Heritage Trail 11 - Streets & alleys

'You will see the streets branch off at regular intervals...'  Walking along Caroline Street takes you past the end of many of the streets that run north-south, like George Street on the left here.  George Street is one of the longest streets in the village, cleverly designed so that the Church can be seen right from the very top (see here).  Between the streets run back alleys, where each house has its own backyard (and originally its own 'privy' or outside toilet) making these houses luxurious compared to the prevailing conditions in the cities in early Victorian times.  Remember, these were houses for ordinary working folk, Sir Titus Salt's millworkers, most of whom had previously been living in the city of Bradford where the mills then were.

I think it's hard for us these days to appreciate just how significant Salt's actions were.  James Smith in his report for the Health Of Towns Commission in 1844 concluded "... of Bradford I am obliged to pronounce it the most filthy town I visited."  Central Bradford in the 1840's is described as having "courts, yards and dingy alleys with overflowing privies, open cesspits, pig styes and slaughterhouses and effluent laden watercourses".  Diseases, including cholera, were rife.

The wonderful book by Jim Greenhalf, 'Salt & Silver' says: "For more than 25 years Salt had worked in the dirty heart of bursting-at-the seams Bradford... He was a very rich man, and might have retired with a lordly income... but he was proposing to adandon Bradford for a greenfield site more than three miles to the north. Everything was based in town. Yet Salt proposed removing to the country, putting himself at the astronomical expense of building a vast new works, fire-proof and with all modern conveniences." (Plus the village around it).  And why?..... "because he had a dream which he believed was his God-given duty to turn into reality. And so, on a chilly November evening in 1849, Salt walked into the comfortable fire-lit chambers of architects Lockwood and Mawson." And the rest, as they say, is history.

[See Caroline Street on the street plan]