Westgate, Shipley & Samuel Lupton

2.28    SHI c1875 WOO    BHM 1827 B28

Samuel Lupton v Shipley Local Board (WB Woodhead, surveyor)

Paper 15 ft: 1 inch 75 *75cm Condition: fair

This is another plaintiff’s plan. On this occasion it is Shipley Local Board who are presumably wishing to purchase properties from Samuel Lupton. The map is not dated but on the back is annotated in ink: ‘copy presented to John Hindle with WB Woodhead’s complements’. John Hindle was the Bradford architect and surveyor of that name I assume. I don’t know this area at all well but examination of the first and second OS maps doesn’t suggest huge changes to the topography in the nineteenth century.

Note that Rosse Cottage with its vinery is at the junction of Kirkgate and Windsor Road; it is evidently in a detached position relative to the rest of the map. Only a small portion of the garden is required. In 1874 a Dr Smyth advertised in the Bradford Observer to the effect that he had taken Rosse Cottage, previously occupied by Samuel Lupton. By the second (1889) OS map the area had been covered by new housing.

The search through the Bradford Observer also revealed that in 1869 Samuel Lupton was in dispute with the SLB over ‘frontages’, but could this have generated the map? A man of this name eventually served on Shipley Local Board himself, and on Shipley Local Board of Health. With him on the Health Board was Samuel Atkinson, another landowner who appears on the map as ‘the late’. A Westgate innkeeper of this name died in 1875. In his will probate he is described as gentleman, and he left some thousands of pounds, so I imagine it is him. In conclusion the evidence of Dr Smyth and Samuel Atkinson would suggest the first five years of the 1870s as a probable date for the map.

Who was Samuel Lupton? It seems like that his first wife Caroline Lupton (nee Studholme) died at the age of 29 in 1854 and is buried at St Paul’s Church. On her tombstone he is described as ‘Samuel Lupton, grocer’. By the year that his own quietus came in 1886 he was living at Springfield House, Baildon. He was then 63 years of age (born 1822-23) and living with a second wife, Mary Ann Lupton, who ultimately joined him at St Paul’s churchyard. With this amount of information it is not difficult to trace him in census reports. In 1881 he does indeed describe himself as a ‘retired grocer’, although presumably one who went into property. Twenty years earlier in 1861 he had been a ‘woollen spinner’ and in 1841 a ‘tallow chandler’. In 1841 a man of this name and the correct age had served six months for larceny, being convicted at Pontefract sessions. If this is really our Samuel Lupton, and I am not a family historian, a difficult youth seems to have evolved into a comfortable and honoured old age. Why have I bothered with all this detail? It seems that Samuel’s granddaughter was (Caroline) Marie Studholme (1872-1930), an actress and music hall star. She was well-known in her day and merited a blue plaque at her Hampstead home. I’d be most interested to learn more about the family.