Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

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

Rode through a most beautiful country to Otley. The roads in many places for a mile or two scarcely passable, the first four mile from Rochdale excessively bad, two miles in the middle between Halifax and Bradford very bad, a mile down to the bridge over the Aire between Bradford and Otley, these parts are the worst, but it is matter of great surprize that the whole of the road should be in such indifferent repair and some execrably bad through the whole of this manufacturing district, that the whole and sole cause where the road is not pitched is the not letting the water off or breaking the stones and that the whole distance from Congleton to Otley there were not 20 persons employed in either of these occupations, notwithstanding they tell you half the people are out of employ and every three mile at the furthest there is a shilling turnpike for a chaise and pair. The environs of Rochdale, Ripponden, Halifax, Bradford, the bridges over the Aire and Otley are beautiful in the extreme and were it not for the reflection that the greatness of Great Britain depended I may say principally on the defacing of the hand of nature in these parts by the hand of man, which produces not only riches in every way from exploitation and taxation at home and raises in time of war an innumerable population which is seen over the whole district for the armies, one could not help regretting that scenes so romantic and lovely should be impaired and destroyed by the black steam engines, by the yarn, the cloth, the cotton, the morals of the people destroyed by being crowded together, and the hammer of the water engines perpetually affrighting quiet and comfort from valleys which at first view one would imagine were placed by nature in the most remote and sequestered situations for the peculiar residence of innocence and peace. The seats or rather the villas of the manufacturers like the citizens in the neighbourhood of London have neatness to recommend them but scarcely any character through the whole district that distinguishes one very much from another.

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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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Tags

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• Air pollution (13) W/G ·
• 📌Bradford (73) W/G ·
• Congleton (1) W/G ·
• 📌Halifax (43) W/G ·
• Hammer (8) W/G ·
• Industrial Revolution (22) W/G ·
• Newton, Benjamin (1762-1830) (1), rector of Wath, diarist W/G ·
• 📌Otley (13) W/G ·
• Pennines (11) W/G ·
• Pollution (10) W/G ·
• River Aire (27) W/G ·
• Road transport (14) W/G ·
• Road (4) W/G ·
• 📌Rochdale (8), old Lancashire mill-town at the foothills of the South Pennines in the dale on the River Roch, 9.8 miles (15.8 km) northeast of Manchester W/G ·
• Textile manufacturing (60) W/G ·
• Toll road (4) W/G ·
• Turnpike trust (3) W/G ·
• Water pollution (4) W/G ·
• Year Without a Summer (3) 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

19 October 1816: Serenaded by the military, decorated barges leave Leeds for Liverpool to celebrate the completion, after almost 50 years, of the canal uniting east and west

20 September 1853: Ballad composed for the inauguration this day of Titus Salt’s palace for the manufacture of woollen fabrics

8 June 1561: A York official explains why textile manufacturing has left his city for the West Riding

23 April 1832: “Pilgrims” arrive at Leeds on Easter Monday on their way to York to hear Richard Oastler call for a 10-hour working day for mill children

30 May 1835: Alfred Austin, future poet laureate, “Banjo-Byron that twangs the strum-strum,” is born into rural splendour at Ashwood, 48 Headingley Lane, Leeds

7 November 1920: In a guest sermon in the parish church where his father had officiated, Clifford Allbutt evokes the village of Dewsbury in the 1840s

12 April 1924: The Bloomsbury Group’s Amabel Williams-Ellis finds little art for art’s sake in Leeds

25 September 1705: Daniel Defoe is amazed by Leeds’s outdoor cloth market on Briggate, shortly before the opening of the white cloth hall

14 April 1843: John Nicholson, “the Airedale Poet,” “the Bingley Baron,” dies after falling into the Aire while drunk

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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