X51    CLA c.1850 BRA

Size: 11” * 20”                 Material: Paper

Scale: unk                        Condition: good

I’m sure that we haven’t previously visited Clayton Heights in this series of maps. Along with Clayton itself this community wasn’t incorporated into Bradford until 1930. Historian William Cudworth is not very helpful to my interpretation of this map. He describes Clayton Heights, and nearby Old Dolphin, as very ‘bleak and cold’, and he places, but does not name, a worsted mill there. He confirms that in the neighbourhood stone was quarried and ‘the Halifax Bed’ coal was mined, but this is true over much of north Bradford of course. I assume it is the ‘Hard Bed’ or ‘Halifax Hard Bed’ coal seam that he is referring to.

This small map locates the Nag’s Head Inn, ‘David Crossley’s premises’ and, rather intriguingly, a shaft. As usual the map is undated, and its purpose is uncertain. The overall topography closely resembles the first Ordnance Survey map of the area, which would have been surveyed in the late 1840s. So, we are probably in the mid-nineteenth century. The roadways included would today be called Back Lane and Highgate Road.

The OS map also names the ‘Old Nag’s Head’ Inn. This building survived into the modern era and is grade II listed. The listing document considers that it was built in the early nineteenth century, and was extended and re-roofed in the 1850s. In the 1940s the inn was the location of a murder, the perpetrator of which was hanged by Thomas Pierrepoint (uncle of the more famous Albert), who himself lived in Clayton.

Other than this I haven’t found the history of Clayton Heights easy to come by. In the hour I allow myself the hits on the online Bradford Observer I consulted only revealed burglaries, bankruptcies and general mischief making. The 1851 census reports did not include the Nag’s Head, so evidently I am missing something. What enumerators reports I could locate indicated that, aside from several farmers, most residents had textile related occupations. Older people registered as wood-combers and hand-loom weavers, whereas the youngsters were operating power looms. A transitional year in textile technology then. A George Mason describes himself as a worsted spinner and manufacturer employing nearly 200 men, women and girls. His only domestic servant, Margaret Wilkinson, is 13 years of age. There is no David Crossley in Clayton Heights, or in Clayton itself.

As you can see on the north side of the beginning of Back Lane is a shaft. The blue line joining it must I suppose be underground coal ‘roads’ though it is unusual to find this incorporated into general maps. If there is coal mining occurring in the contemporary community it is strange that in the 1851 census I can find only a single coal ‘hurrier’, and no pits are marked on the OS map.