IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROSSE - Shipley

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
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