IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROSSE - Shipley

IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROSSE 

by 

Ian Watson

INTRODUCTION 

The main theme of this study is the story of a field. From the time when the field 

was first created, through its subsequent history, and up to the present time. 

The idea for this work into the origins of the street where I grew up, and its 

surrounding area, came from a decision by the newly formed Shipley Local History Society 

to encourage 

members to work of some specific project concerning the history of Shipley. 

The starting point of my research was the collection of Ordnance Survey maps 

held in Shipley and Bradford libraries. These maps, which cover a period from the 

middle of the nineteenth century up to the present time, gave me a rough breakdown 

of the chronological sequences of the development of the area in question. The 

earlier cartographic evidence relating to the history of this part of Shipley is limited 

to a copy of the 1815 Enclosure map, catalogued in Bradford Central Library as, 

‘Dixon’s Map of Shipley 1837’; and the Shipley Tithe Award Map of 1848 which is held 

in the Leeds Office of the West Yorkshire Archive Service. 

Much of the work on the evolution of this area has been done at the West Riding 

Registry of Deeds in the Wakefield office of the West Yorkshire Archive Service. This 

office holds most of the freehold land transactions for the West Riding of Yorkshire 

from 1704 to 1970, and it is a very valuable source of information for anyone interested in 

the ownership and development of land within the West Riding of Yorkshire. 

Other records which have proved useful include the records of the Shipley Local 

Board of Health, and the Shipley Urban District Council records, held at the Bradford 

office of the West Yorkshire Archive Service. 

Ian Watson 1989 

A rewriting of this study, over the last year, has allowed me to incorporate a limited 

amount of new evidence. In particular, the information from the survey relating to the 

1910 Finance Act, which is held at the National Archives, at Kew, London. 

The story of this plot of land is not complete. Limited research time, particularly 

for the period after the First World War, has left several gaps in the story. The 

research is, therefore, ongoing; and I would be very interested in receiving any information 

about this site and its houses, in order to add to my own information. 

Ian Watson 2006 

NOTES 

[A] [1]: The letters and numbers in square brackets within the body of the text refer to 

the plot numbers shown on the large plans of the site which are to be found on the 

following pages: 

WRRD - West Riding Registry of Deeds, Wakefield 

SLBH - Shipley Local Board of Health 

WYAS - West Yorkshire Archive Service 

The plans used are taken from Ordnance Survey Maps

Main sections of the whole site as referenced in the text

Sub-sections of the whole site as referenced in the text

CHAPTER ONE 

In terms of land usage, Shipley at the beginning of the nineteenth century was, predominantly, 

agricultural. ‘Industry’ in the township was limited to small-scale 

coal-mining in the Moorhead-Northcliffe area, and the quarrying of the good quality 

sandstone which underlies much of the district. By the late-1820s, an embryonic, 

industrialised textile manufacturing industry had started to evolve out of the homebased 

production of the past. 

Most of the population of the township, which in 1801 consisted of 1400 people, lived 

within the area around Westgate and the present Market Square; and the area to the 

south of Low Lane, now Briggate. The rest of the township consisted mainly of conventional 

farmland and woodland, along with two large areas of common land, the 

Low Moor and the High Moor. 

Shipley Low Moor started around the Crowgill area and ran between what is now 

Kirkgate and Saltaire Road, as far as the present Saltaire roundabout. The High Moor 

continued from this point as a broad corridor running up, what would become Moorhead 

Lane, to the top of the hill. It then spread out, across the steep rise of High 

Bank, to cover the whole of the hilltops as far as New Brighton and Noon Nick, high 

above Cottingley. 

These two moors seem to have consisted, for the most part, of poor quality scrubland, 

which was quite unsuitable for the farming skills of earlier times. As a result, 

they had survived the earlier enclosures of the better quality land, and had been left 

for generations past as the towns common lands. 

Historically, such commons were for the use of those owners and occupiers of land and 

property who held the rights of common through the deeds and leases of their properties 

- the value of these rights being related to the size of the land attached to a particular 

farm or house. While the legal guardian of the common land, the lord of the 

manor, had the rights to control the extraction the mineral and stone from the common 

- hence the early appearance of mining and quarrying throughout the two moors. 

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the pressure for the 

country to produce more of its own food, aided by recent improvements in the methods 

of agriculture, persuaded many landowners and farmers around the country 

that the transformation of the remaining common lands into conventional farmland 

would be financially viable. The result was the last great enclosure movement. 

In 1815 a Bill was presented to Parliament to allow for the enclosure of the two Shipley 

moors. The procedure took several years to completed, and it was not until June 

1825 that the enclosure award was finalised. 1 The enclosure surveyors also took advantage 

of the changes to improve several of the old lanes within the township. These 

included Moorhead Lane and its continuation, High Bank Lane. It was also during 

this period that the route of the Shipley section of the Bradford to Keighley Turnpike 

Road, which passed through part of the newly enclosed land, was being determined 

by the turnpike surveyors. 

The new fields which were created by the enclosure of the moors were allocated 

to the various owners and lessees of the properties who had rights of common, in proportion 

to those rights. This meant, in effect, that the large landowners received the 

largest amounts of the new farmland, while those whose rights came from the occupa- 

1

tion of a small cottage, received strips of only a few square yards of land, all of which 

were grouped together on a site on the north side of the Crowgill quarry. These, being 

of little practical use to their individual owners, were quickly sold and amalgamated 

into larger plots. 

The lord of the manor of Shipley at the time of the enclosure survey was the Rev. 

Cyril Jackson, Dean of Christ Church College, Oxford, who was also the largest landowner 

in the township. He died in 1819, and by the time of the award in 1825, the lord 

of the manor was John Wilmer Field of Heaton Hall. He received 1/16 of the former 

common as his right as the lord of the manor. This would appear to have been a national 

standard. 2 

Mr. Field also received additional land in his right as a conventional landowner. In all 

he was given a total of 79 acres out the 278 acres enclosed. As with the cases of the 

other large awards, the land granted to Mr. Field was spread over the whole of the enclosure 

zone. This resulted in him receiving some plots of land near to the centre of 

town and some within the Moorhead area. 

Among the various plots allocated to Mr. Field was the land that this study is concerned 

with. Situated at the eastern junction of the new Moorhead Lane and the Bradford-Keighley 

Turnpike, this parcel of ground was originally made into a field of just 

over 6 acres. This was later subdivided into three fields, which were named: Low 

Moor Field, High Moor Field and Cragg Field. The names of the first two fields are significant, 

in that they suggest that this area formed part of the boundary between the 

Shipley High Moor and Shipley Low Moor. The name, ‘Cragg Field’ suggests that there 

was an outcrop of rock on the site. And it was the existence of, what can be assumed to 

have been, good quality sandstone, that would dictate the future of this site over the 

next few decades. 

Fields created at the time of the enclosures 

Fields created at the time of the enclosures 

Well before this time, the lord of the manor of Shipley had been an absentee landlord. 

As a result, the manor house, which stood on the site of the present Town Hall, 

had become the home of the farmer of the manor’s main farm, which operated under 

2

the name of the Over Hall Farm. With the addition of the newly enclosed lands, this 

farm, which was tenanted by a Mr Jonas Bradley, at the time of the Tithe Award of 

1845, was over 100 acres. By 1866, this large farm had been split up. The High Moor 

and Low Moor fields were left in Over Hall Farm, now run by Samuel Bradley, while 

Cragg Field was leased to another farmer, Henry Dibb. 3 

It would appear that for forty years or so after the enclosure, these fields were 

mainly used for conventional agricultural purposes. There is little specific information 

available, but the Tithe Award of 1845 shows the Low Moor and Cragg fields as 

meadow, while High Moor Field is arable. There are no details on the type of arable 

crop growing in this field but it could have been oats, or it could have been a root crop, 

as these were also classed as arable. If it was oats it can be assumed that this was a oneoff 

crop, as the land in this area is not suitable for cereal growing. Information from 

other parts of Airedale suggest that when a field was used for arable it was necessary to 

leave it fallow for the next eight years before the land could be used for such purposes 

again. 4 

It is possible, and even probable, that at some time after the Tithe survey stone 

quarrying commenced within these fields. What is known, is that a deed of 1857, between 

the Earl of Rosse, who was lord of the manor at this time, and Titus Salt, gave 

Salt the right to quarry stone on the Earl’s land. 5 Specific fields are not named 

in the deed, but as there is some circumstantial evidence, from old maps, that there 

had been quarrying within these fields prior to the building work starting, it is more than 

likely that at least some stone from these fields was used to build the model village. 

In 1856 Bradford acquired the right to build a new reservoir at Barden in Wharfedale, 

in order to provide more fresh water for their expanding town. A pipeline was laid from 

Barden down into Wharfedale, then all the way across Ilkley Moor to Silsden. From 

there it came along the valley side and then down through Shipley Glen and across the 

River Aire - on pipes that can still be seen - and then up Hirst Lane. It then ran diagonally 

across Low Moor field and Cragg Field, before passing into the hills of Northcliffe 

and then up into Heaton Reservoir. The Barden Viaduct, as the pipeline was called, was 

opened in 1860. 6 

In October 1868 the Bradford to Keighley Turnpike Trust, who until this time had 

owned and managed the road running past this site, was wound up, and control of the road, 

within the Shipley boundaries, passed to the Shipley Local Board of Health, the forerunner 

of the Urban District Council. 7 

1 Chambers J.D. & Mingay G.E. (1966) The Agricultural Revolution, Batsford, London, 

& WRRD Enclosure Award B382 : The Shipley Enclosure Act - 55 Geo.III 1815: 

2 Hammond J.L.& B. (1911) (Reprint 1987) The Village Labourer 1760-1832, Allen Sutton Publishing 

3 WRRD Deed ZL 255 290 - A survey of the Rosse Estates of Shipley and Heaton 

4 National Archives: IR18 12476Cononley Tithe File: 

5 WRRD : TW 175 201 - Lease to Titus Salt from the Earl of Rosse for minerals and stone 

6 Richardson C. (2002) The Bradford Region, Bradford Libraries Archives and Information Services 

7 WYAS Bradford - SLBH Minutes : 23 October 1868 

3

CHAPTER TWO 

Like many other towns in the increasingly industrialised West Riding, the population of 

Shipley had started to grow quite rapidly from the middle decades of the 19th century. 

This was fuelled, in the main, by an expansion in the levels of textile manufacturing 

production. The earliest textile mills in the town had been built close to the town centre, 

where most of the people lived. Later mills were built further out, on what are now 

called, ‘green field sites’. The largest such development in Shipley was Titus Salt’s 

Mill and the village of Saltaire. While the house building in Saltaire was more or less 

completed by the late 1860s, the population of Shipley which had increased from just 

over 3,000 in 1851 to 10,000 by 1869, was still increasing, and there was still a demand 

for more houses. 

It can be seen that this expansion of industrialised building only came about due to the 

aristocratic/gentry landowners of Shipley: the Rosses, the Crompton-Stansfields and the 

Wainmans, coming to recognise that their land in Shipley had greater value as building 

land than as agricultural land. The result was the release of a considerable amount of 

this land for industrial premises and house building. 

One of the sites chosen for disposal by the Rosses was the land at the bottom of Moorhead 

Lane. The three fields were divided into various blocks, and negotiations commenced 

concerning their development. 

The basic plots 

The first reference to any building on these three fields is in early 1869, when Charles 

Edwin Rhodes submitted a planning application to the Shipley Local Board of Health for 

the construction of a Public House at the bottom of High Bank Lane [Moorhead Lane]. 

This was approved on the 11 th May. However, it was not until October 1869 that the 

Countess of Rosse finalised the sale of the plot of land of 3,100 sq yds, to Mr. Rhodes 

[A]. 

Charles Edwin Rhodes was the eldest son of Edwin Rhodes, a tin-plate worker from 

4

Kirkstall, who had settled in Shipley in the mid-1840s. Edwin had married into the 

Murgatroyd family, who were behind the 1858 development of Murgatroyd Street, off Saltaire 

Road. 

Charles Edwin had started out as a butcher, in a shop run by his uncle Jonas, at the 

end of Murgatroyd Street. By the late 1860s he had become a beerhouse keeper on the 

same site. The beerhouse operated under the name of The Beehive. In later years 

Charles Edwin would return to Murgatroyd Street as the landlord of the new Beehive 

Hotel - now The Shipley Pride. 

Charles Edwin had three brothers: Thomas, William and Murgatroyd. Thomas and 

William were builders, and it was their firm, trading as ‘Rhodes Brothers’ who would 

do most of the building work on this site over the next few decades. 

Immediately after his purchase, Charles Edwin Rhodes sold two plots of land situated 

behind the proposed new pub. The first plot was sold for £90 to John Baxter, a baker, 

who built No’s 2 and 4 Moorhead Lane [2]. Mr. Baxter lived at No. 2, and, according to 

tradition, used the cellar as a bake house where he baked the local delicacy, havercakes. 

8 The other plot was sold to Thompson Hudson, a Warp Dresser, who built No’s 

2a and 4a Queen’s Road [3]. Rhodes then sold the plot of land to the south of these 

houses to his uncle, Jonas Murgatroyd [4]. 

The first buildings 

In November 1869, Shipley Local Board approved a plan for the development of the remaining 

part of the three fields, ‘near Four Lane Ends’. The application was made 

by a firm of Bradford surveyors, Messrs Smith and Gotthart, who were the local 

land agents for the widowed Countess of Rosse, the former Mary Wilmer Field of 

Heaton Hall, who by this time had retaken the title of lord of the manor of Shipley 

following the death of her husband. The application was successful. The fields were 

divided into sections, and preparations for the development of the land commenced. 

Four streets, each 10 yds wide, were partially laid down running at right angles to the 

Bradford to Keighley Road, and roughly parallel to Moorhead Lane. They were given 

the names of: Queen’s Road, Ferrand Road, Oastler Road and Ashley Road. Queen’s 

5

Road was, presumably, named after Queen Victoria. The others were named after: 

W.B. Ferrand of St. Ives, Bingley; Richard Oastler, ‘The Factory King’; and the 7th 

Earl of Shaftesbury whose family name was Ashley. The common denominator between 

these three men was that they had all been involved, in one way or another, with the 

reforms of the child labour laws during the earlier years of the century. It is probable 

that the Rosse family themselves picked these names. Being Anglican Tories, but 

social liberals, it is more than likely that the Rosses would also have been supporters 

of such reforms. 9 Another street was planned to run between Queen’s Road 

and Moorhead Lane. This was to be called Fielden Street, after John Fielden, the MP for 

Todmorden, who was another supporter of the Ten Hours Movement. 10 However, this 

street was never developed and is now included in the gardens of Gleview Terrace. 

At the time it was built, the new pub, ‘The Rosse Hotel’, would have looked quite isolated, 

as there was nothing on this south side of the road for a long way in either direction. 

It was, however, just across the road from ‘dry’ Saltaire, and so had a ready 

made ‘clientele’ on the doorstep. The new landlord could also expect a regular increase 

in customers from the new houses that would be built by his brothers in the near future. 

During the same period that the ‘Rosse’ was being built, another building was going 

up at the opposite end of the site. In 1870, the Countess of Rosse sold 853 sq yds of 

land to a Jabez Copley, a resident of Saltaire, who proceeded to build a grocers shop on 

part of the plot [F & 6]. He had earlier been given planning permission for quite a large 

building project within these fields, which had included many houses and shops, but 

they were never built, and this one shop was the only work he did on the site. 

8 Information given by Mrs Gill 2, Moorhead Lane (1987) 

9 Davison D.H. (1989) Impressions of an Irish Countess, The Birr Scientific Heritage Foundation, Birr, 

Ireland 

10 Gill G.J. The Ten Hour Parson quoted in Hammond J.L. & B (1911) (Reprint 1987) The 

Town Labourer 1760-1832, Allen Sutton Publishing 

6

CHAPTER THREE 

Prior to fairly recent times, the vast majority of houses occupied by the working classes, 

as well as many occupied by the lower middle classes, were rented rather than being 

owned outright. There was, however, one way for working class people of the nineteenth 

century to buy their own homes and that was through the creation of a building 

club. 11 

In September 1871, the Countess of Rosse sold 2,254 square yards of land, between 

Queen’s Road and Moorhead Lane, to a group of men who called themselves ‘The Saltaire 

Building Club’ [B]. The deed of sale was signed by the representatives of the club: 

Amos Booth, a bookkeeper of Saltaire and Christopher Althorp, a foreman. They in turn 

sold the plots of land to the individual members of the club, who then took out mortgages 

with the Bradford Equitable Building Society. Nine through terraced houses 

were built for the new owners, among whom were 3 overlookers, 2 woolsorters, and a 

gardener. The new row, with a nice outlook over to Shipley Glen, was, appropriately, 

called Glenview Terrace. The houses were originally built with outside privies (ash 

pitts ?) but in 1883 they were converted to W.C’s. 

A few years later, in 1874, the Countess of Rosse sold 10,240 sq yds of land, running 

from the middle of Queen’s Road to the middle of Oastler Road, to Rhodes Bros. [D]. 

The first houses - c.1874 

The visual evidence of surviving housing projects from the late nineteenth and early 

twentieth centuries, along with the records of the West Riding Registry of Deeds, seems 

to suggest that it was the normal practice during this period for speculative builders to 

develop their sites piecemeal. The tradition seems to have been to borrow money from a 

private individual or a building society, and then build a short row of houses. They 

would then be sold, and the process would start all over again with another small block being 

developed. It would also appear to have been normal in such small-scale developments 

for the various blocks to be of different sizes and designs. The Oastler-Ferrand 

Road development is a classic example of this. 

7

The first block of houses to be built on the site was a set of 9 small, cottage-type, backto-back 

houses. Each house was fronted by a small yard which housed a privy and a 

coalhouse. In addition, there were two shops fronting onto Bradford and Keighley Road 

[8]. The shop at the junction with Oastler Road was opened as a grocers shop and offlicense, 

and continued in this trade, through various owners and tenants, right up 

until the demolition of the site 95 years later. 

This block was part of the Rhodes brother’s property that came under the control 

of their trustees at the time of the firms bankruptcy in 1882. The trustees then appear 

to have mortgaged this property to the trustees of another Shipley builder, William 

Ives. 

1877 

The 7 houses and 2 shops were then sold, by the Ives Trustees, to the trustees of the 

Baildon Branch of the Ancient Order of Foresters, for £1605 in 1886. The Foresters 

held onto the property until 1920, when they sold the entire block to James Edgar Kay, 

who ran a small plumbing business from 54 Bingley Road, which was the shop at the 

corner of Ferrand Road and Bingley Road. He and his heirs continued to own this 

property until the compulsory purchase of the site in 1967. 

1876 saw a further batch of 7 houses built in Oastler and Ferrand Roads [11]. 

Planning permission was also given for another block of 6 houses adjoining [23], but 

these were not built until 1897. This new block, which was built with the aid of a 

mortgage taken out by Mrs Rhodes, was divided from the earlier block by the line of 

the Barden Conduit. These houses were also much larger than the earlier block below 

them. Due to the lie of the land at this spot, the living rooms were raised well above 

street level, and the entrance to the houses was via a flight of steps. This allowed 

enough space underneath the main room for a large cellar-kitchen. In 1890 Mrs Rhodes 

sold this block to Henry and Hannah Moore of Keighley. They in turn sold it to the 

Misses Brown of Keighley in 1895. In 1915 the block was sold to James E. Sutcliffe, a 

house furnisher of Leeds Road, Windhill, for £1150. 

Planning permission for the Queen’s Road-Ferrand Road site was also given in 1874. A 

long block of 34 back-to-back houses was then built by Rhodes [9]. Two larger houses, No’s 

8

35 Ferrand Road and 18 Queen’s Road, were added on to the end of this row in 1875 

[12]. They were bought by Mr. Thomas Akam, a Bradford stuff merchant in 1877. 

He paid for them with a mortgage of £600 taken out with a private mortgagee, Mr. 

Jonathan Wilkinson. 

In November 1875, the Rhodes brothers decided, for some unknown reason, to split up 

their business partnership in this particular project, and a Deed of Partition was drawn 

up. 12 Thomas and William Rhodes took 7,270 sq yds out of the 10,240 sq yds which had 

been sold to the brothers by the Countess of Rosse in 1874. This being the northern end 

of the Queen’s/Ferrand Road plot, and from the east side of Ferrand Road to the west 

side of Oastler Road [8,11,12,15,23,24,25]. 

Charles Edwin Rhodes took the remaining 2,969 sq yds, between Queen’s Road and 

Ferrand Road, which was occupied by the block of 32 back-to-backs which the firm had 

only recently built [9]. In 1876, Charles Edwin sold all these houses to the Bradford 

Third Equitable Benefit Building Society, who then rented the houses out. In 1890 the 

Building Society sold the top four houses in the block to Mr. William Wade, a spinning 

overlooker of 60, Titus Street, Saltaire [9a]. In 1893 they sold the remaining 30 

houses to Mr. John LaPage, a yarn agent of Moorhead Villas. He bought them with 

a £3200 mortgage. 

After his death the Trustees of Mr. LaPage sold the houses to C.F. Taylor’s Ltd. for 

£4750. Sometime after 1910, the seventeen houses in Ferrand Road were re-numbered. 

No. 3, at the north end became No. 15, and the top house changed from No. 35 to No. 

49. 

It was around this same time that the Local Board gave permission for the firm of 

Rhodes Bros. to build a Roller-skating rink. The rink is described in the planning 

records as, “a temporary wooden structure between Oastler and Ashley Roads to be 

known as the Shipley and Saltaire Skating Rink”. In fact the rink was constructed on the 

site of a former quarry opposite the top of Victoria Road. It was opened on the 1st July 

1876 as the ‘Victoria Park Skating Rink’, and was managed by the Rhodes’ brother-inlaw, 

John Burgess. 13 At the time of writing, there are no details as to how long this rink 

operated, but it would appear that it was not there for very long, as it does not appear 

on any map of the period. 

In 1877, Thomas and William Rhodes bought the remaining undeveloped part of the 

site from the Countess of Rosse. It consisted of an area of 10,770 sq yds, running 

from the centre of Oastler Road, eastward to the old field boundaries [E]. The brothers 

immediately sold off one small section in Ashley Road to a firm of quarry owners called 

John and William Kay [13]. 

The Kays took out a mortgage with the Bradford 2nd Equitable Benefit Building Society 

and obtained permission from the Local Board to build 3 cottages and a stable in 

Ashley Road; another house was added to the block sometime later. In 1891 another 

four houses were built on the site of the old stables, and separated from the first block 

by a passage. In 1906 these eight houses were bought for £800 by Mary Hannah 

Brooksbank, the wife of Mr Albert Brooksbank. These houses, like the block adjoining, 

[14] and those opposite, [17] shared a lavatory with the house behind them. This 

required those occupiers of the houses fronting the street to walk through the passage, 

which was made between every two houses along the road, every time they required the 

lavatory. Such houses were known as ’tunnel backs’. 

9

The Rhodes’ firm received permission for another block of 8 back-to backs to be built in 

Ashley Road in 1878 [14]. This was on a plot abutting onto the Kay’s property [13]. 

These houses, along with some properties in Bromley Road and Otley Road, which 

they owned, were mortgaged to Dr. John Terry, a Surgeon of Bradford. A second mortgage 

was then taken out to James Robert Singleton a Bradford timber merchant. The 

bankruptcy of the brothers, in 1882, [see below] was probably the reason for them failing 

to repay the mortgage, because in 1896 Mr Singleton sold these houses, along 

with others in Bromley Road, to Ferguson Marshall Jowett, formerly the landlord of 

the Junction Inn, Shipley. In 1902 Mr Jowett bought the other mortgage from Dr. 

Terry. Mr Jowett himself then took out a mortgage on all this property for £2000, repayable 

at £4 5s % per annum. He died in 1919 and the heirs of his estate sold the 

houses in Ashley Road to Edith Clough of Ivy Grove for £1000. 

In 1877 permission was given to the Rhodes firm for the erection of a temporary 

wooden building on Bingley Road, for the use of the Bradford Coffee Tavern. The 

idea behind the Coffee Taverns was to provide a non-alcoholic drinking establishment 

as an alternative to the public house; and was part of the on-going campaign, during this 

period, to encourage people to give up the ‘demon drink’. The precise location of this 

building is not yet known, as the Coffee Tavern does not appear in any of the trade 

directories of that time. However, if the tavern ever opened, it was probably at the junction 

of Ferrand and Bingley Roads, as there was a wooden building on this site around 

about this date. 

It would appear that the dispute of 1875, which had cause the break-up of the family 

business, worsened over the years. In July 1881, William and Murgatroyd Rhodes were 

charged with an assault on a bailiff, Edward Frost, who was attempting to retrieve 

goods from Murgatroyd, on behalf of their brother, Thomas. Thomas’s wife, Elizabeth 

Ann, was also assaulted in the mêlée. The full details of the family quarrel were not 

disclosed in court, but William was fined 20 shillings, i.e. £1. 14 

In spite of their problems, the firm of Rhodes Brothers Ltd. remained very active 

as building contractors throughout this period. Among their other Shipley projects 

were houses in Bromley Road (1877); Dallam Road (1881); and the Salvation 

Army Citadel in Rhodes Place (1893). They also had several contracts from the county authorities, 

for building work on various schools throughout the West Riding; and from 

railway companies for various station buildings. 15 

In the 1881 census, Thomas and Elizabeth Ann Rhodes are shown to be living at 11, 

Oastler Road, which was the largest house within this block [11]. The census also shows 

Thomas at this time to be a, ‘Contractor - employing 60 men and 20 boys’. The Rhodes’ 

seem to have moved house quite often. Over the years, they lived in many of the houses 

that they had built within this area. At the time of his death, in 1917, Thomas was residing 

at No. 4 Robinson Street [27], which backed onto the houses facing Ashley Road. 

In the early years of this building project, the Rhodes firm had their base at the northern 

end of the Queen’s Rd/Ferrand Rd site, fronting Bingley Road [15]. The evidence 

for this comes from a threatened prosecution from the Local Board who were reacting 

to a complaint about the amount of dirty smoke coming from their engine chimney (a 

steam crane?) in their builders yard. 16 But later, in 1877, they moved to new premises, 

in a worked-out quarry at the top of Oastler Road, which would be their main base for 

the next forty years [21]. They then sold the vacated site to Mr John Burgess, their 

10

other-in-law, who in turn, sold it to Mr Joseph Greenwood of Oxenhope. Two 

houses were built adjoining the existing row [15a], while the rest of the site was kept for 

stabling and workshops. Later on these buildings would be used by a joiner and a blacksmith, 

while in the latter years they were used as garages for various local firms. 

In 1886 Mr Greenwood sold this plot to Mr Benjamin Hargreaves, a Grocer and Confectioner, 

who built a row of wooden shops facing onto the main road. The early occupiers 

of these shops included a photographer and a greengrocer. In 1921, these shops, 

no’s 58-62 Bingley Road, were bought by James E. Kay, the founder of the firm of 

plumbers and electricians, in partnership with a Mr Walter Minakin. Miss Edith 

Minakin, possibly his sister, ran the sweetshop until her death. In 1944, Mr Percy 

Warne leased the shop from Mr Minakin and it became part of the ‘Anne’s of Saltaire’ 

chain of shops. 

This shop is the last remaining example of a range of wooden shops which had been constructed 

on Bingley Road during the early years. The shop lies adjacent to the Barden 

Conduit, and the writer of this study has been given to understand that, in the event of 

an emergency, the water authorities have the right to demolish the shop at only a few 

hours notice in order to get to the pipes. 

The Moorhead Lane Tramshed 

The land at the top of Oastler Road [21], on which the brothers had built their new 

workshops in 1877, had been mortgaged, by Mrs Rhodes to the Bradford Old Bank 

as security for her husbands debts. In 1907 this bank got into financial difficulties 

and ceased trading. Their affairs, which included the Rhodes mortgage, were taken 

over by the Counties Bank. However, it was only a few years later when this bank itself 

was wound up, and, in 1916, the deeds and mortgages passed to their liquidators, The 

United Counties Bank. 

The new mortgagees allowed Mrs Rhodes, in partnership with a timber merchant called 

Denby Drake, to pay off the mortgage, and Mr Drake ran the workshops as the Victory 

Saw Mills. The business didn’t thrive and by 1923 the firm was under the control of the 

Receivers. The workshops were then bought by William Stephenson, a joiner who 

had been running his business from a shop that he had built in Saltaire Road just be- 

11

hind the Salts Hospital. This building was later owned by Jefferies Motorcycles, and it is 

still a motorcycle showroom to this day. The firm of Stephenson’s, operating as joiners 

and undertakers, remained on this Oastler Road site until the demolition in the 1960s. 

In 1881, a tramway promoter from Southport, by the name of Joseph Speight, applied 

to the Shipley Local Board for permission to build and run a horse-drawn tram service 

along Saltaire Road. 17 The tramline was to start by the Fox and Hounds public house in 

Commercial Street, and terminate on the Bradford to Keighley Road, just passed the 

present roundabout. It was also decided to build a tramshed nearby to house the cars 

and horses. This was built on a plot of land a little way up Moorhead Lane [4]. The 

buildings consisted of a shed for four cars, and stables for twenty horses. A cottage was 

also built on the site. 

Work started on the new line in March 1882, but a row with the labour force over 

hours and conditions caused an immediate strike. The men had been contracted for a 

5½ day week, from 7.00 am to 5.30 pm weekdays, and until 12 noon on Saturday. The 

wages for the work was to be 3 shillings (15 pence) per hour. The management wanted 

the men to start an hour earlier in the morning and work until 12.30 pm on Saturday, 

as well as providing their own shovels. However, the dispute was soon settled, and 

work was resumed. The line opened on 2nd August 1882, though it was not a success. 

Consequently, in 1884, it was sold to a Richard Maurice Jones from Liverpool, 

described in early deeds as a Ironmonger, but later as a Tramway Proprietor. In 

1885 the line was taken over by the Bradford and District Steam Tramway Company. 

The new company had great difficulty in running the line and had to be given a 

three months extension by the Shipley Local board, to try and make it viable. They 

continued to run the line for the next few years, though for a period of three months in 

1888 the trams stopped running again. 18 

By 1891 the Local Board was negotiating with this company to try and stop them closing 

the line down. Finally, in 1893, the Shipley Local Board bought the line and the 

Moorhead Lane Depot for £1000 and operated it themselves for a short time, before 

selling out to the Bradford Tramways and Omnibus Company. In 1906, following the 

building of a new, large, tramshed, just across the road from the Rosse Hotel in 1904, 

the old shed became a garage run by the Rosse Motor Car & Cycle Company. This firm 

went into liquidation in 1909 and the building was taken over by the Thornton Engineering 

Company. Since that time, this building has changed hands several times, 

though nearly always for the purposes of light engineering products. 

11 Caffyn, L. (1986) Workers’ Housing in West Yorkshire 1750-1920. RCHM, London HMSO 

12 WRRD - 1875 735 694 764 : Deed of partition for Rhodes Brothers Ltd. 

13 WYAS Bradford : Shipley Local Board Building Plan No. 581 1876; plus The Shipley & Saltaire 

Times: July 

1876. : 

The London Gazette of 21st March 1879 shows that the partnership of Edward Cordingley, John Thomas 

Peacock and Thomas Rhodes, carrying on a business known as the ‘Shipley and Saltaire Skating 

Rink Company’ was dissolved by mutual consent. 

14 The Shipley & Saltaire Times : 9 th July 1881 

15 Pike W.T. (1897) A Descriptive Account of Bradford and Shipley Illustrated 

16 WYAS Bradford - SLBH Minutes 1 st May 1877 

17 WYAS Bradford: BMT/SH/6/1 

18 Shipley and Saltaire Times : March 4th 1882 & August 5th 1882 

& Coates, D.M.(1984) Bradford City Tramways 1882-1950, Wyvern Publications 

12

CHAPTER FOUR 

In early 1882 the firm of Rhodes Brothers appears to have got into financial difficulties. 

At the time there was a depression in the general economy, and, locally, a reduction in 

house prices and rentals, due to too many houses coming onto the market. 19 As a result, 

many speculative builders, such as the Rhodes’ firm, found that their returns were 

not enough to cover their mortgages and other debts, and their creditors moved in. 

In March of that year, at a hearing in the Bradford County Court, a special resolution 

was passed, under the Bankruptcy Act. It called for the liquidation of the assets of 

the firm of ‘Rhodes Brothers, operating as builders, quarry owners and stone merchants 

at Oastler Road and the Midland Station, Shipley’. 20 

The court appointed a charted accountant, James Clough Wright, to manage the affairs 

of the firm. At a meeting of the creditors, called at Leuchers Restaurant in Darley 

Street, Bradford, on the 22nd March 1882, it was disclosed that the liabilities of the 

firm was £1922 6s 7d, while the assets were £535. The creditors resolved to liquidate 

the company. The assets of the firm, which included the land between Queen’s Road 

and Ashley Road, as well as land in Bromley Road, Hirstwood and Rosse Street, were 

handed over to a group of trustees. 21 All their properties were then, apparently, taken 

over by the Bradford Commercial Joint Stock Banking Company who administered 

them. 

In spite of the bankruptcy and liquidation, the firm of Rhodes Brothers appear to have 

continued in business. Though, from this time on, all records relating to the firm are in 

the name of Elizabeth Ann Rhodes, the wife of Thomas. It can be assumed that this was 

a technicality, as the records show that Thomas, while, presumably, not able to front his 

business legally, certainly continued to operate as a builder after this time. 

It was also in 1882 that the Shipley Local Board changed the names of several of the 

roads in Shipley. Among them was the Bradford and Keighley Road, which was divided 

into two sections. That part to the east of the ‘Ring O’ Bells’ was re-named, Bradford 

Road; while the road to the west of the pub, which included the section running 

past our site, was to be called, Bingley Road. 

In 1883, a major health scare, in the form of cholera, struck Shipley and the surrounding 

area. As a result, the authorities in Shipley started to take a renewed interest in the 

general standard of health in the town. An urgent survey was carried out by the Medical 

Officer of Health into the state of the town’s sanitation facilities. The resulting recommendations 

were then presented to the Shipley Board. Stricter enforcement of the rules 

governing the standards and maintenance of ash-pits and privies followed. One of the 

initiatives to come out of this scare was to post warning notices about the danger of 

disease on all ash-pit doors in the town. There was also a crackdown on breaches of basic 

public health standards. 

Among the first to come to the attention of the authorities, following the introduction 

of this new hard line, was the Bradford Third Equitable Building Society. In June 

1884 the Shipley Local Board ordered the society to provide traps, and repair defective 

drainage in their houses in Queen’s and Ferrand Roads. A month later while the town 

was in the middle of a drought they were told to stop the waste of water in the street. In 

13

December of the same year they were told to keep their w.c’s in good repair, and when 

the repairs were not done within the specified time they were threatened with prosecution. 

22 

All the evidence above suggests that, in order to maintain standards, the local authorities 

had to keep a continual check on the housing situation throughout the town. Even 

when it involved, what might be assumed to have been, a respectable business such 

as a building society. 

In 1885, the Bradford Commercial Joint Stock Banking Company sold a plot of land at 

the junction of Ashley and Bingley Roads to the Windhill Independent Co-operative Society 

[16]. Permission was then given by the Local Board for the building of two shops 

and three houses on the site. The Ordnance Survey map of 1889, shows that the three 

houses, two in Ashley Road, and one fronting onto Bingley Road, were built first. Some 

time later, the Bingley Road house was converted into a shop, and an additional building 

was added to its side. The whole block then consisted of: a butchers, a grocers and a 

drapers. They survived as such until the demolition in the 1960s, albeit with the grocer’s 

having been converted into one of the new self-service ‘supermarkets’, not too 

long before the demolition. 

Over the next few years things seem to have improved for the Rhodes firm. Elizabeth 

Ann Rhodes started to buy back much of the land taken under the control of the Bradford 

Commercial Bank at the time of the bankruptcy. In January 1890 Mrs Rhodes, operating 

as Rhodes Brothers, received permission to build a block of 8 back-to-back 

houses in Ashley Road, just behind the Co-op [17]. A year later the firm built a second 

block of 7 houses adjoining [18]. The houses were financed by a mortgage for 

£1000 taken out with Mr Robinson Bramley of Outwood Hall, Wakefield. 

These houses were different from earlier ones that the firm had built, in that the ‘back’ 

houses faced into an enclosed yard. Prior to this time all the houses constructed on this 

site had faced out onto their own streets, with the majority of the houses having their 

own yard and lavatory. In this particular case, each pair of houses, front and back, had to 

share a lavatory, as, indeed, did those who lived on the opposite side of Ashley Road. Presumably, 

these houses were designed for tenants who required a lower rental accommodation 

than those who took the earlier houses [see below]. 

The lavatory blocks were situated within the enclosed yard, and were sited only a few 

feet away from the houses they were to serve. The lavatories themselves were below 

ground level and were accessed by a flight of steps. 

On completion, in 1891, both blocks of houses were sold to Mary Hannah Brooksbank, 

the wife of Alfred Brooksbank of Shipley. Mrs Brooksbanks sold all her Ashley Road 

properties to Sir Titus Salt Bart and Sons Ltd. in 1920, at a time when several textile 

mills were expanding their housing interests. Elizabeth Ann Rhodes also sold another 

small block, [29], to the Saltaire firm at the same time. 

Following her sale to Mrs Brooksbank, Elizabeth Ann Rhodes bought another plot 

from the Bradford Commercial Joint Stock Bank, an area of 1600 sq yds, bounded by Oastler 

and Bingley Roads [19,20]. A row of five wooden shops were erected on that part 

of the site fronting Bingley Road [19]. Among the first occupants of these shops was a 

confectioner, a hairdresser and a plumber. There was also a small stable at the Oastler 

Road end. Behind these shops were the remains of an old quarry. This land was never 

developed and remained as waste land until the time of the modern re-development. 

14

Following her purchase, Mrs Rhodes took out a mortgage in order to build a block 

of 8 back-to-back houses on the southern part of the site [20]. This block included 4 

houses fronting onto Oastler Road and 5 houses facing into a communal back yard. 

The Co-op Buildings 

These houses faced across the yard to the ‘back’ houses in Ashley Road [17,18]. The 

houses in this block, like the ones opposite them had shared toilets. The one exception 

to this was No. 10 Oastler Road, which, due to the angle of the design, was larger 

than the others, and being the odd one out, had its own private, outside, lavatory. All 

these ‘back’ houses had a small garden plot and there was a reasonable amount of space 

between the houses and the wall dividing the Oastler Road houses from the Ashley 

Road ones, for such things as hanging out the washing. 

These houses were sold by Mrs Rhodes in 1897. They were bought by a Mr Anderson 

Rhodes ( no relation) who ran the butchers shop at the corner of Katherine Street in 

Saltaire. The sale also included the vacant land at the bottom of Oastler Road and the 

wooden shops that faced onto Bingley Road. At the same time, Anderson Rhodes also 

bought the small block of houses in Queen’s Road situated just behind the Rosse Hotel [3]. 

When he died in 1909, Anderson Rhodes left all his property to his two sons and one 

daughter. When they decided to sell their Oastler Road property in 1925, the wooden 

shops, and the spare land behind [19], went to the Windhill Co-operative Society, who 

had the buildings next door; while the 9 houses were sold to a relative, Mr Fred Shuttleworth 

of Sherwood Grove. These houses later passed to another member of the family, a 

Mrs Lillian Shepherd. When she sold No. 4 Oastler Road to its occupier Mr Dennis 

Crabtree, in 1947, the deed of sale included a condition allowing him to continue sharing 

the outside toilet with the house at his back, No. 8. 

In 1952, the other 8 houses were sold to Mrs Annie Sanderson of Lidget Green for 

£1500. Over the next few years she sold No’s 2, 8 and 12 to individual occupiers. But due to 

the inability of the remaining tenants to buy their homes, the other 5 houses - 

6,10,14,16,18, were kept as rented property until the council bought them in 1969. 

The final development on the Ferrand and Oastler Roads plot, consisted of 7 houses in 

15

each street. They were constructed in 1896 [23,24,25]. The proceeds from the sale of 

these properties went to paying off the debts owing to the Yorkshire Banking Company. 

Block [23] was sold to Mr Samuel Sheard of Earl Street, who bought them with a 

mortgage of £780. These houses passed through several owners over the years, but by 

the beginning of the second world war they were all owned by their individual occupiers. 

Block [24] was bought by Samuel Whittingham, an overlooker. He sold No. 27 Oastler 

Road and No. 28 Ferrand Road before the turn of the century, but still had the other 

four houses at the time of his death in 1942. The last two houses in the block [25] were 

sold to a Lily Grange of Westcliffe Road, who sold them to James E. Kay, the plumber, 

in 1910. 

All of the above, can be taken as evidence of the widespread habit of relatively ordinary 

people investing in property, albeit on a fairly small scale, at the turn of the nineteenth 

and twentieth centuries. 

By the late 1880’s the population of Shipley had risen quite considerably. One particular 

effect of this increase was felt in the parish church of St. Paul’s in Kirkgate. The 

church could only seat 1,200 people, and was unable to provide for the growing number of 

potential new worshipers in the town. Sometime around 1888, a group was formed to organise 

the funding for a new Anglican church to cater for the overflow. 

Things moved quite slowly for a few years, until in 1891, when Mr Joseph Poole, of 

Moorhead Villas, left £500 in his will towards the cost of building the new church. 

A short time later a further gift of £500, from Mr George Knowles of Hollin Hall, at 

the top of Moorhead Lane, was given to be used for the purchase of a suitable site. The 

trustees approached the Earl of Rosse about a plot of land in Moorhead Lane. He 

agreed to sell the land for £600. The trustees only had the original £500, but after some 

negotiation the Earl decided to give the trustees £100 himself. In May 1892 the trustees 

purchased the plot of 3320 sq yds [C-22]. They then started the process of raising more 

funds in order to start the actual building. 

The foundation stone of the Church Hall, the first building to go up on the site, was 

laid in 1893, and plans for the church itself were drawn up. It was to be named in honour 

of St. Peter, and the cost of building it was estimated at £6,000. It took considerable 

time to raise the money required and the foundation stone of the church was not 

laid until 1907. The new church was finally consecrated by the Bishop of Ripon in 

1909. 

The original 1904 architects drawing shows the vicarage attached to the church on the 

southwest corner, in what is now the car park. 23 For some reason this was not built. 

And, until the vicarage on the opposite side of Moorhead Lane to the church was purchased 

in 1923, the vicar lived at Highfield House, a little further up Moorhead Lane. 24 

19 Wilson, A.N.(2002) The Victorians, Hutchinson London & Bradford Weekly Telegraph, December 

1882 

20 Yorkshire Observor : 15 th March 1882 

21 Yorkshire Post : 22 nd March 1882 

22 WYAS Bradford - SLBH Minutes : June and November 1884 

23 WRRD : 1904 131 63 

24 Thompson, J.D. (1984) St. Peter’s Shipley - The First 75 years : 

16

CHAPTER FIVE 

In 1893, Elizabeth Ann Rhodes obtained another large section of the site, containing 

8,380 square yards, from the Bradford Commercial Joint Stock Bank. In order 

to pay for this she took out a mortgage with the Yorkshire Banking Company. The 

area involved covered the whole of the southern part of the site between Ashley and 

Ferrand Roads. Mrs Rhodes then leased off 3,460 square yards of this land at the top of 

Ashley Road to a stone-quarrying firm from Rawtenstall in Lancashire, called James & 

William Wylde [26,27,28,29,31,32,33,334]. The lease gave the Wyldes the right to take 

out the un-worked beds of stone on the site. Three years later, after they had left the 

area, Mrs Rhodes built some more houses to complete that eastern side of Ashley Road 

[26,27,28]. All were back-to-backs excepting the top house No. 8 [28] which was a 

through house. However, these last few houses were different from the other houses in 

Ashley Road, in that each had its own w.c. in its own yard. 

All of the "back" houses on the eastern side of Ashley Road had their frontage on a 

small lane which became known as Robinson Street - named after Mr Jesse Robinson 

who had bought four of these properties [27]. The two houses below them were 

bought by a milk-dealer called Albert Greaves, who, a few years later, sold them to the 

Windhill Co-operative Society. The top house, No. 8, was occupied by Mr and Mrs 

Thomas Rhodes themselves, until they sold it to a Mrs Stephenson in 1905. 

In 1896 Elizabeth Ann Rhodes bought a small strip of land 3 yds wide running across 

the southern edge of her property [35]. The reason for the purchase was to do with 

the width of the new road to be called Victoria Avenue. In 1898 Mrs Rhodes had applied 

to the Local Board for permission to build a row of houses on the proposed new 

road, but it was turned down as the Board did not like the design. However, later plans 

must have been acceptable, as over a period of the next few years, 1900-1904, permission 

was given for the building of various sections of this row of through terraced 

houses. Each section being separately financed with a mortgage from a variety of Building 

Societies and private investors. 

Victoria Avenue was built on a fairly steep slope. As a result the front room, facing 

onto the Avenue, was at ground level, while the same floor at the back was one floor 

above ground level. Also, some of the houses in the row were built with a small extension 

at the rear, making them much larger inside than they would otherwise be. 

The first houses to be built in Victoria Avenue, No’s 2 to 12, were sold, by Elizabeth 

Ann Rhodes, to Emily Bottomley in 1904. They passed into other hands a few years 

later. Then, in the early 1920s they were sold to their individual owner-occupiers [30]. 

The next section. No’s 14 to 20 were sold in 1905 to Mr Anthony Gadie, of the Gower 

Trust, who sold them in 1907 to Dr. Arthur Hawkyard a Surgeon of Leeds [31]. 

Most of the other houses, No’s 22 to 32 were sold as they were built to individuals. 

Except for No’s 26 and 28, which were bought by Ernest and Fanny Rhodes, the son 

and daughter-in-law of Thomas and Elizabeth Ann. Ernest was still living at No. 26 

during the 1940s [33]. 

In 1908 Thomas and Elizabeth Ann Rhodes took out a private mortgage with a Mr 

John Speak, on No’s 22, 24, 30, 32 Victoria Avenue [32,34]. Mr Speak died in 1918 and 

17

the outstanding debt was bought. from his executors, by a Major John Speak Elwiss of 

the Royal Horse Artillery. In 1929 Major Elwiss was forced to sue, the by then widowed 

Mrs Rhodes, for repayment of the outstanding loan of £758 7s 2d, which she 

failed to do. The High Court ordered the loan to be repaid by a given date. When this 

was not done the court ruled that Mrs Rhodes had forfeited her rights to the properties 

and they were ordered to be handed over to Major Elwiss. In fact, the houses in question 

had already been sold to their occupiers by this time. 

In 1906 a small group of four houses was built at the top of Ashley Road [29]. They 

were quite unique, in that the shape of the houses had to fit into a rather unusual angular 

plot. The houses were of the through type, but, due to the shape of the plot, the front 

and back rooms were not in line with each other, but slightly off side. The angular 

shapes of these houses, and many of the other gable-end houses on the site, was due to 

them being on the edge of the Barden Conduit, which ran diagonally across the site, and 

over which building was not allowed. 

The opening of St Peter’s church in 1909 [see above], marked the end of the development 

stage of this site, a process that had begun back in 1869. All the available plots 

had been built on, and, no more could be done. 

1906 

This mini-village with its shops, pub and church, small industrial premises, and 

a mixture of house types had taken 40 years to complete and it was to survive more or 

less intact for the next 60 years. 

All of the houses in Oastler Road, and most of the houses in the other roads within 

this site, were back-to-backs, though they were a mixture of types and sizes. In all, 

there were a total of 112 back-to-back houses constructed within the four roads, and 32 

through houses. 

The houses were a mixture of one, two and even three bedroom types. There was 

also a large attic, used either for storage or as an extra bedroom for those families with 

several children. Most of the back-to-backs faced out onto the street, and had their own 

small walled-yards. The majority of these houses had their own lavatories and a coalhouse 

in the yard. The house door led straight into the main room of the house. The 

18

main feature of this room was a range style fireplace, i.e. a coal fire, with an oven built 

into the side for cooking. The limited space within the oven, meant that, in many cases, 

vegetables had to be cooked in a pan balanced on the edge of the fire-grate. It also 

meant that the fire had to be lit even on hot days so that the occupants could cook. 

Those houses that were in the middle of the blocks had their ‘kitchen sinks’ built 

into a cupboard at the side of the fireplace nearest to the window, to allow for the 

drainage outlet. Those houses with gable ends, or with side outlet to a passage had their 

sinks at the top of the cellar steps, or ‘cellar head’ - a small landing which usually also 

included a gas ring or gas cooker. 

The cellars consisted of a large main room, with a sink and a small brick-boiler for 

the laundry; a small pantry and, in certain houses, a ‘coil oil’. In these houses 

the coal was delivered through a grate either built into the wall side or into the top 

step just outside the house door. 

The cellars were also used as a, ‘bathroom’, though the bath would have been a 

portable zinc one. The hot water would be fed into the bath from a pipe leading 

from the fire-boiler, though after finishing the bath would have to be ‘ladled’ out by 

hand. In post-war years, gas water heaters were used for the purpose of heating the 

water. 

Lighting was by gas, at least until the late 1940’s, but this was only available in the 

main living room and the main cellar. There was no lighting of any kind upstairs, and, 

on dark nights, people went to bed by candlelight. The main bedroom had a fireplace 

in it, though the smaller ones did not. . 

Rents for the one bedroom houses in these streets in 1910 averaged around 4s 11d per 

week, while the two bedroom houses were around 5s 8d a week. The larger, through 

houses, in Glenview Terrace had a theoretical rent of 6s 6d per week, but seven out of 

the nine houses in this row were owner-occupied. All the houses in Victoria Avenue, on 

the other hand, were rented, and they brought in between 6s 11d and 7s 11d per 

week for their owners. As an example of an individual sale, a house in Ferrand Road 

in 1902 fetched £162. 25 

A survey of wages within the textile industry, compiled in 1906, shows that the average 

weekly wage for a man was 28s. 1d., and for women 15s. 5d. So the rents for these 

houses would be well within the limits of such people. 26 

Census returns, and rate books for the late 19th and the early 20th century, show that 

most of the wage earners who lived in these houses, were, for the most part, skilled 

craftsmen and textile workers as well as an assortment of shopkeepers, clerks, and a 

few self-employed. Even as late as 1901 there were quite a few quarry workers in 

these houses, showing that stone quarrying was still a common occupation in 

Shipley at this time. With the exception of the quarry workers, there was a similar class of 

person still occupying these houses in the 1960s 

n.b.The block of shops to the east of Robinson Street were also built by the Rhodes 

firm. They were then sold to Bradford businessman, Michael John Barry in 1900. But 

as they are outside the boundary of the, ‘three fields’, they are not part of this study. 

25 National Archives : The Valuation Office Survey-Finance (1909/10) Act : IR 58 & IR 134 

26 Askwith, G.R. (1906) Earnings and hours of labour of workpeople of the United Kingdom: I: 

textile trades in 1906: Board of Trade. Earnings and Hours Enquiry 1906 

19

CHAPTER SIX 

Victoria Avenue, like most of the other houses on the site, had been built on top of old 

stone- quarry workings. While this did not cause any problems for the other houses in 

the area, in the case of Victoria Avenue it was to lead to a disaster. 

During the early part of 1921, the owners and occupiers of the houses in the middle of 

the row noticed large cracks and general structural problems occurring in their homes. 

The occupiers of No’s 10 and 12, Mrs Green, and Mr and Mr Oddy, who had only 

bought their property in 1919, were soon forced to leave as the damage continued to 

get worse. At 4 am on Sunday 11th September 1921 the whole of the rear sections of 

No’s 10 and 12 collapsed into their respective yards. 

1920 

According to the Yorkshire Observer for the following day, the back parts of the 

houses collapsed, "with a tremendous noise like an earthquake". The lane running 

across the top of Oastler and Ashley Roads was completely blocked, and the heavy 

weight of the fallen masonry and wood broke the gas and water mains pipes in the 

ground below. A photograph in the same newspaper shows the rooms of the two houses 

exposed to the elements while the rubble of the old walls lies beneath them. 

The neighbours on either side of the collapsed houses had to move out, as a safety 

measure. But it was not long before some of them had problems of their own, as the 

damage spread to their properties. The family at No.8 were able to go back after a 

while, but those on the other side found that their homes had become uninhabitable. 

The owners of these properties tried to persuade Shipley Council to accept responsibility 

for the damaged houses. The council was not very keen, and the owners were 

told it was their own problem. After surveying the damage, the council ordered the 

owners to clear the site and make the area safe. However, later on, presumably after 

a certain amount of pressure, the council relented, and in May 1922 the council 

20

agreed to take on the task of clearing the site. 

They did this only on the condition that the owners gave the property to the council. 

This deal appears to have fallen through because in October 1923 the council took the 

owners to court. The owners were ordered to clear the site - which by this time also included 

the sculleries of No.14, and No.16, which were also in a state of collapse. 

The owners were told that if they did not proceed immediately the council would do 

the work themselves, and the owners would then be held responsible for the cost of the 

operation. The clearances would however, be subsidized by the sale of the salvaged 

material. In the event, by the time the council made the site safe, at the end of 1923, 

the sale of the stone etc. met the full cost of the clearance and it did not cost the owners 

anything. 

This was not the end of the story however, as No’s.14, 16, 18, 20 continued to deteriorate 

and were quickly abandoned. They remained standing but empty for many years. 

In 1935, the council examined them again and condemned them. The houses were 

bought by the council for just a few pounds and demolished. 

The houses that stand in Victoria Avenue today are still separated by the gap of the demolished 

houses. They have survived unscathed, but only just. In the early 1960s the occupiers 

of one of the houses woke up to find that their back yard had all but disappeared, 

down what appeared to be a bottomless pit. There have been no other incidents of this 

sort since then, but presumably it is quite possible that something of the kind could 

happen in the future. 

c.1940 

21

CHAPTER SEVEN 

Apart from Victoria Avenue, little happened, visually, within this area in the period between 

the wars. One exception, however, occurred in 1923, when J. E. Kay and Walter 

Minikin pulled down one of the wooden shops, at the junction of Bingley Road and Ferrand 

Road and put up a stone building in its place. It is possible, though not proven, 

that the demolished building was the one approved for use as a Coffee Tavern by the 

Local Board in 1887. 

The new building became a family butchers, which, for many years, was under the management 

of John Chell, who was a well known figure in Shipley, being a leading light 

in the Legion of Frontiersmen in the pre- and post-war years. 

The rooms immediately above the butcher’s shop were used for a variety of purposes 

over the years. During the 1950s, one set of rooms was used as a chocolate confectionary 

production department for Percy Warne’s, ‘Anne’s of Saltaire’; and another 

room was used by the Apostolic Church. 

The main changes that did occur in the inter-war years mainly related to the ownership 

of the houses. It appears to have become common practice after the end of World War 

I for the directors of the main textile mills in Shipley to expand their property portfolios 

in the town. In 1920, for example, Sir Titus Salt Bart. & Sons Ltd. bought virtually the 

whole of Ashley Road [13,17,18,29]; while, in the same year, C.F. Taylor’s, based in Otley 

Road, Baildon, bought 30 houses between Ferrand Road and Queen’s Road [9]. In 1927, 

C.F. Taylor’s sold all their houses to a business called The Aire Property Trust. While 

in October 1933, Salts sold the village of Saltaire, and all their other houses, including 

Ashley Road, and all those that they owned between Park Street and Thompson Street - a 

total of 964 houses - to The Bradford Property Trust for £164,500. 

The Bradford Property Trust had been founded in 1928 by Fred Gresswell, a Bradford 

estate agent, and Algernon Denham, a director of the Halifax Building Society. It was 

Gresswell who, in the early 1920s, had recognised how the problems of a low rental 

income, due to rent controls, and the high cost of repairs, due to post-war inflation, 

meant that many rented estates were no longer economically viable for their owners. 

Gresswell’s idea was to purchase such estates, sell the empty houses immediately, in 

order to realise some immediate return on his investment, and then persuade the 

sitting tenants to purchase their own homes, at a price below the market price, but at 

a level which gave Gresswell a small profit on each house. This was done using a double 

mortgage plan, which Gresswell had devised, which meant that the mortgage repayments 

were little more than the existing rent. 27 

By 1935 there were only 7 houses in Queen’s Road and 5 houses in Ferrand Road left 

in the portfolio of The Aire Property Trust, at which time they were transferred to a firm 

called The Rossefield Estate. They too started to sell more of these houses to their individual 

occupiers, and by 1942 the only houses still in their hands were No’s 2 & 7 Queen’s 

Road. However, there were still several small blocks of property throughout these four 

streets in the hands of private landlords, and many remained so until the demolitions. 

n.b. There appears to be little information available about the Aire Property Trust. However, 

it is known that both the Aire Property Trust and the offices of the Rossefield Estate 

were based at 19, Market Street, Bradford, in 1935. 

22

The middle years of the Second World War saw the start of several changes to this area. 

The first of these was the removal of the five wooden shops at the bottom of Oastler 

Road. Over the years they had been occupied by a variety of small businesses. In 

1898, for example, there had been a confectioner, a milliner, a hairdresser, a 

draper and a grocer; while in 1932, there had been a confectioner, a tripe dresser, 

a hairdresser and a watchmaker. 

The whole plot in which they stood [19] had been bought by the Windhill Cooperative 

Society in 1926. Presumably they had plans to develop the site at this time, as 

their deed of sale gave them specific permission to block up the windows in the gableends 

of the two houses in Oastler Road that overlooked the site. For some reason the 

planned building did not take place, and after the wooden shops were cleared away, 

sometime after 1942, the site remained vacant, with the exception of an advertisement 

hoarding, until the clearances of the 1960s. 

The late 1940s saw the introduction of electricity into these streets. For the first time 

every room in the house, from the attic to the cellars, had a light. The changeover from 

gas to electric also allowed people to buy the new electrical appliances, such as vacuum 

cleaners and electric irons, which were becoming more readily available after the restrictions 

of wartime. 

It also became possible for the occupiers to buy a mains radio for the first time. 

Prior to electrification, the only radio available in these houses came via a radio relay 

station, situated in Commercial Street, which fed a limited number of radio stations to a 

loudspeaker in the house, via a cable. 

A few years later came the electrification of the street lamps. One exception to this 

was the lamp in the middle of the enclosed area between Ashley and Oastler Roads. 

This lamp remained as a gas lamp for a long period after the introduction of electric 

street lights to the rest of the area, and the town’s lamplighter had to make a special 

journey to this lamp, and to the other few surviving ones in Shipley, every night in order 

to light it. When the last of the gas lamps in the town were finally removed in the early 

sixties, the old lamplighter, one of the last remnants of Victorian England, disappeared 

from the streets of Shipley for ever. 

However, despite the improvements within the area, the post-war years saw an 

increasing amount of dissatisfaction for many of the people who lived in these 

streets. 

The general restrictions and rent controls introduced during the war had reduced 

the profitability of rented houses, just at a time when these houses were of 

an age when they needed money spending on them. Even the abolition of such controls 

in the 1957 Rent Act, failed to change the attitude of the landlords. The result was 

that the rented houses within this area were not maintained as well as they should have 

been. For example, the houses were quite cold and draughty, due to the fact that the 

main door of the house opened straight into the main room. The tenants also felt that 

the rent which they were paying was not giving them value for money. The effect of this 

was a subject of persistent worry and complaint by the tenants. And both the landlords 

and the town council were to feel the wrath of the occupiers for several years before action 

was taken. 

On the other hand, the private house owners, of whom there were a growing number 

by the early 1960s, were usually prepared to spend money on improving their own 

23

properties. These improvements mainly consisted of the installation of a proper bathroom. 

This allowed them to abandon the old tin bath, and to give up once and for all, 

visits to the outside ‘lav’. Many also replaced the old range-type fireplace in the main 

room with a modern one. Though this was one modernisation that was carried out 

by tenants as well. Unfortunately, the expenditure involved in buying their homes 

and improving them was, in retrospect, a waste of money. 

The revival of the slum clearance programmes, that had been interrupted by the 

war, encouraged local authorities to replace as many of the older types of houses as 

they could with new houses and flats. This was helped by a range of government subsidies 

and special loans. While Windhill had a quite a large number of poor quality 

houses, and their replacement involved a large scale operation, within the old 

township of Shipley itself there were few, and they were quickly demolished. However, 

as the subsidies were still available to the council, it decided to continue with the 

work. 

In the early 1960s, Shipley council took the decision to condemned and demolished 

all back-to-back houses in the town regardless of their condition. As the houses within 

the four streets under discussion were, for the most part, of the better type of their kind, 

these streets were well down the list of priorities, and it was not until 1968-9 that the 

council got around to them. 

The new development - The first stage 

For some, the compulsory purchase of their homes brought many problems. People 

who had expected to live out their lives in their own private homes, usually bought 

after a certain amount of financial sacrifice, realised that they were going to become 

council tenants with a lifetime of rents to pay, and many were very resentful. 28 In addition, 

many of the private house owners felt that the amount of compensation offered to 

them was quite miserly. As a result, there were several instances of hard negotiations 

between the owners and the council before it was all settled. Even then, the compensation 

was very small. 

On the other hand, most of those who were tenants were delighted to be moving into a 

modern home with all the latest conveniences, such as central heating, hot running 

24

water and indoor plumbing. Quite a few of the people from this area went to the 

new Wycliffe Garden estate, off Saltaire Road. 

The contract for the demolition of the site was given to the contractor, Ogdens of Otley, 

and the work was completed in two stages. 

The re-developed site 

The first stage was the demolition of all the back-to-back houses in Ashley Road, Oastler 

Road , Ferrand Road and Queen’s Road. In their place arose two blocks of flats, 

Ferncliffe Court and Neville Place, both of which were specifically designed for older 

people. A smaller block, called Salts Court was added later. 

In the early 1970s, the final stages in the re-development of this site took place, with the 

demolition of the Bingley Road shops between Ashley Road and Ferrand Road. They 

were replaced with a terrace of new shops. Among them was a Cooperative store to 

replace the one that had been demolished. 

One result of the new developments was a reorganisation of the street names. During 

the course of the new building and landscaping, Oastler Road had disappeared completely. 

Only two small sections of Ashley Road and Ferrand Road survived, and they 

were linked together by a new road running behind the new shops. This new road were 

then renamed, Oastler Road, with the names of Ashley and Ferrand being lost. It can 

only be assumed that the officials responsible considered the name of Richard Oastler 

to be better known than either of his contemporaries. 

Looking at the area today, it is quite interesting to note that most of the earliest buildings 

on the site have survived. Glenview Terrace is still there, as is the Rosse Hotel. 

While at the opposite end of the site, the grocers shop at the bottom of Ferncliffe Road 

(previously Robinson Street) is also still there, though with a new roof and frontage 

to bring it into line with the modern shops. 

27 Brennan, J. (1978) History of the Bradford Property Trust 1928-1978, Whatmoughs, Bradford 

28 WYAS Bradford : Shipley Town Clerks Files 1946-1974 

25

CHAPTER EIGHT 

The creation of the Shipley Local Board of Health in 1853, and the powers specifically 

given to the Board to control all new developments in the town, meant that from that 

time on, all houses erected in Shipley had to be built to a certain minimum standard. 

The Local Board were also required to ensure that there was sufficient ventilation, 

within and around the houses; also that they were provided with a decent water supply 

and adequate sewerage facilities. The planning records of the Shipley Local 

Board, and the later Urban District Council, show that such powers were taken seriously, 

and many original plans were rejected for breaches of the bye-laws on these matters. 

Naturally, the standards and requirements for new buildings changed over the years, 

both in terms of local and national legislation. But the most controversial of all were the regulations 

regarding back-to-back house. Such houses had been a traditional way of providing 

homes for low paid industrial workers in many parts of the country throughout 

previous centuries. Though by the second half of the nineteenth century it had become 

accepted by most public health experts, and many local authorities, that living in such 

houses meant a poor standard of health for their occupiers. 

For example, a study by the Local Government Board into the health of residents of 

such houses, compared with those of through houses, suggested that there was an increase 

of between 15 and 20 percent in the death rates of the occupiers of back-tobacks. 

29 Although it could be argued that the people most likely to be living in such 

houses were among the poorest within any district, and that, as such, they would be 

more susceptible to debilitating illnesses anyway. Also, as George Sheeran has pointed 

out, opposition to such houses from the medical profession was based on the false medical 

theory of miasma. 30 Nevertheless, many local authorities in other parts of the country 

had outlawed such houses. 

However, Shipley, and many other towns within the West Riding continued to defend 

the right of builders to put up back-to-back houses despite national and 

county pressures to outlaw them. 31 Indeed, the pressure on the council from the 

developers was so great that they were sometimes coerced into breaking their own 

bye-laws. For example, during the course of 1892, Shipley council was in regular 

correspondence with the solicitor of the West Riding County Council and the 

Local Government Board in London, over the councils wish to pass plans for a new 

block of back-to-back houses in Belgrave Square which were said to be in contravention 

of such bye-laws. 32 

The evidence from Ordnance Survey maps show that a large number of homes 

built in Shipley during the last thirty years of the nineteenth century were back-tobacks. 

And this, despite the example from Saltaire, that through houses were a viable, 

and even a minimum requirement for decent housing - though there were even 

a few back-to-backs at the bottom end of Saltaire village, which survived until the 

1930s. 

The largest development of back-to-backs in Shipley can be seen to have been in the 

area bounded by St. Paul’s Road, Manor Road and Westcliffe Road, where over 450 

26

such houses were erected during the 1880s. While others were constructed in Wycliffe 

Road, Thompson Street and in a series of short cul-de-sacs off Saltaire Road. 

All of these developments were relatively close to the town centre, and the main mills. 

The better class of through houses that were being built in Shipley at the same time, 

were built a little further out in areas such as Shipley Fields. 

The failure of the county authorities to enforce a ban on the back-to-backs was 

one of the factors that encouraged the Liberal government of the day to increase its 

involvement in local authorities affairs through the 1909 Housing and Town Planning 

Act. One element of this new Act banned any local authority from approving any future 

schemes for back-to-back houses. However, houses that had been given planning 

permission before the act came into effect were allowed to be built, which meant that in 

places such as Leeds, they continued to be built well into the 1930s. 33 

29 Dara Mair, L.W. (1910) Back-to-Back houses. Relative Mortality in Through and Back-to-Back 

Houses in certain Towns in the West Riding of Yorkshire : Parliamentary Records :Cd 5314 xxxviii, 

893 

30 Sheeran, G. (1986) Back-to-back houses in Bradford, in Bradford Antiquary Vol. 2 

31 Gaskell, S. M. (1983) Building Control-National Statutes and the Local Community, British Association for 

Local History 

32 WYAS Bradford - SLBH minutes January to June 1892 

33 Leeds Civic Trust [Internet World Wide Web site ‘Back-to-back houses’ & note 2 above 

27

CONCLUSION 

While the building firm operating under the name of, ‘Rhodes Brothers’ appear to have 

had a great many contracts for public works within the county, as mentioned above, 

and built houses on many other sites in the district, they appear to have always operated 

on a relatively small scale. In that, they built a few houses, sold them, and then 

built a few more. This would appear to be evidence of the economically sensitive nature 

of the industry, which moved from boom to decline, if not bust, with regular frequency. 

With regard to this particular site. Several members of the Rhodes family, and many 

of their employees, appear to have lived mainly within these four streets for most of 

the period of the areas development. The reason for this would seem to be that the firm 

used this site as their main base of operations, though they also had a storage yard close 

to the railway station. Given that it took over forty years to complete the building 

on these four streets, it is possible that the work on this site may have been used as a 

way of keeping their workmen busy when they had no other outside contract work to 

keep them occupied. 

The evidence from this report highlights the importance of the small investor in projects 

such as those operated by building firms like the Rhodes brothers. Many of the 

mortgage lending's which helped to finance these projects were from private individuals. 

And many of the purchasers were also small private investors, though there does appear 

to have been quite a regular turnover of purchases and sales of such properties. 

Another example of the difficult nature of the house building industry during the second 

half of the nineteenth century, can be seen from the plans devised for the land 

neighbouring this site. 

The land to the south and east of this site was part of a farm that had been owned for 

several generations by a family called Walker. When the family decided to sell the 

farm, in 1862, they commissioned the Bradford architects, Andrews and Delaunay 

to draw up plans for an estate of large villas and short terraces, suitable for successful 

businessmen, which was planned to cover much of the area between Victoria 

Park and Moorhead Lane. In the event, only the Victoria Park area was developed at 

this time, partly by a Shipley shop-keepers, William and Jesse Cockshott, and partly 

by a Bradford businessman, John Douglas. 34 The restricted scale of this development, 

compared to the original plan, suggests that the market for superior middleclass 

housing in Shipley was limited. The failure of this project also meant that the 

Grosvenor and Fernhill areas had to await a more favourable market in the middle 

years of the twentieth century before they too could be developed. 

This subsequent developments within the surrounding area, with the through 

houses of Saltaire to the north, and the Fernhill and Moorhead developments to the 

south and west, meant that these four streets remained an isolated example of the 

back-to-back house within this particular part of Shipley. 

34 WRRDeeds : SY 477 544 & XC 652 711; 

Also; Bradford Central Library Local History Department: Maps and Plans, Shipley :Douglas :1862 

28

Aerial photograph of the site by C.H.Wood. C.1950 [Ref. A14664]

The surviving wooden shops on Bingley Road

Photographs of houses in the inner yard of Oastler Road - plot No. 20

IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROSSE 

© Ian Watson 2006 

by 

Ian Watson

IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROSSE - Shipley

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?