X70            BRA c.1850 GRE

Size: 18” * 22”            Material: paper

Scale: 8’ to 1”              Condition: good

In addition to Mr Green’s property this undated plan from the Local Studies Library reserve collection shows the Angel Inn, and the Silsbridge Lane junction with Westgate. Silsbridge Lane was renamed Grattan Street after 1900, so evidently the plan is Victorian. I assume Thomas Green’s property was the central shop, house, ‘out offices’ (which are perhaps privies), and the cottage shown: but the name Josh. Roberts seems to be attached to the rear of the cottage. A ‘Thomas Green, merchant’ was married in Bradford in 1823: was this him? We know too little, and the name is too common, for any certainty. Other landowners indicated are the late James Driver and James Johnson. My limited family history skills can confirm that a James Driver of Westgate was on the Bradford voters’ register as late as 1835.

A second inn, The Boy & Barrel, is also marked. This location is extremely important since The Boy & Barrel is still present today and fixes the position of the map exactly. Just beyond it, but not included here, is James Gate which is also unchanged. Today the space south of the Boy & Barrel is occupied by two undistinguished constructions and then a rather lovely stone building on which the Westgate road-sign is affixed. There have been many changes opposite these and clearly the Angel Inn itself has not survived: it was probably caught up in road widening in this position.

To learn a little more about the area I tried two excellent publications. Paul Jennings Bradford Pubs (Tempus, 2004) records that in 1869 the city had 600 pubs, but sadly the Angel is not featured. In Bradford Old & New, John & Jane Ayres (1976) take us into James Gate, but unfortunately not the few yards further needed to enter Westgate itself. My third source Old Bradford Views: from the Cudworth collection (1897) fortunately this provides an illustration, with the additional valuable information that the Angel Inn had become the Adelphi Hotel by 1891. in fact, this transition occurred a generation earlier but still it is a rare pleasure to link one of these plans with an image.

As far as I can tell the first Ordnance Survey map of 1852 shows a topography that resembles our plan. But ‘standard’ maps of Bradford are not especially helpful. The whole area is developed as early as 1802 but no maps name the premises present. Guessing that our plan is mid-19^th century in date I can confirm that in 1850 the Angel Inn (51, Westgate) was being operated by a William Hemingway Lister (Ibbetsons Directory 1850), and that a Mr Beattie, a corn-miller of Heckmondwyke, was to be found there conducting business on Thursdays.

In fact the Angel was also present in 1822 (Baines Directory), seemingly under the management of William Lister, presumably the father of William Hemingway Lister. Oddly a William Lister is described as a ‘new landlord’ at a Brewster session in 1849: is that father or son? The younger man is likely to have been born in 1820 and married Elizabeth Smith at the Parish Church in 1843. Twenty years later he is living in Brewery Street, off Silsbridge Lane. He died in 1865. Strangely this man’s unique name has defied my attempts to locate him in a census.

I can say that The Angel appears to feature by that name for the last time in the Bradford Observer in 1854, and by the time of the 1856 Lunds Directory it had evolved into The Adelphi (Josh. & Wm. Baxter).