Shipley is a historic market town and civil parish in the City of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Located on the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, Shipley is directly north of the city of Bradford. The population of Shipley at the 2011 Census was 15,483.
Until 1974, Shipley was an urban district in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The town forms a continuous urban area with Bradford.
History
Toponymy
The place-name Shipley derives from two words: the Old English ('sheep', a Northumbrian dialect form, contrasting with the Anglian dialect form which underlies modern English sheep) and meaning either 'a forest, wood, glade, clearing' or, later, 'a pasture, meadow'. It has therefore been variously defined as 'forest clearing used for sheep' or 'sheep field'.
Early history
Shipley appears to have first been settled in the late Bronze Age and is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, in the form .
Its early history relies on the records of a succession of Lords of the Manor, not all of whom were in permanent residence. The rolls of the manor court have been missing since the 18th century, leaving the records incomplete. In the 12th century, 'Adam, son of Peter', an early Lord of the manor, granted grazing and iron ore mining rights to the monks of Rievaulx Abbey. Through the Middle Ages the Lords were the 'Earls of Ormande' (sic), possibly the Irish Earls of Ormond, followed by the Gascoigne family. In 1495, Rosamund Gascoigne, a daughter of one of the William Gascoignes who held the title, married Robert Rawson, thought to be related to the Rawson family of Bradford, after whom one of the city's markets is named. Their son, William, married a cousin, Agnes Gascoigne, and through the marriage the Rawson family inherited the manor in 1570.
The Rawsons lived at Over Hall known as the Manor House, on the site of the current town hall. The manor estates extended to Northcliff, to the south of Shipley. The family had interests in Halifax and moved there in the early 18th century, retaining their Shipley estates until the last male heir died in 1745.
By the 19th century the Rawson estates and those of the Fields, another prominent land-owning family, had become the property of the Earl of Rosse who had extensive holdings in Heaton. His legacy has endured in the name of a public house on the main Bradford to Keighley road, and Rossefield School in Heaton. Of the lower orders at this time not much is known, but there was relief housing offered at the town's expense near Crowghyll.
Industrial Revolution
Shipley was shaped largely by the Industrial Revolution and, in particular, the growth of the textile industry. Textile manufacture dates from pre-industrial times. As the place name indicates, Shipley had a history as sheep grazing land, so wool was plentiful, and the River Aire was a ready source of water for powering water mills and cleaning processes. There was a fulling mill in Shipley by 1500 and two more by 1559. Another mill was built by the Dixon family on the banks of the Aire in 1635. New Mill on the far side of Hirst Wood was built in the 1740s and by the late 18th century between 9,000 and 10,000 pieces of broadcloth were being fulled annually at Shipley's mills. Much work was undertaken in workers' cottages which had 'loom shops' for spinning yarn. Home workshops were once a common sight along the River Aire and often had external flights of steps. Examples can be seen in the cottages at Jane Hills along the canal in Saltaire.
The industrial era ended cottage industry. Providence Mill, one of the first steam-driven mills was built for Denby Bros. in 1796. Other spinning mills followed, including Ashley Mill, Prospect Mill, Red Beck Mill on Heaton Beck (c. 1815), Well Croft Mill (c. 1840s) and Whiting Mill on Briggate.
The smaller mills gave way to larger premises which could combine all the processes of worsted production on one site. The first was Joseph Hargreaves' Airedale Mills (demolished 1970s), Salts Mill (built in 1853, now a gallery and restaurant complex), an enlarged Well Croft Mill (demolished 1950s) and Victoria Mills, near the canal. Hargreaves employed 1,250, Salt initially 2,500, and by 1876 total employment in the mills was 6,900.
The growth in textile production stimulated the growth of associated supply industries. Other local employers included loom makers, Lee and Crabtree, WP Butterfield's galvanised containers and J. Parkinson and Sons machine tool makers.
The other major effect of industrialisation was the vast expansion in housing stock. Titus Salt's Saltaire is an example of a model village, and Hargreaves had cottages built for his workers around the town centre and his mill. He built 92 back-to-back houses along Market Street and Central Avenue in an area which came to be called Hargreaves Square or The Square. The houses were built by filling in the old courtyards. The population of the township grew from 1,214 in 1822 to just over 3,000 in 1851 to 10,000 by 1869.
It was then the landowning families—the Rosses, the Crompton-Stansfields and the Wainmans—took advantage of the demand for housing by selling their less productive land on Low Moor and High Moor. Houses for the better off were built in Sunny Bank and Hall Royd in the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s. Kirkgate was lined with villas from the 1860s, some of which still stand. Middle-class houses were built in the Nab Wood and Moorhead districts In 1870 a tranche of land in Moorhead was sold by the Countess of Rosse to build five streets of terraces. The public house on Saltaire roundabout that bears her name dates from that time.
Post-war redevelopment
The decline of the textile industry saw the demolition of many mills, only Salts Mill and Victoria Mills remain and have been converted to other uses.
Of more concern in the immediate post-war period was the deteriorating housing stock. In the 1950s, the back-to-backs of Hargreaves Square were condemned as slums and the site redeveloped. The redevelopment removed several historic buildings – Shipley Old Hall (1593), at the junction of Kirkgate and Manor Lane and of which a few fragments of roof drainage and a roof truss survive in Crowgill Park (formerly Crowghyll Park), Shipley Hall (1734), which stood at the junction of Market Street and Otley Road became the headquarters of Windhill Cooperative Society and possibly Hudson Fold House (1629). Of the major Victorian town centre buildings, only the Old Bradford Bank (now Barclays) and Sun Hotel remain. The slums were replaced with low-rise modern retail outlets, a central square serves as an outdoor market and an underground indoor market is situated beneath a tall, brutalist market hall tower which is a visible landmark for many miles around. Until recently the tower had a 'man' striking a bell to mark the hours.
A second phase of clearance in 1978 saw the construction of a library, swimming pool and health centre, with Asda added in 1985. Croft House (1729), a stone built farmhouse which was converted to a school and then subsequently used as the Labour Party headquarters, was a casualty of this development. By 1970 2,900 slum houses had been demolished.
The Otley and Leeds Roads were widened in the early 1970s, at the expense of the Fox and Hounds Hotel after which Shipley's main road junction, Fox Corner, was named.
Geography
Shipley is located at an important crossing of the River Aire, where the route from Otley to Bradford crosses the route from Skipton to Leeds. It is sheltered by the millstone crags of Wrose and Windhill to the east, and to the north by Baildon and Hawksworth Moors.
Early development in Shipley was centred on the crossroads, locally known today as Fox Corner after the former Fox and Hounds pub that stood there. Here, as today, the route from Otley to Bradford crossed the route from Skipton to Leeds at an important crossing of the River Aire. The present Kirkgate and Manor Lane (then known as Sower Lane) were probably no more than tracks.
In medieval times, Shipley consisted of the settlement around the crossroads, and the unenclosed fields at Shipley Fields and the Hirst which were collectively farmed. Beyond these lay the Low Moor, which ran from the Crowghyll to the former Saltaire roundabout (now a junction on the Bradford to Keighley road), in the approximate area of modern day Wycliffe, and the wasteland of High Moor (from Saltaire roundabout, through Moorhead, as far as New Brighton and Noon Nick). These areas were steep, rocky land, unsuitable for farming. By 1600 at the latest, the open fields had been enclosed and given way to individual farms. The town was bounded to the north by the River Aire, to the east by Bradford Beck, with Cottingley and Heaton lying beyond its western and southern boundaries.
Outlying districts, such as Windhill, were not part of Shipley until the 19th century. Saltaire became part of Shipley after its foundation in the 1860s, while Windhill, which had previously been part of Idle, became part of the Shipley Urban District in 1894.
Governance
Shipley was historically a township and chapelry in the large ancient parish of Bradford.Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1870–72, at Vision of Britain website Shipley Local Board was formed in 1853. Originally the board met at the Sun Hotel near the market. In 1880, it moved to the old Manor House, until it was demolished in 1915. Shipley became a separate civil parish in 1866. In 1894, Shipley Urban District Council was constituted with 15 councillors, and Shipley incorporated the Windhill district, formerly part of Idle. An attempt was made to gain borough status in 1898, but failed. Shipley Town Hall was built in 1932, as part of a scheme to relieve high unemployment during the Great Depression and was opened by the Earl of Harewood. It became the seat of Shipley's administration for the next four decades.
For many years, Shipley opposed joining Bradford for local government purposes whenever it was proposed. A large protest march marked the third attempt in 1937. In 1974 after local government reorganisation, merger into Bradford seemed inevitable, and no resistance was offered.
The Shipley parliamentary constituency was created in 1885, and its first MP was Joseph Craven.
A campaign for Shipley to have a Town Council was launched in 2018, resulting in the creation of Shipley Town Council in January 2020. Councillors Shipley electoral ward is represented on Bradford Metropolitan District Council by three councillors; Anna Watson (Green Party), Kevin Warnes (Green Party), and Martin Love (Green Party)
ElectionCouncillorCouncillorCouncillor 2004 Hawarun Hussain (Green) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2006 Hawarun Hussain (Green) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2007 Hawarun Hussain (Green) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2008 Hawarun Hussain (Green) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2010 Hawarun Hussain (Green) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2011 Hawarun Hussain (Green) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2012 Hawarun Hussain (Green) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2014 Hawarun Hussain (Green) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2015 Hawarun Hussain (Green) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2016 Hawarun Hussain (Green) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2018 Vick Jenkins (Labour) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2019 Vick Jenkins (Labour) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2021 Vick Jenkins (Independent) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) 2022 Anna Watson (Green) Kevin Warnes (Green) Martin Love (Green) indicates seat up for re-election.
The four wards of Shipley Town Council are represented by nine councillors with two vacancies which will be filled by September 2020.