This map is an auction plan of an estate in Allerton and Manningham. The sale was undertaken in October 1869. Notice of the auction was posted in the Bradford Observer, so we know that the auctioneers were Hardwick, Best & Young of Piccadilly, Bradford. The land agent involved was GB Smith, who must surely be George Belk Smith the surveyor, son of the equally well-known surveyor and agent, Joseph Smith. GB Smith was Sir Titus Salt’s agent in the purchase of the land for Saltaire, and he had offices in Leeds Road.

Evidently the estate, which already included a house and three cottages, was being promoted as a unique opportunity for development. The vendor’s name is not provided on the plan, but a small advertisement of five years earlier describes a Joshua Robertshaw, a farmer and land agent, as being of Shuttleworth Hall, near Bradford. A man of this name is a 43-year-old farmer living at the hall in the 1861 census, but then so were several other families. A remark by Cudworth suggests that the purchaser was Alfred Illingworth of Daisy Hill. I assume this was Alfred Illingworth MP of Whetley Mill who married the daughter of Sir Isaac Holden. Cudworth also records the earlier history of Shuttleworth Hall. It was once a possession of the Sunderland family, of High Sunderland near Halifax. In the seventeenth century a Mr Richard Shuttleworth of Clitheroe married into that family and presumably provided the name. In the eighteenth century the estate was owned by the Pollard family.

We are fortunate that the William Scruton archive contains a photographic illustration of Shuttleworth Hall which probably dates from the 1890s. The building is evidently a substantial farmhouse near Four Lane Ends, Bradford. This basic pattern of an older central housebody (of Tudor date perhaps) with two later projecting wings, seems to have been a common one in this area.

Returning to the plan we can see the domestic arrangements which, in addition to the house, a shed, mistal, barn and malt kiln. There were also extensive formal gardens.

As someone who is interested in field name maps like this are a most useful source of information. Most of the names you can see are easily explicable, but what about Hesp Field? Hesp or Esp is not uncommon in north Bradford: The name probably originates from OE aespe – the aspen.

What happened to the estate? Bradford Girls Grammar School, founded in 1875, has been located on Squire Lane since the mid-1930s, and occupies the land to the right of the watercourse on the original map. But what was the future of Shuttleworth Hall itself? English Heritage has material relating to the house as late as the mid-1950s, but the area is now covered by a modern estate.