Keighley mills history and biography pdf

Back-to-backs were first mentioned in Bermondsey as early as and were built in Birmingham and Nottingham in the s, Manchester and Liverpool in the s. Leeds began to build them in and has the most back-to-backs in the country.

Bradford leeds border

The early back-to-backs houses usually consisted of a kitchen room with 2 bedrooms on the floor above and a cellar place for coal. Houses at the rear were usually accessed by tunnels from the street. They were popular for cheap rents and running costs but were unsanitary with shared middens and water supply, small windows and generally a lack of ventilation with subsequent damp.

Water from rivers, becks and streams could so easily carry typhoid and dysentery, such was the pollution before proper sewerage systems.

Bradford demographics

These houses had to meet minimum standards of build quality, ventilation, sanitation and population density. The overcrowding, insanitary conditions and deterioration of much early housing caused concern, not least amongst employers who required healthy workforces to fill their factories and mills. The Brigg family of Calversyke Mill in Keighley built better back-to-back housing in Lynum Street, however their hopes to build a model village like Sir Titus Salt in Saltaire was prevented due to the inadequacy of the water supply there.

The list of house planning millowners goes on though not for model villages. Slum clearance began in the s and went through stages up to the s. In Keighley, much early housing was cleared when the Housing Act of allowed for compulsory purchase of the proven inadequate housing for demolition. Jude highlighted the destruction of community in the process, however, and some members of the audience noted Parkwood in the s.

Not everyone wanted to leave their homes, improvement yes, not demolition and rehousing. How things change. Thank you to all who attended, please find an earlier blog with future talks listed into next year. Please note these are free events and also a place booking is required for that on the 11th December , Christmas Family Traditions and Crafts , contact Keighley Local Studies.