Bradford
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the larger local government district, see City of Bradford. For other uses, see Bradford (disambiguation).
Coordinates: 53.8000°N 1.75206°W
Bradford
Bradford City Hall
Bradford
Bradford shown within West Yorkshire
Area 24.85 sq mi (64.4 km2)
Population 293,717 [1]
- Density 8,981/sq mi (3,468 /km2)
OS grid reference SE163329
- London 174 mi (280 km) S
Metropolitan borough City of Bradford
Metropolitan county West Yorkshire
Region Yorkshire and the Humber
Country England
Sovereign state United Kingdom
Post town BRADFORD
Postcode district BD1-BD15
Dialling code 01274
Police West Yorkshire
Fire West Yorkshire
Ambulance Yorkshire
EU Parliament Yorkshire and the Humber
UK Parliament Bradford North
Bradford West
Bradford South
List of places: UK • England • Yorkshire
Bradford (pronounced /ˈbrædfəd/ ( listen)) lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, 8.6 miles (13.8 km) west of Leeds, and 16 miles (25.7 km) northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897. Following local government reform in 1974, city status was bestowed upon the wider metropolitan borough.
Bradford has a population of 293,717,[1] making it the fourteenth-most populous settlement in the UK. Bradford forms part of the West Yorkshire Urban Area conurbation which in 2001 had a population of 1.5 million[2] and is part of the Leeds-Bradford Larger Urban Zone (LUZ), the third largest in the UK after London and Manchester, with an estimated population in the 2004 Urban Audit of 2.4 million.[3]
Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bradford rose to prominence during the 19th century as an international centre of textile manufacture, particularly wool. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, and amongst the earliest industrialised settlements, rapidly becoming the "wool capital of the world".[4] The area's access to a supply of coal, iron ore and soft water facilitated the growth of Bradford's manufacturing base, which, as textile manufacture grew, led to an explosion in population and was a stimulus to civic investment; Bradford has fine Victorian architecture including the grand Italianate City Hall.
The textile sector in Bradford fell into a terminal decline from the mid-20th century. Since this time, Bradford has emerged as a tourist destination with attractions such as the National Media Museum and Cartwright Hall. However, Bradford has faced similar challenges to the rest of the post-industrial area of Northern England, including deindustrialisation, housing problems, social unrest and economic deprivation.
Since the 1950s Bradford has experienced significant levels of immigration, particularly from Mirpur, Pakistan. Bradford has the second highest proportion of Muslims in England and Wales outside London. An estimated 101,967 people of Asian origin reside in the city,[5] representing around 20.5% of the city's population, with this figure projected to rise to 28% by 2011.[6] Bradford is often cited as one of the prime examples of 'parallel communities', where the population is effectively segregated along ethnic, cultural and faith lines.[7]
Contents [hide]
1 Etymology
2 History
2.1 Early history
2.2 19th century and the Industrial Revolution
2.3 Recent history
3 Government
4 Geography
4.1 Climate
5 Demographics
5.1 Ethnicity
5.2 Religion
6 UNESCO City of Film
7 Economy
8 Landmarks
8.1 Memorials
9 Transport
10 Education
11 Culture and recreation
12 Museums and art galleries
13 Sport
14 Religion
15 City of Sanctuary
16 Public services
17 Carnivals and festivals
18 Crime
18.1 Manningham Riots
18.2 Bradford Riots
19 Notable Bradfordians
20 In popular culture
21 International relations
22 See also
23 References
24 Further reading
25 External links
Etymology
The name Bradford is derived from the "broad ford" at Church Bank (below the site of Bradford Cathedral) around which a settlement had begun to appear before the time of the Norman Conquest ("Bradeford" in the Domesday book of 1086). The ford crossed the stream called Bradford Beck.
History
Early history
Bradford was first settled in Saxon times and by the middle ages, had become a small town centred on Kirkgate, Westgate and Ivegate.[8] Destroyed after an uprising in 1070 against the Norman conquest.[9] Bradford grew slowly over the next two-hundred years as the woollen trade gained in prominence. The Civil War caused a decline in the industry but with the accession of William and Mary in 1689 prosperity began to return.[8] The launch of manufacturing in the early 18th century marked the start of the town's development while new canal and turnpike road links encouraged trade.
19th century and the Industrial Revolution
Bradford Boundaries 1835.
At the turn of the 19th century, Bradford was a small rural market town of 16,000 people, where wool spinning and cloth weaving was carried out in local cottages and farms. The Industrial Revolution led to rapid growth, with wool imported in vast quantities for the manufacture of worsted cloth in which Bradford specialised, and the town soon became known as the wool capital of the world.[10] Yorkshire had plentiful supplies of soft water, which was needed in the cleaning of raw wool, and locally mined coal provided the power that the industry needed. Local sandstone was an excellent resource for the building of the mills, and with a population of 182,000 by 1850,[11] the town grew rapidly as workers were attracted by jobs in the textile mills.[10] Such unprecedented growth did create problems, however. With over 200 factory chimneys continually churning out black, sulphurous smoke, Bradford gained the reputation of being the most polluted town in England. There were frequent outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, and only 30% of children born to textile workers reached the age of fifteen. Life expectancy, of just over eighteen years, was one of the lowest in the country.[12]
Lister's Mill
To support the textile mills, a large manufacturing base grew up in the town providing textile machinery, and this led to diversification with different industries thriving side by side.[10] Bradford's manufacturing history includes the Jowett Motor Company, which had many great achievements during its 50 years of existence.[13]
Recent history
The textile industry began to fall into terminal decline in the 20th century. A culture of innovation had been fundamental to Bradford's dominance, with new textile technologies being invented in the city; a prime example being the work of Samuel Lister. This innovation culture continues today throughout Bradford's economy, from automotive (Kahn Design)[14] to electronics (Pace Micro Technology). Wm Morrison Supermarkets was founded by William Morrison in 1899, initially as an egg and butter merchant in Rawson Market, operating under the name of Wm Morrison (Provisions) Limited.[15]
The grandest of the mills (no longer used for textile production) is Lister's Mill, the chimney of which can be seen from most places in Bradford. It has recently become a beacon of regeneration in the city after a £100 million conversion to apartment blocks by property developers Urban Splash.[16]
By 2001 Bradford had the second largest population of Asians of any UK city, with approximately 68,000 Pakistanis, 12,500 Indians, 5,000 Bangladeshis and 3,000 other Asians. However, the majority of people in the city are white (Ethnicity: 78.3% White, and 18.9% S.Asian). In January 1989, copies of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses were publicly burnt in Bradford, and the city's Muslim community took the lead in the campaign against the book in the UK. In July 2001, ethnic tensions led to serious rioting in Bradford, leading to a report describing Bradford as fragmented[17] and as a city of segregated ethnic communities.[18] Bradford has suffered from deep-rooted de-industrialisation, and has some of the poorest levels of social deprivation in the UK,[19] with widespread pockets of exclusion and rates of unemployment in some wards exceeding 25%.[17]
Government
See also: City of Bradford
Bradford is represented by three MPs: for the constituencies of Bradford East (David Ward, Liberal Democrat), Bradford South (Gerry Sutcliffe, Labour), and Bradford West (Marsha Singh, Labour). Bradford is within the Yorkshire and the Humber European constituency, which is represented by two Conservative, one Labour, one UKIP, one Liberal Democrat and one BNP MEPs. The voting figures for Bradford in the European Parliament election in June 2009 were: Conservative 24.7%, Labour 22.6%, UKIP 14.9%, Lib Dem 13.4%, BNP 9.4%, Green 8.8%.[20]
The city played an important part in the early history of the Labour Party. A mural on the back of the Priestley Centre For The Arts (visible from Leeds Road) commemorates the centenary of the founding of the Independent Labour Party in 1893.[21]
Geography
Bradford is located at 53°45′00″N 01°50′00″W (53.7500, -1.8333)1. Topographically, it is located in the eastern part of the moorland region called the South Pennines.
Unusually for a major city, Bradford is not built on any substantial body of water. The ford from which it takes its name (Broad-Ford) was a crossing of the stream called Bradford Beck. The beck rises in the Pennine hills to the west of the city, and is swelled by tributaries such as Horton Beck, Westbrook, Bowling Beck and Eastbrook. At the site of the original ford, just below the present Bradford Cathedral, it turns north, and flows more or less straight towards the River Aire at Shipley. Bradfordale (or Bradforddale) is a name given by geographers to the valley of Bradford Beck (see for example Firth 1997[2]). It can reasonably be regarded as one of the Yorkshire Dales, though as the site of a big city, it is often not recognised as such.
Leeds and Liverpool Canal (Bingley)
The beck's course through the city centre is entirely underground, and was mostly so by the middle of the 19th century. On the 1852 Ordnance Survey map of Bradford[3] it is visible as far as Sun Bridge, at the end of Tyrrell Street, and then again from beside the railway station at the bottom of Kirkgate. On the 1906 Ordnance Survey,[4] it disappears at Tumbling Hill Street, off Thornton Road, and first appears again north of Cape Street, off Valley Road, though there are further culverts as far as Queens Road. This is substantially the position today.
The Bradford Canal, built in 1774, took its water from Bradford Beck and its tributaries. This supply was often inadequate to feed the locks, and the polluted state of the canal led to its temporary closure in 1866: the canal was closed in the early 20th century as uneconomic. 'The Channel' is another facet of the Alsop plan, envisaging the creation of a new canal-side community through its reopening.
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