Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

[Letter from Horton to John Flamsteed, 19 October 1715]

I have been often thinking of what you suggested, viz., instructing some person in the use of my instruments and engines, but I find these matters so little understood or felt in this country that I know not where to find any one either of fit capacity for it or inclination that way, though my instruments could not but be of considerable value, having within the space of the last ten or twelve years laid out upon Mr. Yarwell, while he followed that employment, £10 or more in glasses for telescopes and telescopical sights for different instruments. Yet, should I bestow them all gratis, besides my labour in constructing, I could not engage any person I know, either for want of judgement, inclination, or convenience, to employ them to any good purpose. Therefore must be obliged to wait till some better encouragement be offered.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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• 📌Bradford (73) W/G ·
• Flamsteed, John (1646-1719) (4), the first Astronomer Royal, prepared a 3,000-star catalogue, Catalogus Britannicus, and a star atlas called Atlas Coelestis, made the first recorded observations of Uranus, laid the foundation stone for the Royal Greenwich Observatory W/G ·
• 📌Little Horton (9) W/G ·
• Owner’s manual (1) W/G ·
• Sharp, Abraham (1653-1742) (6), mathematician and astronomer, assistant of John Flamsteed W/G ·
• Technical documentation (1) W/G ·
• User guide (1) W/G ·

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Similar

24 March 1703: The mathematician and astronomer Abraham Sharp experiences the northern lights for the first time, at Little Horton, Bradford

7 December 1703: Abraham Sharp writes to John Flamsteed of the difficulties of observing Jupiter from Little Horton, Bradford

19 November 1715: Writing to the astronomer John Flamsteed, Abraham Sharp of Little Horton (Bradford) hopes that defeat at the Battle of Preston will end local Jacobite aspirations

24 May 1669: Abraham Sharp (16), later mathematician and astronomer, undertakes not to fornicate for the next eight years and is apprenticed to a York textile merchant

23 June 1674: Oliver Heywood attends the funeral of Martha Stansfield and her baby

5 February 1649: The Puritan John Sharp of Bradford, on military service at Hull, writes passionately to his “cousin” at York

14 March 1655: Mary Sharp of Little Horton, Bradford, writes to her son Sam at Cambridge, in the year preceding his death, of his “misery by nature”

30 October 1744: Landowners form a partnership to pipe water from Little Horton to Bradford, facilitating urban growth

29 February 1824: Prophet John Wroe is baptised on the Leap Day in the Aire near Apperley Bridge before an audience of 30,000

2 May 1844: The Bradford Observer reports a 10% increase in the borough’s population in two years

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Ibbetson also quotes census data 1801-1841 for the borough and for the 12 other townships that constitute the parish of Bradford, showing an increase in the century of 253% and in the decade 1831-1841 of 32%:

POPULATION IN A.D.	1801	1811	1821	1831	1841
Allerton township	809	1093	1488	1733	1914
Bierley North township	3820	4766	6070	7254	9511
Bowling township	2055	2226	3579	5958	8918
BRADFORD township	6393	7767	13054	23223	34560
Clayton township	2040	2469	3609	4459	4347
Ecclesoill township	1351	1608	2176	2570	3008
Haworth chapelry	3164	3971	4668	5835	6303
Heaton township	951	1088	1217	1452	1573
Horton chapelry	3459	4423	7192	10782	17618
Manningham township	1357	1596	2474	3594	5662
Shipley township	1008	1214	1606	1926	2413
Thornton chapelry	2474	4016	4100	5968	6788
Wilsden township	913	1121	1711	2242	1684
Totals	29794	36358	52954	76976	105259

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