Sub-sections of the whole site as referenced in the text
CHAPTER ONE In terms of land usage, <strong>Shipley</strong> 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. <strong>Shipley</strong> 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 <strong>Shipley</strong> 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 <strong>Shipley</strong> 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
Change language