This plan should be straightforward, but in fact it has caused me problems, so I should be glad to hear from anyone who knows the area well. A previous student has annotated it with the date 1890 (as part of the index number CUL 1890 WOO) but internal evidence implies that it is at least a year or two later.

There are three names mentioned: Ferrand, Hallas Land & Building Co, and J.& J. Broadbent Co. I assume the plan was drawn as part of some piece of litigation, though not necessarily one which reached a court.

Ferrand is easy since members of this important family were associated with the area throughout the nineteenth century. They had estates in the hamlets of Bingley & Harden, in the parish of Bingley, and the township of Wilsden. Sarah Ferrand (1783-1854) inherited the Ferrand estate from her brother Edward Ferrand, who died childless in 1837; she enlarged Harden Grange which then, confusingly, exchanged names with St. Ives. She and her husband Currer Fothergill Busfeild, had several children the oldest of whom was the well-known William Busfeild Ferrand MP (1809–1889) who became Conservative member of parliament for Knaresborough and was a friend of Benjamin Disraeli. He lived at Harden Grange (modern St Ives), but the St Ives Estate now belongs to the City of Bradford.

Remarkably when William Ferrand MP died himself the estate was claimed by a working man, Edward Ferrand of Worksop (Sheffield Independent 5 April 1889). William’s only daughter Sarah (wife of Bradford solicitor Edward Hailstone) also opposed his will which disinherited her. Despite these assaults, and his son Hugo being dead, the estate passed to William’s nephew, another William Ferrand, who must be the ‘Mr Ferrand’ of the map.

It is fairly obvious what the activity of the Hallas Land & Building Company must have been, and in fact they were still landowners in the area in the twentieth century. I cannot as yet find out anything about J.& J. Broadbent. No J Broadbent was resident in Cullingworth in the 1891 census.

The plan rubric suggests that the buildings tinted in pink (A,B,C,D) were constructed in 1891-92, I presume by the Hallas Land & Building Co. The ‘pink etched’ buildings (E, F) were proposed to be constructed. Those buildings of a neutral tint’, which I would describe as grey, were older. The interrupted lines are household drains and sewers, and the black circles are syphon traps under stepstones or sinkstones. There are also outside dishstones for the ‘reception of urine and other foul liquids’. The next figure shows an enlarged view.

Since so much care is lavished on a depiction of the sewerage, especially at points H, L and K, this must be the issue involved. Is the township boundary between Bingley and Wlsden also important? More probably it is the nearby cesspool, and the overflow into the Manywells (Cullingworth) Beck that mattered. It is this watercourse, by now called Cowhouse Beck, that enters the land of Mr Ferrand and gives him a legitimate interest in the development. Was the basic issue one of water pollution?

The final puzzle is the sewer K which terminates at the Cullingworth ‘sewage farm’. This healthy spot is not included on the 1890 or 1906 25” OS maps of the area; could it have been a hypothetical sewage farm which in fact was never created? As far as I can see from the 1906 map the sewage farm and the cottages E-F were never constructed, so perhaps Mr Ferrand won his case.