Manningham Part 2

Click to get photos a decent size.

It was good to find this small 17th century cluster (weavers’ cottages?) well preserved, while up in the village there was a bakery, the Village Bakery, of a type I've never yet found in London, with homemade pies and proper confectionary like jam and raisin slices (that’s two items) and Eccles cakes. And the rec at the top of the hill had views of Ilkley Moor.

Turning back I inspected a row of high-quality back-to-backs on Heaton Road.

The two houses you see don’t go right through to the back: half way back, another one-room-per-floor house starts, with access to its ‘front’ door through the tunnel that was required by Bradford’s by-laws from the 1860s.

Finally I called in at Lilycroft Primary School (Bradford School Board, 1872-3 -- thus very early; I’d done my preliminary teaching practice there in 1963 when I lived just down the road) and admired the angels in the hall.

By this time the sun was out, everything looked wonderful -- and my battery ran out. So I'll have to go back. As if I need an excuse. Bradford, if often shabby, is magnificent: topography exhilarating -- unlike Leeds it’s a true Pennine town, on the edge of the big hills; the buildings a feast for the eyes; and the history -- which I now know a bit about for the first time (why didn’t they teach me it in school? typical grammar school...) -- adds such richness to what’s there to see.