As so often happens this plan is not dated, and its purpose is a matter of inference. I don’t think that there is much doubt that it is a sale plan, and the annotation suggests that the vendor is a ‘Miss Smith’. This is not perhaps the most easily identifiable of surnames and at present I have not identified her.

I originally studied the map because of the Wesleyan Chapel (and presumably Sunday School) which it includes.  I am trying to assemble as many map locations and contemporary photographs of Victorian places of worship in Bradford as I can. Slightly confusingly the chapel appears to be located on James Street, but there’s no doubt that the place of worship concerned is the Bethesda Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in West Lane. West Lane is the adjacent but unnamed roadway. The designation is not noted on the OS maps but is confirmed by a third map in the local studies library reserve collection, which also indicates that the adjacent building, probably a house, was the property of Miss Firth.

The chapel is not labelled as such in the 1850 6” OS map, although buildings are present on site which might well fit. Donald Raine, in his Wesleyan Methodism in Bradford: a scrapbook 1991, gives a construction date of 1824 for the chapel. This is confirmed by the 1851 Church Census. Raine also provides an image.

The Bethesda Chapel is present in the 1890 25” OS map of the area. This confirms the associated presence of a burial ground. The chapel is included on OS maps up to the 1930s but was demolished before the 1990s.

A landowner mentioned on the plans is Simeon Townend. In the 1851 census a man with this slightly unusual name was a worsted merchant living in Upper Kipping, Thornton.  William Cudworth records that in the nineteenth century the Lord of the Manor of Horton was Sir Watts Horton and then, after his death, his son in law Captain Charles Horton Rhyss assumed this role. He might well have had property in Thornton.

Thornton had several chapels in the Methodist tradition. There was a Free Methodist Chapel nearby in Egypt, and in the 1851 census a Primitive Methodist Chapel in Sackpit Lane, Thornton. At the moment I can’t identify the chapel, or Sackpit Lane although there is of course a Sapgate Lane. Finally in the 1851 census there is an institution named as ‘House of Refuge’ in Thornton. This was in the Reformed Wesleyan tradition and is linked with the name John Myers. I can’t find it yet, so research continues.