This is a rather important plan which offers an insight into development at the time the new Borough of Bradford was created in 1847. We have the usual problems of the plan’s date and purpose, although I believe I can answer these questions. Before I do I have to admit that I am not sure where I obtained the plan originally., although I took the photograph. I believe it is held by the Bradford Industrial Museum where I volunteered some years ago, rather than by the Local Studies Library.

If you want a puzzle more taxing than Wordle or Sudoku then trying to relate ‘Bradford as it was’ to the modern city will certainly provide such. I think that the problem is basically that there was an ‘old Bradford’, say pre-1840, but then a lot of that was knocked down to create late-Victorian Bradford. Finally, Victorian Bradford was, in its turn, demolished in the 1960s to create modern Bradford. I must admit that I don’t find it easy to relate the three, especially not having had the advantage of having been born here.

If the Parish Church (now the cathedral) had been drawn on the original plan it would be at the top left corner. As it is you can see the Church Steps and Church Bank. The ‘new turnpike road’ must be Bolton Road. Immediately below this is a triangular area formed by the junction of Broadstones and Well Street. By the time of the 1878 map, Broadstones was swept away and had evolved into Upper Kirkgate. The whole area was about to be totally redeveloped and within a decade the Post Office building had been constructed, and the area in front of it was the location of Forster Square.

On the plan next to Well Street is a large coal staithe operated by the Low Moor Iron Co. It must have been impossible to supply this staithe except by horse drawn coal-transporting carts. To the best of my knowledge each cart carried 22 cwt (in old money), but I do intend to address the problem of the city’s coal supply in the future. It is not surprising that by the early 1860s at the latest the staithe had gone too. It was on an important town centre site and would not have been easy to supply by rail delivered coal. This whole area must be covered today by the Broadway shopping centre.

Now find the area above Hall Ings on the plan. It is empty but is the process of being developed I suspect. The line at the extreme upper right of the plan is actually the border of Leeds Road, and beyond it to the right would be the Bradford Exchanged Railway Station. Below Hall Ings is a group of streets. Swaine Street runs left to right, and below this is the incompletely named Brook Street. These are crossed at right angles by Collier Gate, Booth Street and Charles Street. Collier Gate may reflect the coal staithe, although the land now occupied by Little Germany was once called Colliers Close. There is absolutely no reason at all why coal could not have been mined here in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century: in fact, two collieries were still within walking distance (Bunker’s Hill at Barkerend, and Fairbanks pit at the town end of Thornton Road).

The names Charles, Swaine and Booth reflect the family names of major landowner Rev. Godfrey Wright, who originally inherited this area, also Colliers Close, and the land on which St George’s Hall was built in 1850. In fact his two eldest sons were named Charles Swaine Wright (1815-1850) and Thomas Booth Wright (1816-1884). Their father, an absentee landowner, was not a popular man, and was widely perceived to have ‘grown rich not through his own industry and skill but through the industry, and skill, and enterprise of the people of Bradford’. The area enclosed by this street grid is divided up into numbered lots which strongly suggests that the purpose of the plan was to guide the original purchasers when Godfrey Wright, or rather his agent, sold the land. When might this have been? One of the purchasers is Leo Schuster whose name provides good dating evidence. In the 1850 Ibbetson Directory Leo Schuster & Brothers are already recorded in Charles Street so the plan must likely date to the late 1840s. From information in the local press the Bradford Board of Surveyors were holding weekly meetings at their office in Swaine Street by 1849. From other evidence of this type I believe that the streets were probably created in 1845, this being the probable date of the plan.

Naturally, Bradford being Bradford, this is all gone now.