Shipley Hall Estate c.1849

X16  SHI c1849 PLA

Size: 25” * 39”

Material: Paper

Scale: unk

Condition: good

This item is identified as a sale plan of the Shipley Hall Estate (C.F. Walker). I have always been a little confused by the large Shipley houses. There was Shipley Hall, Shipley Lower Hall, Shipley Old Hall, Shipley Manor House (Over Hall), Shipley Fields Hall and, later, Shipley Grange. George Sheeran discusses these buildings in his essential publication Village to Mill Town: Shipley and its Society 1600-1870, a copy of which is in the Local Studies Library.

The Manor House has been demolished and the present Town Hall occupies the site. Shipley Old Hall was built by John Dixon and stood next to the Manor House, but is now also demolished. Shipley Lower Hall is the modern Conservative Club: it has been renamed Shipley Old Hall (presumably after the disappearance of the original building of this name). Sheeran states that ‘Shipley Hall’ itself was probably built in 1734. The original builder was unknown and the building has also been demolished and its site occupied by the Airedale Co-op (now I think the Sir Norman Rae pub). If you rotate the map by 90˚ anticlockwise it is now orientated N-S. The shape of the building plan leaves no doubt that Shipley Hall is the house represented here, and its appearance closely resembles that given on the first OS map of the area. Unfortunately, as you will see, the ambiguity over which Shipley Hall was which reappears when I looked at census reports.

The house, together with its surrounding land, is evidently the property of one CF Walker. Surrounding landowners names are added in pencil. The one that I recognise is EC Lister-Kaye who must surely be Ellis Cunliffe Lister-Kaye (1774–1853), textile mill owner and builder, the father of Samuel Lister of Manningham Mills. The presence of his name is entirely consistent with a mid-19^th century date for the plan. Unfortunately I don’t know who CF Walker is, and his surname doesn’t feature in a useful list of old Shipley families that Sheeran provides. A Dr Joshua Walker of Leeds owned land in nearby Frizinghall after 1795, but his estate passed to his daughter Margaret and then by marriage to a Quaker, William Leatham. There is no CF Walker in the 1841 or 1851 censuses of Shipley but he may not, of course, have ever been a resident owner.

The situation at the time of the 1841 census was that Shipley Hall seemed to be partitioned between a surgeon and farmers – Thomas & Elizabeth Bishop. Then the Bradford Observer recorded that Richard Fawcett, a benevolent businessman, died there in 1845 at the age of 66. Subsequently a solicitor called John Darlington was living there in 1846 and had a daughter born there the following year. He still gave Shipley Hall as his address in the 1850s and was resident there at the time of the 1851 census.

I can find evidence in the Bradford Observer that Shipley Hall was sold in 1849, which may well explain the plan. At that time a Martin Hertz was said to be in occupancy. In the 1851 census, and separate from John Darlington at Shipley Hall, there is a report for a house rather ambiguously called ‘Hall’. Among the residents are James Wood (worsted spinner and manufacturer) and Martin Hertz (stuff merchant): both men are sufficiently well to do to have house servants. Hertz is well-known and was an early member of Bradford’s German Jewish community who founded the firm of M.Hertz & Co.in 1846. But did he live in Shipley Hall? The local newspaper suggests that he did, but the census of 1851 suggests that Hertz and Darlington had separate residences. I would welcome additional help with this map from any Shipley local historians, since I am clearly out of my depth.

***

Since I originally wrote this paragraph local historian Ken Kenzie has been able, not for the first time, to take me further. Evidently Cudworth mentioned a Walker family who, although not residing in the district, had considerable possessions in Shipley, Baildon, and the neighbourhood. He identifies Shipley House as one of their properties. Was Shipley House the same location as Shipley Hall? Cudworth goes on to say that ‘Shipley House with the estate was, about twenty years ago, sold by the Walker family. And the hall…….purchased by the late Mr Joseph Hargreaves of Shipley Fields’. Since Cudworth published his book in 1876 this date, minus 20 years, is a reasonably good fit for a known sale in 1849. A James Hargreaves of Frizinghall was a well-known worsted manufacturer. James Hargeaves’s textile interests descended to his son Joseph (1780-1861). Joseph was a bachelor and so involved his nephews: James, George, Thomas & William of Carr Syke. In the 1841 census Joseph is 60 years old and a stuff manufacturer of Shipley Fields. He would be a perfectly reasonable purchaser for additional land in the area.

Finally in 1868 a Charles F. Walker is named as one of new trustees of Baildon Church. Is this our CF Walker? There is quite a well-known Charles Francis Walker. He was born in 1836 and lived to be a Royal Navy admiral. He was the grandson of John Wilmer Field of Heaton, the last Lord of the Manor of that name before his estates in Heaton and Shipley passed to the Earls of Rosse by marriage. Unfortunately I don’t think the dates quite match for him to be our man. Research must continue. I still can find a plausible man of this name in the census reports, but my limitations as a family historian have long been exposed!