This is one of my favourite maps from the Local Studies Library reserve collection. It is an undated sepia plan with annotations in a different ink. The map illustrates the east side of Bradford, Wakefield Road and a collection of ‘new roads’. One of these is the modern Leeds Road, and Vicar Lane is described by its old designation of ‘Dead Lane’. There are many examples of Dead Lanes in England and I assume they indicate the traditional routes along which corpses were brought for burial. This one is at least close to the parish church although Dead Lane Heaton, now Stoney Ridge Avenue, is miles from any place of interment, so there may be another explanation of the name.

The map clearly pre-dates the tithe map of 1849 and is from the period from before Bradford became a borough in 1847. If Leeds Road is in existence it dates the map to later than c.1825-30 during which time this new turnpike to Leeds was constructed. The pattern created by the other ‘new roads’ included also exists on the Bradford plan of 1830, so we are probably looking at a map from the late 1820s. This map formed the thirteenth in a series the LSL produced some years ago as ‘map of the week’, although I may have underrated its interest then. The value of the map is distributed over three areas, which I shall show as details.

At the extreme left of the map is Well Street. There is a coal stay (staithe) at the junction of Well Street and Hall Ings. A coal staithe is a place adjacent to a highway from which coal merchants can collect a supply for subsequent delivery to their customers. This one is evidently operated by J.J. & Co. who is John Jarrett, one of the Low Moor Iron Company partners. I understand, from local historian Mary Twentyman’s researches, that the original owner of the land, Charles Swain Booth, sold it to Edward Leeds of Royds Hall. Leeds supplied it with coal from his Wibsey pits, probably using a tramway. The Low Moor Iron Company acquired the staithe, and the rest of Leeds’s estate, after his death. The development of buildings in this region must have soon prevented its supply by tramway. At the opposite end of Wells Street is another ‘new street’ which had been in existence for some years and has now evolved into Market Street. Behind this is a rather sketchily drawn the Bradford Beck. The surveyor of the map was evidently interested in the owners of property between Market Street and the beck where he has added some names. You probably won’t be able to read these names, and in fact they are not easily legible even on the original. As far as I can make out, reading from top to bottom, the names are: Green, Crossley, Bradford, Wilkinson, Bank, Armytage, L Lumb, and Hustler. There are directories listing Bradford businesses in 1822 and 1834. Plausible identification of most of these names in Market Street can be made from these directories although it is impossible to be completely certain:

Thomas Green, grocer and tea dealer 1834

David Crossley, attorney 1834

Bradford – uncertain

James Wilkinson, cabinet maker 1822

Thomas Jowett Wilkinson, cabinet maker 1834

Bradford Commercial Bank Co. 1834

Samuel Armitage, plumber & glazier 1834

John Lumb, straw hat maker 1822

Ann Lumb, pawn broker 1822

Thomas Lumb, pawn broker 1834

The name Hustler is more difficult. The famous Quaker wool-stapler and canal promoter, John Hustler, had died in 1790. I believe he and his wife (Christiana Hird) left two sons (including John junior) and four daughters. The fact that Market Street boasted two wool-stapler partnerships carrying his surname cannot, surely, be a coincidence. They were Hustler & Blackburn and Hustler & Seebohm and I have confirmed the existence of both in other sources. I know that the Seebohms were another noted Bradford Quaker family but I haven’t researched all the interconnections.

The ‘new road’, running diagonally across the centre of the map, later became known as Leeds Road. This dates the map to later than c.1825-30 during which years this new turnpike to Leeds was constructed by the Leeds & Halifax Turnpike Trust. Let us look at some other roads. Wakefield Road, Bridge Street, and Hall Ings are all in their present positions. Leeds Old Road is now Barkerend Road. As far as I can tell the numbered areas represent fields. Trees are growing west of the first section of Leeds Road and a rather larger wood is mapped there in the 1800 Bradford plan.

The second detail shows another staithe which was also known as the Eastbrook coal staithe. The designation clearly represents the other of Bradford’s great iron companies – John Sturges (or Sturgess) & Co. which was the company that operated Bowling Iron Works. There were two original partners of this name, father and son, but they were presumably dead by the time this map was created. The ‘new rail road’ drawn is in fact a mineral carrying tramway bringing coal in trucks to the Eastbrook staithe, by rope haulage, from the iron works. Bowling Iron Company also owned and operated many collieries and ironstone mines. The trucks may have been returned filled with limestone, needed for iron smelting, which would have arrived at the nearby canal basin from the quarries at Skipton. The tramway was closed in 1846 and the area is marked as an ‘old staithe’ in the first OS map of the area.

The final detail is Bowling Back Lane off Wakefield Road. Several of the field names are visible: Pease Close, Laith End Field, Birks Field and Rushey Bottom. Across this area is drawn a further section of the tramway. The overall topology is still recognizable in the first Ordnance Survey map surveyed in in the 1840s, although by that time the area is crossed by two railway lines: that from Leeds to Bradford and Halifax to Leeds.