This is a detailed map of streets and property between Cheapside and the Midland Railway station. The district was once called Bermondsey, although this name is now virtually forgotten. The Midland Railway Station was opened in 1846 after the line from Leeds via Shipley was constructed. It was reconstituted as Bradford Market Street Station which opened in 1890. This in turn was renamed Forster Square Station in 1924: finally its six platforms were replaced in 1990.

The Local Studies Library reserve collection has a number of maps which show this area and may have originally had the same origin: one is dated 1876 but I cannot be sure that they are all contemporaneous. Sometimes the Margerison Trustees appear alone in the rubric, and sometimes they are associated with the name of John L Margerison Esq. The changes of ownership intimated in this map have been completed by the publication date of the second OS map of the area, surveyed in the late 1880s.

So, who was John Lister Margerison? He was a woolstapler (Margerison & Sutcliffe until 1857) and was born in Leeds in 1820. He starts to appear in the local press reports around 1845. At one time he seems to have been a town councillor. Reports of his activities do mention Cheapside, and it seems that by the 1860s his house was at 29 Manor Row with his office in Bermondsey itself. The house was later offered for sale and then for auction. The last press notice I can trace was in 1870 when he attended a meeting, with other worthies, concerning the Bradford Church Literary Institute. By the 1871 census he and his wife had moved to London. The last glimpse of him is as late as the 1901 census where he is living at 4 Rochester Gate, Paddington with his much younger wife (Mary, 52) and four children. He had a butler, governess, cook, lady’s maid, and four other maidservants. There was evidently still brass to be made in wool and Bradford property sales.

It would seem then that Margerison and other members of his family, living or dead, owned property in the area of the map which is being sold off in the 1870s. Both cottages and warehouses are marked on this map, and streets including Lister Street and Margerison Street. By the time of John L Margerison’s death things must have changed out of all recognition. Forster had replaced Oastler in Forster Square. The Midland Hotel, constructed 1885-90, occupied much of the site, and the Midland Station occupied the rest up to School Street, which at that time was still carried over the train tracks.