As I work on the reserve map collection the same local land-owners appear regularly. Examples are: Rev. Godfrey Wright, Mrs Giles and Miss Dawson. Godfrey Wright has been discussed too frequently on this site to need further elaboration. His benefactor Charles Booth, a wealthy young barrister, married Hannah Gilpin who had inherited the property of famous Horton mathematician Abraham Sharp. The happy couple lived together at Horton Old Hall under their final names of Charles Swaine Booth Sharp and Hannah Gilpin Sharp. In Rambles Round Horton William Cudworth explains the process whereby after her death in 1823 Hannah Gilpin Sharp’s property was enjoyed briefly by her nephew Captain Thomas Gilpin and, after his own death, by her niece Ann Kitchen. By marriage Ann became the ‘Mrs Giles’ who often appears on local maps.  She owned much of Horton, and trustees acting on her behalf sold the land on which the Bradford workhouse (later St Luke’s Hospital) was built. ‘Miss Dawson’, another regular, was probably Eliza Dawson, grand-daughter of Joseph Dawson, partner in the Low Moor Iron Company.

The original map, which will be hard to study in detail in this format, demonstrates an extensive land sale between Manchester and Wakefield Roads in the pre-railway era. To make things easier I have photographed three map details. I want to discuss another regular ‘map name’, Samuel Hailstone. I assume that rather than being a great landowner himself he appears because wealthy clients are employing his legal expertise.

Another map shows nearby land which is also divided into sale lots. This map is stylistically very similar but shows Samuel’s place of business and house. Croft Street took its name from Croft House, in Bowling Lane which was where Samuel lived in his early years. In this undated map from, I imagine, the 1830s Hailstone is offering for sale the land surrounding Croft Street & Bowling Lane (now Manchester Road). It is hard to place this area in the modern city. Croft Street is now largely a railway bridge, but I assume the area essentially lies between Nelson Street and Manchester Road and is occupied by the Jacobs Well carpark.

Samuel Hailstone (1768-1851) was that rare combination, a lawyer and a botanist. His brother John Hailstone MA FRS took holy orders and became a professor of geology at Cambridge. Samuel himself was born in Hoxton, London but his family soon moved to York. In time he became articled to John Hardy, a Bradford solicitor, and Hardy & Hailstone eventually became partners. John Hardy was elected an MP and was the father of another politician Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, who was created Earl of Cranbrook. I understand that Samuel and John Hardy were the moving spirits behind the 1803 Bradford Improvement Act. More than forty years before Bradford became a borough this act established commissioners with a variety of local government powers such as street cleaning, lighting, and water provision.

Samuel continued to practise as a solicitor and was later in partnership with the Thomas Mason who became a director of the Bolling Iron Company and lived at Bolling Hall. Samuel Hailstone was the classic example of a wealthy and highly successful professional man. His politics were Liberal and, slightly unusually for non-conformist Bradford, he was an Anglican. He purchased the Bolton House estate although he never resided there. I get the impression that Yorkshire botany and geology were Samuel’s main interests. A collection of more than 2000 plant specimens was passed to the Yorkshire Museum on his death.

But despite these studies he was active in issues affecting his chosen town. He helped found the Bradford Literary & Philosophical Society, also the Mechanics Institute. He served as a major in the Bradford Volunteer Infantry and was clerk to the Trustees of the Leeds and Halifax Turnpike Road and other committees and organisations. In 1808, quite late in life, Samuel married Ann Jones the daughter of a Bradford surgeon, and the couple had several children. Samuel died at Horton Hall, Bradford in 1851. In his census return for that year he indicates that he is living alone, except for a house-keeper and five servants.

The Hailstones were a very high achieving family. One son, Samuel jnr., was also a noted amateur naturalist and a collector of crustacea. He pre-deceased his father in 1841. There were two surviving sons, Rev John Hailstone (1810-1871), the vicar of Bottisham, Cambridgeshire, and Edward Hailstone FSA (1818-1890). Edward took over the Bradford legal practice but is famous for a huge assembly of books and documents relating to Yorkshire history, especially those of the Sharp family who were the previous owners of Horton Hall. This was the project of his retirement when he lived at Walton Hall, near Wakefield. At his death the collection was left to the archives of York Minster where it can still be consulted today. I have used one of this collection, a map of eighteenth-century Heaton, myself but it didn’t come with any provenance except the Hailstone name.