2.191 FRI 1899 JAC

The development of modern Frizinghall (surveyor Samuel Jackson)

Paper backed with cardboard Scale: 20 yards per inch

Condition: Very Poor (map in two sections)

This is a plan which evidently once accompanied a land sale catalogue for an area between Aireville Road and Frizinghall Road. An estate attached to Highfield House, Frizinghall was being sold for building development. I don’t know a great deal about Highfield House. For 20 years (censuses 1871-91) the residents were James Hargreaves Wood and his wife Hannah, with various children and servants. James H Wood is recorded as being a farmer of 25 acres which plausibly is the estate that was later being offered. He was the son of Joseph Wood and Sarah Hargreaves; Joseph Wood and his sons were well-known as the proprietors of Dumb Mill, Frizinghall. John Hargreaves Wood was well to do for a farmer, leaving an estate of nearly £10,000 when he died in August 1891. Possibly it was his death that ultimately triggered the land sale, or more probably the death of his eldest son, John Wood, in 1898.

Whatever its cause the estate sale conformed with contemporary developments in Frizinghall. William Cudworth records that the sale of the nearby Shipley Fields Estate, after the death of the owner T.T. Lister, and the opening of Frizinghall Railway Station (1875), promoted residential building in the area. There were further land sales by the Marriner family. Cudworth also states that the principal builders of residential property in Frizinghall were Messrs. Mellor, Davies and Jones. In this connection it is interesting to note that several plots are labelled ‘Davis & Jones’ who I assume are purchasers. Other purchasers are M. Barry and D. Milner.

The land auction took place at the Cafe Royal, Bradford on Monday 4 September 1899. It may not be visible but the bottom left hand corner of the map records that the surveyors involved were Samuel Jackson & Son. Samuel Jackson (1830-1910) was a noted Bradford architect who built, among others, Shipley Baptist Church and Cottingley Town Hall. He was one of the runners-up in the competition to design Bradford Town Hall, but sadly the world only remembers the winners.