IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROSSE - Shipley

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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 <strong>Shipley</strong> 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 <strong>Shipley</strong> - 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
Page 1 and 2: IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROSSE by Ian W
Page 3 and 4: Main sections of the whole site as
Page 5 and 6: CHAPTER ONE In terms of land usage,
Page 7 and 8: the name of the Over Hall Farm. Wit
Page 9 and 10: Kirkstall, who had settled in Shipl
Page 11 and 12: CHAPTER THREE Prior to fairly recen
Page 13 and 14: 35 Ferrand Road and 18 Queen’s Ro
Page 15 and 16: other-in-law, who in turn, sold it
Page 17 and 18: CHAPTER FOUR In early 1882 the firm
Page 19: Following her purchase, Mrs Rhodes
Page 23 and 24: main feature of this room was a ran
Page 25 and 26: agreed to take on the task of clear
Page 27 and 28: The middle years of the Second Worl
Page 29 and 30: water and indoor plumbing. Quite a
Page 31 and 32: such houses were erected during the
Page 33 and 34: Aerial photograph of the site by C.
Page 35 and 36: Photographs of houses in the inner

IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROSSE - Shipley

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