Review
Shipley is a mediaeval settlement but not one about which much has been written. Now the Shipley Historical Society has produced as a small pamphlet Bill Hampshire's researches into the town's watermills. There is much in it about the history of the Saltaire site
When Titus Salt first thought of building here the land was agricultural - the Illustrated London News picture of the mill shows sheaves standing in a field where Caroline St now runs. Beside the river stood Dixon Mill with its dam - the ancestor of the present Saltaire weir. Hampshire has done a good job in tracing the property history of the mill from its building in the close known as Eshalleys or Esholtleys in 1635. He also show that part of the close called Ealand on the Baildon side was acquired as early as the autumn of the same year(presumably to allow easier maintenance of the dam) This is, again presumably, how Salt came to own the land which is now Roberts Park.
At the end of the life of Dixon Mill, when Salt bought the land in 1850 it was still being used as a corn and fulling mill.
The site of
Saltaire with
Dixon Mill standing on the
River Aire
Map published 1854 but clearly surveyed before the building of Salts Mill
Dixon Mill Lane is now Victoria Road. It is here seen crossing
( from south to north) the railway and the Leeds-Liverpool Canal.
Salts Mill was built between the railway and the canal to the right of the lane.
There is a history of the Calverley/Stansfield of Esholt connection and, briefly, of the Rosse Lordship of the Manor.
The research on Shipley's other mills is of equal quality. Hampshire has established a clear link between the Manorial Corn-mill and Hirst Mill although he can only speculate as to why it was so far from the manorial centre
( If I might add to his guess - that it was built near a ford carrying Hirst Lane across to a path beside Loadpit Beck ie Shipley Glen - there are, as I am sure he knows, causewayed tracks in the Eldwick area which lead over Rombalds Moor towards Wharfedale. A ford at the point suggested would link a route coming from the direction of Chellow down Moorhead Lane with these paths on the north side of the Aire and as such would be a reasonable place for a business minded lord to place his mill - particularly since he had a monopoly to benefit from.
It is an interesting to compare the situation of Hirst Mill with that of the now ruined St Simon's Chapel in Coverdale built by the monks of Coverham Abbey beside a ford linking East Scrafton and Melmerby - presumably once a trade link between Nidderdale and Wensleydale. The Abbey's idea in building a mile or so upstream from its main building was to get the passing trade in prayers to the benefit of its finances and it clearly picked a commercial site for following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 2nd quarter of the 16thC the chapel became a beershop)
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Some eighteen months ago I was asked by a correspondent in the USA whether I could find out anything about his ancestors who had lived in Saltaire in 1870. After peering at a microfilm of the 1871 census returns for several hours I found them at an address in Albert Rd. The father's place of birth was given as Thornton. This was interesting to me since I have lived in Thornton for the past quarter of a century so the next thing to do was to look at the Bishop's Transcripts (an signed copy of the Thornton chapel register sent annually to York).
It was quite likely that the father would appear here even if the family were methodists, since the only way to register a birth at that time was to be baptised in the local anglican church (which is why Sir Titus Salt was baptised twice: once at the congregationalist chapel at Morley and then again at Batley Church.) After some searching in the register for 1818 I found his name and that of his father a miner from the nearby village of Denholme which was then part of Thornton Township. I was also able to tell my correspondent that his direct ancestor had been baptised by Patrick Brontë indeed a few entries above was that of Emily Jane daughter of the incumbent.
Thornton is the not the only place from which the workers of Saltaire came but it is in typical of those places: of mediaeval foundation - long tofts still stretch down from Market St to Pinch Beck although since 1827 they have been cut by Thornton Rd which joins Bradford to the 18thC Halifax to Keighley turnpike; in the aftermath of the English revolution itb was a centre of non-conformity often visited by Oliver Heywood and the burial place of Joseph Lister and of his son Accepted Lister; cottages which were the homes of handloom weavers are overshadowed by Prospect Mill built in stages by the Cravens in the 19thC; a huge railway viaduct spans the valley- and all of this before we come to the fact that it was the birthplace of Charlotte, Patrick Branwell , Emily and Anne Brontë two geniuses a great writer and a romantic hero.
Alan Whitworth's study of this village at the top of Bradford Dale gives the background to all this. The chapter on the Old Bell Chapel of which Patrick Brontë was curate from 1815 until he received the perpetual curacy of Haworth in 1820 is worth the price of the book in itself ( the author is an expert on church architecture. Long thought to be an early 17thC chapel-of-ease there has always been a problem in that there is a 16th C inscription on the only wall which remains standing and the east window is clearly 15thC. While this evidence could be made to agree - as Whitworth reminds us a "15thC" window could, in this backwater, have been built as late as 1600 - there is documentary evidence of a chapel here which might suggest a 13thC origin. Some years ago Whitworth's attention was drawn to stones from the old chapel which have been used as a garden feature in the grounds of Thornton Hall; these bear masons' marks which may settle the question.
The section on the Brontë family draws on the MS diary of Elizabeth Firth of Kipping House which held in the University of Sheffield,
To students of Saltaire, however the most interesting part of this book are the extracts from the sanitary report of 1853.
The usual story of Salt's model village derived, like most accounts, from Holroyd's Saltaire and its Founder, stresses the unhealthy conditions which resulted from the mushroom growth of Bradford in the first half of the 19thC.
The Bradford Woolcombers' report of1845 had exposed the conditions under which members of this dying trade lived and worked
- what Whitworth reminds us is that conditions in the rural townships of the industrial West Riding were no better.
Of the district known as New Halifax, only a few yards from the Brontë birthplace it was said that:
The privy accomodation...deserves particular attention. The number of houses is from sixteen to twenty, and for the whole there is but one privy without either door or seat: there are however, three other disgusting places built up of stones, without lime or wood, without seats or doors, and so filthy and noisome that a human being could scarcely remain long enough in them to satisfy the calls of nature.(p119)
In contrast at Saltaire there was one privy per house with a service road to ensure regular emptying of the ashpit.
This is an important work of local history which will not be replaced for many years.
Other books noted
December 2000 appears to be a excellent month for local history.
Astrid Hansen From Sharp to Blunt Bradford Libraries
A history of Little Horton Hall, ancestral home of the Sharps- particularly of Abraham Sharp who prepared Flamsteed's star catalogue for the press - and later residence of Bishop Blunt of Bradford who broke the establishment silence on the little difficulty they were having over Edward VIII's relationship with Wallis Simpson. The house was built in the 1670s and demolished, after a long decline, in the 1960s to make way at first for nothing and then for the car park of St Luke's Hospital. This history has one chapter on a notable tenant of the hall John Wood who opened the first factory school in the town and encouraged Richard Oastler's campaign against the liberal millocracy and their use of child labour. It includes the only easily available photograph of Wood. There is also an amazing picture of Edward Hailstone in check jacket and plus-fours.
Bob Duckett (ed) Aspects of Bradford 2
Barnsley,Wharncliffe Books,2000
ISBN 1-871647-82-7 £9.95 (9.95GBP)
The second volume of this series - may there be many more - has four chapters (out of the eleven in book) with some some link, albeit slight, to the history of Saltaire.
Former Bradford local history librarian Elvira Willmott's study of 18thC Bradford explores the town in which men like Edmund Peckover, Abraham Balme and John Hustlerthe elder laid the foundations for the prosperity which would, in a few decades, create Worstedopolis; while a study by Stephen Wade of James Burnley breaks new ground in examining the work of the 19thC editor of the Yorkshireman and the Saunterer's Satchel Almanac, who also wrote one of the many biographies of Sir Titus Salt. Burnley gathered around him a group of writers of both the workingman poet type (such as Ben Preston - linked by his brother John Preston to Saltaire) and the professional amateur of literature type (Charles Forshaw dentist,poet editor and George Ackroyd poet and banker). Wade argues strongley for the originalty of this neglected group of provincial writers. The article includes photographs of many them.
Also included is a study by Ann Dinsdale librarian of the Brontë Parsonage Museum of the dead of Haworth Churchyard which reinforces the point made above about mid-19thC conditions in the rural townships finally there is an account by by Yorkshire watercolourist Peter Shutt of Lister Park last resting place of Bradford's Sir Titus Salt Memorial
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Finally one that we missed when it was republished last year-
C.Richardson The Geography of Bradford University of Bradford, 2000
Clem Richardson's text, first published 25 years ago is available again. It is one of those books which any student of Bradford history must have, comparable, in its way to James History and Continuations and Cudworth's Round about Bradford and the University are to be congratulated for republishing.
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