Insdustry

I’m not really a railway enthusiast so I must start with an apology to those readers who are, and say that I would welcome your guidance. I don’t find the early history of Bradford’s rail links an easy topic since the companies involved seem to change their names, and move the location of their stations, quite frequently. Naturally the creation of early railway lines generated maps and plans, many of which have survived. Even here I have a problem since tracks appear on maps which are notionally of an earlier date. Despite these difficulties I want to describe the early lines entering Bradford from the south because of the interesting light they shed on the city’s industrial past.

The first image is a detail from the 1852 Ordnance Survey map. It shows Bowling junction, although this is not named. Two, seemingly single, rail tracks, are mapped. The first is the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway line which connected Halifax to Bradford, and its terminus Drake Street (later Exchange) Station which opened in 1850. The second line moving off to the right went from Bowling junction to Leeds, via Laisterdyke, and was opened a few years later in 1854. It was operated by the same company and, I presume, allowed trains to travel from Leeds to Halifax direct, by-passing Bradford completely. The track no longer exists but the line is visible on aerial photographs.

I am interested that at the junction a ‘limestone quarry’ is mapped. Limestone strata do not reach the surface in the city area but there was nonetheless an early lime-burning industry based on the extraction of boulders from glacial moraines in the Aire valley. Boulder pits were certainly established in Bingley by the early seventeenth century. It looks as if glacial erratic limestone boulders were found elsewhere, being exploited in the same way. In this case the digging of a railway cutting presumably exposed the valuable mineral. Plausibly these boulders were taken to the nearby Bowling Iron Company where crushed lime was used as a flux in iron smelting. Slightly further north is Spring Wood. The name has almost certainly nothing whatever to do with a water supply. ‘Spring’ was applied to a tree that had been cut off at ground level for coppicing. So Spring Wood was presumably an area of old coppice woodland. William Cudworth records that there was once also a Springwood Coal Pit, but the wood itself soon disappears from maps.

The next plan is from the Local Studies Library reserve collection. If you imagine it turned 90º clockwise it is clearly the same view as before. You can easily identify the two railway tracks and also the Bowling Dye works. The name of the company involved here is West Riding Union Railway. As I understand it this title was only employed for a brief period around 1845-47. This and other evidence suggests that this map is a few years earlier than that of the OS map we have examined. This map shows the Bowling Iron Company colliery tramway very clearly. This took coal to the Bowling Depot on Queens Street where I assume it was available to local merchants. The Bowling Dye Works and the Bowling New Dye House were both parts of the Ripley family enterprises (Edward Ripley & Co). What are obviously missing are the large reservoir and dye pits which are such a prominent feature in the OS map. When were these created? The Bradford Observer reports a large sale of land in this area, including that piece accommodating the Dye Works, in 1850. The vendor isn’t stated but might well be the Bowling Iron Company. Probably the dye works boss, the famous Sir Wm. Henry Ripley, purchased land at this time to allow for the expansion of his business and the assurance of adequate soft water supplies, which included a reservoir. Cudworth records a 100 acre purchase by the Ripley company and also states that a contractor called Samuel Pearson constructed reservoirs for Bowling Dye Works and Bowling Iron Works at a date ‘early in the fifties’. We shall hear more of Samuel Pearson shortly. Marked on this map are marked a variety of planned new streets. Were these streets ever constructed? Presumably not. After 1863-64 Ripleyville, consisting of 200 houses with schools, was constructed by Sir Henry but the alignment of these streets on the 1887 borough map looks quite different.

This third map shows an area slightly further north. There have been additional train track developments. The Great Northern Railway had opened its service to Leeds from Adolphus Street station in 1854 but the rival Midland Railway service, via Shipley, ended at a station more convenient to the town centre depriving GNR of customers. In consequence, around 1867, a track loop was constructed connecting the GNR line to the L&Y track at Mill Lane junction and allowing passengers from Leeds access to Exchange Station. Nearby St Dunstan’s passenger transfer station was also opened. The loop is clearly visible on the map north of Ripleyville. In describing the work involved in taking the GNR railway line from the Exchange Station towards Leeds, Horace Hird (Bradford in History, 1968) again mentions the activities of Samuel Pearson & Son who took over responsibility for the material excavated from the necessary cutting. The cutting spoil created a ‘great mound’ and for 15 years 60 men were employed making drain pipes, chimney pots and bricks from this material. Their Broomfield brick works is clearly indicated on the map above the loop. The line seen curving away to the left edge of the map, opposite the brick works, services a series of coal drops which are still visible, in a ruinous state, off Mill Lane today.

Samuel Pearson was a Cleckheaton brick-maker who founded a contracting dynasty. His contracting business started in Silver Street, off Tabbs Lane, Scholes, in 1856. By 1860-63 Messrs. S. Pearson & Son were established at the Broomfield Works, Mill Lane (near St Dunstan’s) for the manufacture of building bricks, sanitary tubes and terracotta goods. The works can be identified on the 1871 map of Bradford but closed shortly before the 1887 map was published, the ‘spoil bank’ being exhausted. The site is described as a ‘disused brick-works’ by the time of the 1895 OS map. Within a generation Pearson’s had became an international contractor and was particularly associated with Mexico during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. Canals, railways and oil were among the company’s many interests. After being created a baronet Samuel Pearson’s grandson, Weetman Pearson, became the first Viscount Cowdray in 1917. The family seat became Cowdray House and park, near Midhurst in West Sussex.

For the final plan I return to the LSL Reserve Collection. Essentially it shows the same area as the last. The plan is undated but the railway companies have their pre-nationalisation names, so it is earlier than 1948. Wakefield Road is referred to as the A650 and local historian Maggie Fleming suggests that this nomenclature makes the plan later than 1920. St Dunstan’s Station is still present, and in fact had another thirty years of life before closing in 1952. The site of Broomfield brick works is blank, and is today a car park. The purpose of this plan seems to have been to show the course of a new road joining Bolling Road to Upper Castle Street. This is another thoroughfare that was never constructed.

Derek Barker, Local Studies Library Volunteer

Maps and plans offer one of the best ways of reconstructing Bradford’s industrial history. Recently I found a 200 year old example at the Local Studies Library which was highly relevant to the history of the Bolling Hall estate. Victorian hand-writing is not always easy to read but, with small adjustments to spelling and capitalisation, the plan is headed: ‘Copy of the plan of Black Bed coal and ironstone made by Mr Hinchcliffe showing the Black Bed coal left for the protection of Bolling Hall and its buildings pursuant to the agreement of 18^th November 1814‘.

The fragile plan is not easy to interpret. Pink blocks represent Bolling Hall and its attendant out-buildings. Many of the black lines are property and field boundaries. Some of these make sense today, others presumably delineate parcels of land associated with the out-buildings. This whole central area is slightly paler in colour than the region outside the precinct boundary, which is darker and I assume represents winnable coal. This is most apparent if you start at the house and continue towards the bottom right of the plan. The wavy line, in an inverted V shape to the right, is probably a geological fault. In his description of the area historian William Cudworth reported a Bolling Hall fault which threw minerals ‘down 28 yards to the south’.

Bolling Hall is a Grade 1 listed building given by the last owner, Mr GA Paley, to the City of Bradford in 1912. The gift was associated with the purchase of land for nearby Bolling Girls High School, now demolished. A good deal of refurbishment has been undertaken since, including the creation of some formal gardens facing the entrance. Architecturally the hall is complex. A medieval pele tower at the south-west front contains the modern entrance and is believed to date from c1370. The south-east front Georgian bay was created in 1779-80 and (with its sash windows) contrasts sharply with the 17^th century masonry present elsewhere. Historically the building is associated with two important families, the Bollings and the Tempests, but who occupied the hall at the time of this plan?

Towards the end of the 18^th century the owner was Captain Sir Charles Wood, a Royal Navy officer, a painting of whom is still displayed on the main staircase. Captain Wood died of wounds in the far east and was succeeded by his son Sir Francis Lindley Wood (1771-1846). In 1794 Sir Francis gave the nearby Bowling Iron Company permission to mine coal and iron ore under his whole estate. Both as a land-owner and Lord of the Manor of Bowling Sir Francis controlled access to an immensely profitable asset. After five years he evidently grew tired of being surrounded by mines and spoil tips, however rich they made him, and he moved to another of his houses, Hemsworth Hall near Barnsley. Bolling Hall and its estate was sold outright to the BIC in 1816 and was allotted to its partners. Thomas Mason had it until 1834 then it passed to J G Paley. It remained in the possession of the Paley family until gifted to the City.

BIC had been established in 1780. It smelted iron ore found in the roof of the Black Bed coal seam, both of these minerals being mentioned in the plan rubric. A deeper coal seam, the Better Bed, made sulphur and phosphorous-free coke which was ideal for iron smelting. This seam is not mentioned on this plan, nor is the shallower Crow Coal. The removal of the Black Bed and its ironstone naturally left a gap into which the overburden of rock could collapse, resulting in surface subsidence. The common practice was to leave pillars of minerals unmined to support the roof. Under especially sensitive areas, which included churches and the mine-owner’s house, no mining at all took place. To indicate such restraint must be the purpose of this plan.

Where were the nearest coal or ironstone mines? The first OS map of Bradford (1852) shows a line of ‘old pits’ both north and south of New Hey Lane (now Road). The Bolling Hall mine may have been closer still. About half-way between the bottom right corner of the house and the bottom right corner of the map is a small square containing a dot. I’m sure this represents a coal shaft. How deep was it? Fortunately opposite the north gate of Bowling Park (at SE 1698 3157) was a colliery called Waterloo Pit. This is only a few hundred metres away from the hall itself and fortunately the depths of coal seams at this location are recorded on the British Geological Survey website. They are:

Crow Coal 9.8m

Black Bed 28.3m

Better Bed 63.1m

The hall is at the same altitude as the Waterloo Pit (150m above ODL) so I think we can be sure that in the region of the plan the Black Bed coal was being mined, or not as the case may be, at about 30m depth.

Both the Bowling and Low Moor Iron companies exploited the same seams of coal and iron ore which extended over the whole of south Bradford and the surrounding areas. Huge networks of tramways and mineral ways grew up to bring the precious substances to the coke ovens and blast furnaces. To charge a blast furnace you also needed limestone to help the slag to separate. In the first OS map, close to the railway line at Bowling junction, is a ‘limestone quarry’. If there were limestone bedrock at this point then it would be more than a kilometre buried, so clearly we are dealing with a surface glacial deposit. The extraction of erratic limestone boulders from glacial moraine is recognised elsewhere in the Bradford district.

We are left with the problem of who was Mr Hinchcliffe? The only contemporary man of this name mentioned by William Cudworth, or present in Baines’s 1822 Directory, was Joseph Hinchcliffe who was a well-known local schoolmaster. Could surveying have been one of his skills? But the surname is a common one and could be that of an unknown BIC employee. Eventually local iron ore was exhausted and when this plan was being drawn the iron industry in Bradford had only about a century of existence left. Ore could be brought by sea from more favourable reserves abroad but transport costs ensured that only shore based blast furnaces, like those at Scunthorpe, survived. A century later still the deep-mining of coal in the UK was completely finished. This situation would have been inconceivable to Mr Hinchcliffe in 1814, whoever he was.

Derek Barker, Local Studies Library Volunteer