ship’s stewardess, Mary Rogers. The steamship Stella was owned by the London & South West Railway Company and operated as a passenger ferry to the Channel Islands. Once you could take a seat on a boat train at Waterloo Station, switch to the ferry ship at Southampton docks, and wake up in St Peter Port. On 30^th March 1899 the Stella was commanded by Captain Reeks but his ship had its bottom torn out by a granite reef close to the Casquet Rocks, north-west of Alderney, and sank in less than ten minutes. The ship was in a fog bank at the time and although the Casquet lighthouse was giving fog warnings this was noticed too late to save the ship from grounding. Captain Reeks was on the bridge at the time and later went down with his ship.

Following the catastrophe several life-boats were launched, the rule of ‘women and children first’ was followed, and there was no panic among the crew who seemed to have behaved extremely well. Despite this there were over 100 fatalities. After the event there were those who said that the speed of the Stella was too great, given the weather, and blamed the rivalry between the LGWR service and that of its competitor the GWR. The insurers seem to have gone to considerable lengths to avoid paying out on the company’s policy.

Mary Ann Rogers was 44 year old seaman’s widow, with two grown-up children, who lived in Southampton. On the fatal day she was employed as a stewardess on the Stella. Her main duty in the circumstances was to assist those passengers under her care into the life-boats, which she did. She went further by giving her own life-belt to a passenger without one and, once in the water, she refused to clamber into a boat for fear of capsizing it. She was last observed waving cheerfully at the boats, but her body was never recovered. It took some time for the story of Mary Roger’s heroism to emerge. When William McGonagall told the story of the Stella, in his famously execrable verse, it was soprano Greta Williams who was celebrated because of her singing to encourage those in the life-boats; McGonagall’s words gave me my title. When Mary Roger’s bravery became widely known public donations in her memory were solicited. No less than £250 were raised for her family and a larger sum was used to construct a memorial dedicated to her in Southampton. Within a short time a decorated tile also appeared in Postmans Park.

Nearly 70 years later, in April 1968, a very different type of ship took off from London’s Heathrow airport. BOAC flight 712 was en route to Sydney but within a few seconds of take-off there was a catastrophic engine failure, the consequence of metal fatigue in a compressor blade. The Boeing 707’s engine burst into flames prior to falling off the wing. The subsequent enquiry was told of confusion in the cockpit, problems with the evacuation procedure in the cabin, and delayed response by emergency vehicles. Be that as it may the pilot, Captain Taylor, managed successfully to land his crippled plane less that three minutes after initial take-off. Despite the difficulties only five people did not escape from the burning aircraft with its atmosphere of toxic fumes. One of those who died was another stewardess, Barbara Jane Harrison.

Barbara Harrison had been born in Bradford and later lived in Scarborough and Doncaster; she was only 22 years old at the time of her death. When flight 712 landed her first responsibility was to assist passengers down the emergency landing chutes, which she did. Witnesses reported that she was seen preparing to jump herself but then turned back into the burning fuselage. She must have been aware that four passengers had not yet emerged and that this number included a disabled women and an eight year old child. Barbara Harrison made a valiant effort to assist them, dying in the attempt. Their bodies were later recovered together.

In 1940 the George Cross had been instituted as the highest award for civilian bravery. It takes precedence over all other honours and awards, excepting only the Victoria Cross. Since it was instituted it has been directly awarded to only four women, three of whom served during the last war in the Special Operations Executive. Barbara Harrison was the only other woman, and was the youngest of all, to receive a posthumous award of this decoration. Her life was also marked by a memorial in Bradford City Hall and an annual prize in aviation medicine. She is buried in York.

Sadly very few Watts tablets appeared after 1908 although there are occasional exceptions. A 54^th tablet was added in 2009. In nineteenth century language all the people honoured in this way were ‘faithful unto death’ or, in more contemporary speech, they were not prepared to compromise what they saw as their duty in any way whatever, even if this resolution cost their lives. If you happen to be passing Postmans Park please visit this pleasant place to recall their actions.

Lister’s Pride: the Manningham Mills chimney

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Periodically I am asked questions concerning the massive chimney which was built in Bradford for the Manningham works of Lister & Co. The dimensions of the chimney were huge, but are about the same as the Salt’s mill chimney in Saltaire, another familiar local land-mark. The chimney known as Lister’s Pride may not have been Bradford’s tallest but its commanding position on high ground results in it being visible from most parts of the city. There must be an element of Victorian monumentality in its design and position; form did not simply follow function. The chimney has rightly been described as the single finest piece of Bradford’s city architecture. On completion the dimensions of the chimney were published in the local newspapers. I have also had access to the written account of W.H. Watson. Although this account was written 80 years after construction Watson had partially scaled the chimney shaft as a young man!

The architects of the chimney, along with the vast mill it served, were the Bradford firm of Andrews & Pepper. The design was based on the Campanile in Venice. The builders, at a cost of £10,000, were J & W Beanland. John & William Beanland (Horton Lane) were famous Bradford contractors responsible for the construction of the Leeds Infirmary, Bradford’s Swan Arcade, Saltaire Mill (partly) and the Wool Exchange. A longer list of their activities has been given by John S Roberts (Little Germany, 1977). John died in 1890 and is buried with his wife Isabella at the city’s famous Undercliffe cemetery.

Construction took two years. The completed chimney was 249 feet high and, externally, 22 feet square at the base. The internal width was 10-11 feet. The design is notable for the presence of two elaborate cornices, one at 190 feet and one at the top. Although the visible material is beautiful honey coloured sandstone masonry there may well have been an inner skin of brickwork. There would certainly have been a final lining, in the lower part of the chimney at least, of heat resistant fire-brick. Beanlands possessed their own brick-works.

There are two stories told about the great chimney although the first is not well-known. In 1900 steeple jacks were working on the shaft and had laid ladders to the top. Mr W H Watson, then about 20 years old, decided to climb up and took the opportunity when the workmen were having a lunch break. He reached the first cornice, at 190 feet you’ll remember, and then thought better of it and came down. In his recollections he sounds disappointed at this failure of nerve but my feeling is, in free-climbing the ladders with no previous experience, he showed remarkable courage. He survived to become the mill’s manager and be recollected by my friend, the late Philip Townhill, as ‘the old man’ – a very respected figure at Lister & Co.

The second story concerns a lunch party held at the top of the shaft on the day the chimney was officially completed. This sounds highly improbable but was reported in the Bradford Observer of 19 November 1873. A group consisting of: Samuel Cunliffe Lister, Messrs. Andrews & Pepper, William Beanland and Francis Lepper (Lister’s project manager and agent) ascended. At the top a bottle of champagne was broken as a baptismal ritual. After this speeches were given and a ‘champagne luncheon’ served. There are occasions when it is hard not to admire the energy of the Victorians.

‘They can’t be always a working’: old Bradford theatres

I have now been recording maps from Bradford Local Studies Library’s extensive collection for some three months. It is clear that since the 1840s, and perhaps longer, land purchases or changes to roads, railways and watercourses required the production of quite detailed surveyed plans. I often find myself embarrassed at being quite unable to recognise where I am in maps of my own city. My ignorance may be pardonable since what remained of sixteenth and seventeenth century Bradford was demolished wholesale during the population explosion of the nineteenth century. Only the Cathedral, Bolling Hall and Paper Hall have significant portions that remain from this earlier period. Later constructions were themselves often replaced, and further huge changes to the city centre occurred as the result of ‘town planning’ in the 1960s. Road patterns and names have also been frequently altered.

This week I had to identify a survey clearly plan drawn up because of the prospective enlargement of an existing but unnamed music hall. I recognised the location on the ground but I could not see how a theatre could ever have been positioned there, nor did the plan have a date. But then, in honesty, two days ago I could not have named a single Bradford theatre aside from those that have survived to the present day and the Star Music Hall. The Star had an important role during the great Manningham Mills strike of 1890/91. The lessee of the Star Music Hall a Mr Pullan, whose family name we shall hear much more of, placed his premises at the disposal of the strike committee during the early days of the dispute.

My ignorance meant that I have had to undertake a little research. I think that my basic problem is that I have been concentrating on Bradford at work, in its mines, quarries, brickworks and textile mills. I had totally forgotten the lesson of Charles Dickens’s rather neglected masterpiece Hard Times. This story is set within a northern community, Coketown, in 1854. A pair of young people, Thomas and Louisa Gradgrind, are emotionally retarded by being fed a diet of mathematics and other purely factual knowledge by their schoolmaster father. Poor Louisa is eventually coerced into marrying a grasping and hypocritical capitalist, Josiah Bounderby. The cast of unpleasant characters in this short, rather dark, novel is redeemed by a honest, but doomed, union man and a kindly circus girl called Sissy Jupe. It is Mr Sleary, her circus manager, who says: People must be amused…they can’t be always a working, nor yet they can’t be always a learning. So, how were they amused in Bradford?

I think we may reasonably assume that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries itinerant entertainers visited public houses and that there were also visits from fairs and circuses. It looks as if permanent theatre building had commenced by the 1840s; I’ll begin with the example provided by my plan. The theatre was placed near Westgate between Duckett Street and James Street. If you stand in what is Godwin Street today (then it was Cross Street), with your back to a multi-storey car park, you will see those signs of modern civilization, a mobile phone shop and a cash converter. The buildings are modern although round the corner in James Street itself the Commercial Inn could be late Victorian. In 1849 a man named Henry Pullan is known to have built the Coliseum Theatre ‘off Westgate’. Pullan had previously managed the Bermondsey Saloon in Cannon Street, a noted place of entertainment. The Coliseum was unusual in that it was not directly linked to a public house. Twenty years later he moved to a new theatre called Pullan’s ‘New’ Music Hall, in Brunswick Place (now Rawson Street, by another multi-storey car park) which had an amazing 3,000 seats; the modern Alhambra has less than half that number. Pullen’s new musical hall remained in existence in the years 1869-89 at the end of which time it burned down, this being something of a Bradford tradition. The vacant site left after the fire eventually evolved into John Street open market. Thomas Pullen and his son seem later to have taken over as managers or leasees of the combined Star Music Hall and Prince’s theatre which brings us back to the Manningham Mills strike.

Although my plan was not dated it mentions St George’s Hall (opened 1853) and the New Exchange assembly rooms (foundation stone laid 1864) so it must presumably have been drawn-up after 1865. Considering all these facts it seems plausible that the plan represented an intention to enlarge the old Coliseum theatre around 1868 although it seems clear that in the end a wholly new building was constructed on a nearby site. The older theatre evidently survived, being later renamed as St James’s Hall and then The Protestant Working Men’s Hall. It was finally demolished in 1892 which is a plausible date for the construction of the Commercial Inn which I have already mentioned.

The Coliseum was not Bradford’s first theatre by any means although this whole subject is quite a difficult one for a non-specialist like me. The very first is said to have been owned by L.S. Thompson in a converted barn on Southgate (now Sackville Street) around 1810-25. This and other similar enterprises hosted travelling theatre troops. A few years later, in 1841, the New Theatre opened at the city end of Thornton Road using the upper room in an existing Oddfellows Hall which had been opened in 1839. The Oddfellows were a friendly society who had 39 branches in Bradford and surrounding areas. At the time in question they seemed to have some similarities to the Freemasons but this is too complicated a topic to discuss now. I understand that the New Theatre was intended to hold ‘superior performances’.

In the same year the Liver Theatre, Duke Street, probably became Bradford’s first purpose built theatrical premises. In 1844 it was remodelled and re-opened as Theatre Royal, Duke Street. The fact that it was widely known as the ‘wooden box’ may say something about the standards of its construction but the illustration above looks stable enough. In 1864 the Alexandra Theatre had opened in Manningham Lane. In 1869, when the original Theatre Royal finally found fell victim to a series of street improvements, the Alexandra famously took over the discarded name. A moment of notoriety occurred in 1905 when the great actor Sir Henry Irving gave his final performance as Becket at the Theatre Royal, Manningham Lane. Shortly after he collapsed and died in Bradford’s Midland Hotel.

In 1876 the Prince’s Theatre was built above Star Music Hall in Victoria Square. The first proprietor of this curious double establishment was entrepreneur William Morgan who started his career as a Bradford hand wool-comber and concluded it as mayor of Scarborough. I think the site must be at the garden that is now in front of the Media Museum. Both theatres were fire damaged and restored in 1878. The Star Music Hall was renamed as Palace Theatre in 1890s and finally demolished in the 1960s. In 1899 the Empire Theatre was built at the end of Great Horton Road. All three theatres were just across the road from the present Alhambra.

The Alhambra itself was built in 1914 and has fortunately survived. Its construction is associated with the name of Bradford’s pantomime king, Francis Laidler, who had previously been company secretary at Hammond’s Brewery and had been involved in the theatre world since 1902. His career was to last for another 50 years. In 1930 the New Victoria was opened on an adjacent site but was eventually converted to the iconic Odeon Cinema. The cinema is a much cherished local building and, long closed, it hangs on in a ruinous state hoping for Heritage Lottery funding to restore the fabric. Finally I should mention that in 1837 the Jowett Temperance Hall had been built and this was also converted into a cinema as early as 1910. The building was eventually also destroyed by fire and was rebuilt in 1937 as the Bradford Playhouse, Chapel Street.

I hope you will agree that Bradford theatres represent an interesting and eventful story. If you would like a more detailed, and very well written, introduction to the subject there is a splendid website:

http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/BradfordTheatresIndex.htm

There is also a long account of the theatres mentioned in William Scruton’s Pen & Pencil Pictures of Old Bradford. Scruton gives many details of the largely forgotten actors who performed in Bradford. More recently the development of the early theatre was described by David Russell in The Pursuit of Leisure (in Victorian Bradford, 1982).

Bradford Maps

A group of us have been allowed to undertake voluntary work at Bradford Local Studies Library (LSL). This offers a wonderful opportunity for anyone interested in local history and we are very grateful to the library staff for their unstinting welcome and guidance. My personal project is to report on items in the uncatalogued map collection. Many of the more robust maps are already freely available to the public but a substantial number, many of which are now rather fragile, are in store and don’t seem to have been examined recently.

At present the LSL has two large map tables which combine viewing and storage areas. One table contains current, and one historical, maps. There is also a card based map catalogue. Transferring all the catalogue information from the cards to a computerised database will, one day, be a huge job for somebody. Even without computers, after a little effort, it is usually possible to identify a desired map together with its catalogue index. The index reference should enable the library staff to locate the item. Along with contemporary texts, and field studies, maps form one of a triad of principal information sources for the local historian and geographer. Examples of the data they offer would be the development of transport and buildings, the position of antiquities, the course of settlement boundaries, and the existence of old place names.

How do maps and plans differ? Plans closely resemble maps but usually cover smaller areas and are drawn with a specific purpose, such as the identification of resources or explaining a proposed changes to the built environment. Both maps and plans should be used with caution, as must any historical document. Thought must be given to the purpose for which maps were created and the methods by which they were made. They may not be accurate, nor correctly dated, or they may show developments which were considered but which did not take place. You can date maps by the presence or absence of big landscape features, like mills, turnpike roads, railways or canals. Similarly landowners’ names and dates can be researched and an approximate age of a map mentioning them can be consequently obtained. In my project I cannot possibly have the required depth of knowledge for all parts of Bradford. I may have mentioned before what a helpful community is formed by those researching local history. In this instance I have a group of generous friends generously prepared to help me out with their expertise.

It is already apparent that a substantial section of the reserve material is represented by estate plans. These start to be drawn in the late sixteenth century and usually serve to show the property of a large landowner. They are especially valuable in that they may predate other maps of a similar large scale.

From the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries maps were more usually produced on a county basis. The first famous name in county maps is Christopher Saxton (1577). A generation later John Speed published beautifully produced examples although almost all the information is copied from Saxton. In the eighteenth century John Warburton and John Jeffreys produced Yorkshire county maps with much new information about roads.

In the eighteenth century maps of Bradford itself start to appear. When using these maps it is important to remember that its component townships were not incorporated into the borough, or later the city, at the same time. Heaton, for example, does not feature in Bradford maps earlier than 1882 and Idle & Eccleshill not before 1899. The names of surveyors Dixon and Walker & Virr are closely associated with many nineteenth century Bradford maps. By 1879 a plan of the Town and Environs of Bradford was prepared for the Post Office Bradford Directory. Similar maps accompany the PO Directories until 1928.

Plans for all proposed undertakings such as turnpike roads, canals and railways had to be deposited with the Clerk of the Peace. This very ancient office evolved by the later nineteenth century into effectively a county CEO. Submitted plans for the historical West Riding of Yorkshire are mostly at the Wakefield headquarters of the West Yorkshire Archive Service, but some later examples are kept locally. Enclosure maps are large scale maps produced after a private Enclosure Act, usually in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries, or the General Enclosure Acts of 1836 and 1845. The maps accompany enclosure awards by which common land was allotted to local landowners. They do not exist for all places, and usually show only the land that was enclosed, and not the remainder of the affected township.

Tithe maps were large scale maps produced after the Tithe Commutation Act, 1836. The act replaced the payment of 10% of land products in kind with an agreed cash sum. Together with the tithe awards such maps provide information about a township at this time, and the size of landowners’ holdings. From this the monies due to the Church of England from each owner and tenant could be calculated. For the purposes of the act it didn’t matter if a farmer was a Quaker, or a Methodist, or a fire-worshipper; he still had to pay the Established Church. In places where the tithes had already been commuted there are, of course, no tithe awards or maps. Three copies of such maps were made: for the parish, the diocese, and the Tithe Redemption Commission. Copies of those for: Allerton, Baildon, Bolton, Bowling, Bradford, Burley in Wharfedale, Eccleshill, Heaton, Idle, Manningham, Menston, Shipley and Wilsden were deposited at the Bradford branch of the West Yorkshire Archive Service This is located in an office adjacent to the LSL. The LSL itself has a copies of some tithe maps including Tyersal and Wilsden.

Ordnance Survey (OS) maps contain huge amounts of information. The OS was founded in 1791 to produce 1 inch to 1 mile maps for the whole country. The original purpose was essentially military, hence the name. Between 1805 and 1873 the OS was completed in 110 sheets. The local area was surveyed at 6 inches to 1 mile in 1847-50 and published at a scale of 1 inch to 1 mile in 1858 (sheet 92). The 6 inches to 1 mile map was published in 1852 (sheet 216). The survey for the Bradford area was revised and published c.1893 at a 25 inches to 1 mile scale. Later editions were published in 1908 and 1934. OS maps published after the Second World War (National Grid series) are available at 1:1250, 1:2500, 1:10,000 and 1:25,000 scales. There are also examples of OS surveys providing the base maps for regional geology or the location of antiquities.

There are many other map types, for example nineteenth and twentieth century sale plans. Examples of these were drawn up for the Earls of Rosse Estate sale in 1911, which cover large areas of Heaton and Shipley. These, like enclosure maps, usually only show land immediately round the property of sale but are, for perfectly understandable reasons, very accurate. Maps are also included in books, directories, reports etc. Helpfully, several valuable series of maps have recently become freely accessible on-line:

Ordnance Survey maps

Available at the website of the National Library of Scotland:

http://maps.nls.uk/index.html

Tithe maps from the Bradford area

Available at the website of the West Yorkshire Archive Service:

http://www.tracksintime.wyjs.org.uk/tracks-in-time-bradford.htm

Bradford Historical & Antiquarian Society

A small number of maps and plans of Bradford are available at the society’s website:

http://www.bradfordhistorical.org.uk/maps.html

British Geological Survey

The website of the BGS offers access to several useful maps on the geology of the UK which can be most helpful for those interested in Yorkshire industries:

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/

Coal Authority

The website of the Coal Authority offers an interactive map which allows access to a database of sites at which coal mining remains have been recorded:

http://mapapps2.bgs.ac.uk/coalauthority/home.html

We are really very lucky to have such an excellent Local Studies Library available. As well as maps there are large collections of books on Bradford, also trade directories, electoral registers and local newspapers. At the moment the LSL is displaying important information regarding the city during the Great War, and it offers free computer access to the websites devoted to family history studies. If you live near Bradford do please visit the LSL. These days, let’s be frank, it’s so often the case of use it or lose it.