3.032   MAN c1850 PLA   BHM 820 B11

Lot 6, Estate sale plan, near Duckworth Lane

Paper       Scale: 2 chains per inch         Size: 68*48 cm

Condition: good

Although untitled and undated this is clearly a land sale plan. It is marked Lot 6 suggesting the whole estate of which it once formed a part must have been fairly substantial. I think that it is reasonable to assume that this lot was initially a small farm consisting of a house, barn, labourers’ cottages, and 14 associated fields. The junction of Towler (now Toller) Lane and Duckworth Lane makes the location of the farm easy to establish.

Lot 6 borders the West House estate of Thomas Hollings. The overall arrangements closely resemble the first OS map of the area where the farm buildings are close to the word Gerlington (sic). The cottages on the extreme right of the map (south) are named in the OS map as White House, and Occupation Road joins New Thornton Road at the Round Thorn.

There is nothing exceptional about the individual field names but Low Pit Field to the left (south) reminds us that coal was once intensively exploited in this area. The most valuable aspect of the field names is that the same 14 names are recorded by William Cudworth, by which means we can be certain that this land (‘where Abraham Hardy dwelt’) was sold by the widows Mary Brougham and Ann Idle in 1850-52 to Titus Salt and Henry Forbes on behalf of the Bradford Freehold Land Society. The estate was then laid out by Joseph Smith. By the time of the second OS map, somewhat less than 50 years later, everything here is swept away. New rows of terraced housing have been built, like Kensington Street and Girlington Road. They run N-S and appear to follow the old field patterns. In fact very faint parallel pencil lines have been drawn on this plan which may indicate the ghost of this envisaged development.

One local land owner indicated on the plan is George Baron who is likely to be George Baron of North Cave who held the Clockhouse estate from 1840-54. He also had land in Bolton, and Allerton. The Leeds Mercury in 1841 recorded that Thomas Hollings  was selling his property of Toller Lane House: he was part of Thomas Hollings & Son, Worsted spinners of Silbridge Lane. Thomas Hollings, by then of West House Manningham, died in 1844 aged 63. Angus Holden purchased his property and had built his house Woodlands at the site of West House within a generation. Richard Margerison was a councillor and poor law guardian for Manningham. He owned a textile mill and was associated with the Bradford Commercial Joint Stock Bank. He died in 1851. Extensive land sales and house-building in this whole area was occurring by the early 1860s.