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Bradford, Shipley, Clayton, Salt’s Mill and the Worth Valley
A history of the locations in and around Bradford which are associated with the history of the Farndale family
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Introduction
Dates are in red.
Hyperlinks to other pages are in dark blue.
Headlines of the history of Bradford are
in brown.
References and citations are in turquoise.
Contextual history is in purple.
This webpage about Bradford has the following
section headings:
·
The
Farndales of Bradford
·
Bradford
·
Salts
Mill, Saltaire
·
Shipley
·
Worth
Valley
·
Clayton
·
Greater
Bradford Timeline
·
Links,
texts and books
The Farndales of Bradford
John Farndale (FAR00379) of the Bishop Wilton Line was a
groom who moved to Clayton, west of Bradford by 1881. His family established
another group in and around Bradford. His fourth child was James Arthur
Farndale (FAR00555)
who became Worsted Drawing Foreman at the Saltaire Mills of Sir Titus Salt.
James’ son Wilfred Farndale (FAR00766) was a
locally renown cricketer and became the Sanitary Inspector for Shipley.
Wilfred’s descendants are the
Bradford 2 Line.
Joseph Farndale (FAR00463) was
the Chief Constable of Bradford from 1 August 1900 to 31 December 1930.
Henry Farndale (FAR00495) of the Hartlepool 1 Line, was born
in Hartlepool, and worked as a sailor and shipwright’s labourer. By 1939, he
had settled in Bradford and most of his nine children were also in Bradford.
James Armin Farndale (FAR00778)
was a general labourer in Bradford whose family settled there. Robert George
Farndale (FAR00755)
was working as a french polisher in Bradford by 1934
and his descendants are the
Bradford 1 Line.
Henry Stewart Farndale (FAR00832) was
born in Leeds in 1916 and married Maria Patchett in Bradford in 1940. He died
in a Tiger Moth accident when under training in 1945. His family are the Bradford 3 Line.
Bradford
Bradford is
a city in West Yorkshire, in the foothills of the Pennines.
It is 14 km west of Leeds, and 26 km north-west of Wakefield.
Bradford 1857
Historically part of
the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bradford rose to prominence in the
nineteenth century as an international centre of textile manufacture,
particularly wool. It was a boomtown of the Industrial
Revolution, and amongst the earliest industrialised settlements. It
rapidly became the "wool capital of the world". There was close
access to supplies of coal, iron ore and soft water. As textile manufacturing
grew, there was an explosion in population. This became a stimulus to civic
investment. Bradford has a large amount of listed Victorian
architecture including the grand Italianate City Hall.
The textile sector in
Bradford fell into decline from the mid-20th century.
Shipley
Shipley 1857
The place-name Shipley
derives from two words: the Old English scīp
'sheep', and lēah meaning either 'a
forest, wood, glade, clearing' or, later, 'a pasture, meadow'. It has therefore
been variously defined as 'forest clearing used for sheep' or 'sheep field'.
Shipley was shaped largely
by the Industrial Revolution, especially the textile industry. Textile
manufacture dates from pre-industrial times. As the place name indicates,
Shipley had a history as sheep grazing land, so wool was plentiful, and the River Aire was a ready source of water for powering water
mills and cleaning processes.
There was a fulling mill
in Shipley by 1500 and two more by 1559. Another mill was built by the Dixon
family on the banks of the Aire in 1635. New Mill on the far side of Hirst Wood
was built in the 1740s and by the late 18th century between 9,000 and 10,000
pieces of broadcloth were being fulled annually at
Shipley's mills.
Much of the work was
undertaken in workers' cottages which had 'loom shops' for spinning yarn. Home
workshops were once a common sight along the River
Aire and often had external flights of steps.
The industrial era ended
cottage industry. Providence Mill, was one of the
first steam-driven mills built for Denby Brothers in 1796. Other spinning mills
followed, including Ashley Mill, Prospect Mill, Red Beck Mill on Heaton Beck
(c. 1815), Well Croft Mill (c. 1840s) and Whiting Mill on Briggate.
The smaller mills gave way
to larger premises which could combine all the processes of worsted production
on one site. The first was Joseph Hargreaves' Airedale Mills, Salts Mill (built
1853), an enlarged Well Croft Mill and Victoria Mills near the canal.
Hargreaves employed 1,250,
Salt initially 2,500 and by 1876 total employment in the mills was 6,900.
The growth in textile
production stimulated the growth of associated supply industries. Other local
employers included loom makers, Lee and Crabtree, WP Butterfield's galvanised
containers and J. Parkinson and Sons machine tool makers.
The other major effect of
industrialisation was the vast expansion in housing stock. Titus Salt's
Saltaire is an example of a model village, and Hargreaves had cottages built
for his workers around the town centre and his mill. He built 92 back-to-back houses
along Market Street and Central Avenue in an area which came to be called
Hargreaves Square or The Square. The houses were built by filling in the old
courtyards.
The population of the
township grew from 1,214 in 1822 to just over 3,000 in 1851 to 10,000 by 1869.
The landowning families
took advantage of the demand for housing by selling their less productive land
on Low Moor and High Moor. Houses for the better off were built in Sunny Bank
and Hall Royd in the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s. Kirkgate was lined with villas
from the 1860s, some of which still stand. Middle-class houses were built in
the Nab Wood and Moorhead districts. In 1870 a tranche of land in Moorhead was
sold by the Countess of Rosse to build five streets of terraces. The public
house on Saltaire Roundabout that bears her name dates from that time.
Salt’s Mill, Saltaire
A major employer
was Titus Salt who in 1833 took over the running of his father's
woollen business specialising in fabrics combining alpaca, mohair, cotton and silk.
By 1850 he had five mills.
However, because of the polluted environment and squalid conditions for his
workers Salt left Bradford and transferred his business to Salts
Mill in Saltaire in 1850, where in 1853 he began to build the
workers' village which has become a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Worth Valley
Worth Valley is
a ward in the City of Bradford. It is named after the River
Worth that runs through the valley to Keighley.
The Valley contains the
Keighley villages of Oakworth, Oldfield, Haworth, Cross Roads, Oxenhope and Stanbury; areas of
farmland; and large expanses of moorland.
Its
attractive villages, particularly Haworth and its Pennine
landscape are at the heart of Brontë Country. The Brontë Sisters,
lived in the village of Haworth - Anne. (1820–1849), Novelist; Charlotte,
(1816–1855), Novelist; Emily, (1818–1848), Novelist; Branwell Brontë,
(1817–1848), painter and poet; Rev Patrick Brontë, (1777–1861), clergyman
and writer
The Worth Valley has
the Keighley and Worth Valley heritage railway running through
it from Keighley to Oxenhope and has been used in several films,
including The Railway Children.
Clayton
The village of Clayton
lies three miles west of Bradford. Claitone probably
derives from claeg meaning clay and tun,
meaning farmstead, and so meant farmstead on clay. The village was privately
owned from 1160 to 1866 when a local board was formed to manage the village.
During the 1870s "the wells", on the central village roundabout, was
used as a site for open air preaching
Since the eighteenth century hand loom weaving and spinning had been
carried out in the homes of the villagers, as had shoe making and mending.
During the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, Clayton's main industry was worsted manufacturing.
Alfred Wallis, Asa Briggs and Joseph Benn were the
principal manufacturers at Oak Mills and later Joseph Benn and Sons at Beck
Mill.
Other businesses included
quarrying, coal mining, brewing and maltsters and Clayton Fireclay Works, owned
by Julius Whitehead at Hole Bottom.
In the centre of the
village is Victoria Park, which was opened on 23 July 1898 on land that had
previously been the village green. The opening by Asa Briggs J.P. attracted a
large crowd and the park became a popular meeting place.
Clayton was well served by
public transport from the late nineteenth century. In October 1874 the Great
Northern Railway opened to Clayton, followed in October 1878 by the Bradford –
the Keighley and Halifax lines.
The population has
increased from 2,040 in 1801 to over 9,000 by 2005.
Bradford Timeline
1616
A constable of Bradford is
mentioned in 1616 (Victoria County History –
Lancaster, A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4 Townships: Bradford).
1666
The hearth tax return of 1666 gave a total of
twenty-seven hearths; the largest house was that of Edward Charnock with five
hearths (Victoria County
History – Lancaster, A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4 Townships:
Bradford).
1780
The population of Bradford
was about 4,500.
1788
Blast furnaces were
established in about 1788 by Hird, Dawson Hardy at Low Moor.
1801
In 1801, Bradford was a
rural market town of 6,393 people, where wool spinning and cloth
weaving was carried out in local cottages and farms. Bradford was thus not much
bigger than nearby Keighley, with a population of 5,745 and was
significantly smaller than Halifax which had a population of 8,866
and Huddersfield. Bradford was then a hub for three nearby townships
– Manningham, Bowling and Great and Little
Horton, which were separated from the town by countryside.
1825
The population
in England grew from 8.6M in 1801 to 17M in 1851, about 98%. The urban
population tripled in the same period. In the 1820s alone London doubled,
Bradford grew 78%.
In 1825 the wool-combers
union called a strike that lasted five-months but
workers were forced to return to work through hardship leading to the
introduction of machine-combing.
1833
Titus Salt took over
the running of his father's woollen business specialising in fabrics
combining alpaca, mohair, cotton and silk.
1841
The population of the
township in 1841 was 34,560.
1844
A permanent military
presence was established in the city with the completion of Bradford Moor
Barracks in 1844.
Industrial
Revolution led to rapid growth, with wool imported in vast quantities for
the manufacture of worsted cloth in which Bradford specialised, and
the town soon became known as the wool capital of the world.
1847
Bradford became a
municipal borough in 1847 and received its charter as a city in 1897.
When the municipal borough
of Bradford was created in 1847 there were 46 coal mines within its boundaries.
Coal output continued to expand, reaching a peak in 1868 when Bradford
contributed a quarter of all the coal and iron produced in Yorkshire.
1850
Bradford had ample
supplies of locally mined coal to provide the power that the industry needed.
Local sandstone was an excellent resource for building the mills, and
with a population of 182,000 by 1850, the town grew rapidly as workers
were attracted by jobs in the textile mills.
By 1850 Titus Salt had
five mills. However, because of the polluted environment and squalid conditions
for his workers Salt left Bradford and transferred his business to Salts
Mill in Saltaire in 1850, where in 1853 he began to build the
workers' village which has become a UNESCO World Heritage site.
1854
A desperate shortage of
water in Bradford Dale was a serious limitation on industrial
expansion and improvement in urban sanitary conditions. In 1854 Bradford
Corporation bought the Bradford Water Company and embarked on a huge
engineering programme to bring supplies of soft water from Airedale, Wharfedale
and Nidderdale. By 1882 water supply had radically improved.
1868
Widening the franchise in 1867 began
years of electoral corruption and a gilded age of bribery. A common practice
was to hire ‘committee’ rooms’ in public houses with
free refreshments and cash for expenses. Electoral turnout could be encouraged uyp to 90%. The Liberal candidate for Bradford in 1868 hired rooms in 158 pubs and
spent £7,000 (well over £1M today).
1880
Henry Ripley was a
younger contemporary of Titus Salt. He was managing partner of Edward Ripley
& Son Ltd, which owned the Bowling Dye Works. In 1880 the dye works
employed over 1000 people and was said to be the biggest dye works in Europe.
Like Salt he was a councillor, JP and Bradford MP who was deeply concerned to
improve working class housing conditions. He built the industrial Model
village of Ripley Ville on a site in Broomfields, East
Bowling close to the dye works.
Samuel Lister and his
brother were worsted spinners and manufacturers at Lister's
Mill (Manningham Mills). Lister epitomised Victorian enterprise but it has been suggested that
his capitalist attitude made trade unions necessary.
Unprecedented growth
created problems with over 200 factory chimneys continually churning out black,
sulphurous smoke, Bradford gained the reputation of being the most polluted
town in England.
There were frequent
outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, and only 30% of children born to textile
workers reached the age of fifteen. This extreme level of infant and
youth mortality contributed to a life expectancy for Bradford residents of just
over eighteen years, which was one of the lowest in the country.
1890s
Meanwhile, urban expansion
took place along the routes out of the city towards the Hortons and Bowling and
the townships had become part of a continuous urban area by the late nineteenth
century.
1893
The Independent Labour Party
was founded in Bradford, a non Marxists Socialist
party. It attracted future politicians including James Keir Hardie and James
Ramsay MacDonald.
The city played an
important part in the early history of the Labour Party. A mural on the back of
the Bradford Playhouse in Little Germany commemorates the centenary
of the founding of the Independent Labour Party in Bradford in 1893.
1900
Iron was worked by
the Bowling Iron Company until about 1900. Yorkshire iron was used
for shackles, hooks and piston rods for locomotives, colliery cages and other
mining appliances where toughness was required.
1916
The Bradford
Pals were three First World War Pals
battalions of Kitchener's Army raised in the city. When the
three battalions were taken over by the British Army
they were officially named the 16th (1st Bradford), 18th (2nd Bradford), and
20th (Reserve) Battalions, The Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire
Regiment).
On the morning of 1 July
1916, the 16th and 18th Battalions left their trenches in Northern France to
advance across No Man's Land. It was the first hour of the First day of
the Battle of the Somme. Of the estimated 1,394 men from Bradford and District
in the two battalions, 1,060 were either killed or injured during the ill-fated
attack on the village of Serre.
Other Bradford Battalions
of The Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire Regiment) involved in
the Battle of the Somme were the 1st/6th Battalion (the
former Bradford Rifle Volunteers), part of the Territorial Force,
based at Belle Vue Barracks in Manningham, and the 10th
Battalion (another Kitchener battalion). The 1/6th Battalion first saw
action in 1915 at the Battle of Aubers Ridge before moving north to
the Yser Canal near Ypres. On the
first day of the Somme they took heavy casualties
while trying to support the 36th (Ulster) Division. The 10th
Battalion was involved in the attack on Fricourt,
where it suffered the highest casualty rate of any battalion on the Somme on 1
July and perhaps the highest battalion casualty list for a single day during
the entire war. Nearly 60% of the battalion's casualties were deaths.
The 1/2nd and
2/2nd West Riding Brigades, Royal Field Artillery (TF), had
their headquarters at Valley Parade in Manningham, with batteries at
Bradford, Halifax and Heckmondwike. The 1/2nd Brigade
crossed to France with the 1/6th Battalion West Yorks in April 1915. These
Territorial Force units were to remain close to each other throughout the war,
serving in the 49th (West Riding) Division. They were joined in 1917
by the 2/6th Battalion, West Yorks, and 2/2nd West Riding Brigade,
RFA, serving in the 62nd (2nd West Riding) Division.
1929
The Low Moor
Company also made pig iron and the company employed 1,500 men in
1929.
1974
Following local
government reform in 1974, city status was bestowed upon
the City of Bradford metropolitan borough.
Links, texts and
books