April 2022
Welcome
After a break, the rediscovering Ripleyville blog, is again open to visitors. The site went private to allow some time for thinking and planning.
New demands on the site, renewed interest and newer web and social media capabilities mean that the way the Victorian history of Ripley Ville is communicated needs to change.
Ripleyville as heritage and family history; how the name ‘Ripleyville’ is thought of, its place in history, how its buildings and residents are remembered, how residents’ memories are recorded all need to be reviewed.
The demolition and replacement by Accent Housing Association of the mix of housing that have been known as Ripleyville since 1976 and local news coverage make the task more urgent.
rRV Blog : Time-capsule
The rRV blog is a time-capsule. There was an ambitious programme for future blogs set out in 2017 but regular updating of the website stopped the year before; nearly 7 years ago. So, as at today. 2nd April 2022, the rRV blog contains none of the findings from research on Victorian Ripley Ville that has been done in those 7 years. That also needs to be remedied.
Newer findings and thinking about Victorian Ripley Ville, about Bowling Dyeworks and the Ripley family show just how central they were to the growth of Bradford from a town of squalor, conflict and chaos in the 1840s. Over the next thirty years cutting-edge ways of making and dyeing worsteds changed it into a town that was renowned and praised as ‘Worstedopolis’. The original Bowling works that grew from the ‘dyehaase’ of the 1830s, the ‘New Dyeworks’ and what was done in them put the Ripleys at the centre of these changes. New cloths, entirely new articles in the market, made huge profits for the leading manufacturers and dyers.
From their super-profits, merchants, manufacturers, and other magnates from Bradford pitched their schemes to combat the town’s’ many ills. Through the 1860 and 1870s, they funded or part-funded projects to improve living conditions, moderate worker behaviour, or contribute to the health of the town.
Victorian Bradford in Microcosm
Victorian Ripley Ville was one such scheme. Importantly, it was worked up from within the conditions that applied in Bradford. It was not part of an outward movement of mill, workers and their families to a green-field site, like the industrial model village of Saltaire.
Rich and powerful men making money in the town harboured political ambitions with even more say in how the town was run.
Political cartoon c. 1868
Bradford shown as a hatchery for the ambitions of rich and powerful men.
Sponsors, like Henry William Ripley with Ripley Ville, left indelible personal marks on their schemes. A village is, however, a complex mix. Issues of the day for Bradford people; extension of the right to vote for workers, elementary schooling for their children, standards of decent behaviour, temperance, disease prevention, the proper roles of men and women, religious beliefs and non-belief, party politics, Irish politics, the clash of styles in architecture, they all left their marks on Victorian Ripleyville. The village, its industrial setting, the reasons it was built and what was planned and built there between 1864 and 1882, provided a record of a town that had become ‘Worstedopolis’. The village was mid-to-late Victorian Bradford in microcosm.
100 Up : rediscovering Ripleyville; Heritage Matters for Ripley Road site
rediscovering Ripleyville’s 100th post : a Heritage Matters update about Bradford Council’s Planning Policy proposal for land on Ripley Road. Your chance to help shape the council’s policy for land near to where the northern site of Bradford’s only industrial village once stood!
Heritage Matters Update
Ripley Road Planning Allocation
Just over a week ago (2016/01/08) I happened across a planning document referring to Ripley Road in West Bowling and the land across from the Edward Ripley & Son’s Laboratory building which dates from 1916 (see photos below).
Laboratory Building Ripley Road
Date plaque Laboratory building
The Allocation Site in 1882
The map below shows that in 1882 the land would have included;
- Ripleys’ ‘New Shed’ (NS),
- subsiding pits (SP) for Bowling Dyeworks
- and a reservoir (Res).
The eastern side of Ripley Road was used for allotments’ with the lower block of Ripley Terrace (Nos 67-85), which featured in a recent post, and the Ripley Ville schools building (Sch) beyond (see photograph).
Ripley Terrace & Schools building c 1950s
Wider Setting of Site in 1882
The map shows the features above and the allocation site’s wider setting including Bowling Dyeworks and the rest of the northern site of the industrial model village of Ripley Ville.
Super-imposed on this in red are the outline of the site in the proposed allocation (WM2) and the words ‘Registered Historic Park’ used in the planning document to denote Bowling Park.
Site Allocation : Waste Disposal/Management Purposes
There is a proposal that the whole of this site of 2.35 hectares be considered for waste disposal/management purposes.
The link to the pdf of the planning document, which is on Bradford Council’s site is:-
You need to scroll down to pages 28 & 29 for the part relating to Ripley Road.
Mitigation Requirements
The grounds for the policy and allocation appear sound. The key point about the document are the conditions under which the policy and allocation might be applied i.e when an application to develop the site comes in. On this, the document includes the following paragraph under ‘Mitigation Requirements’ ;
Development proposals will need to ensure the significance (including the setting) of the Registered Historic Park to the south-east of the area is not harmed. This will need to be demonstrated through robust analysis in the heritage statement submitted with the planning application.
Awareness Raising
I was at a public consultation meeting when I was shown the document. I did at that time tell the planners attending about Ripleyville. They did not seem to know of its previous existence. It seems to me that there is an opportunity to make the planners aware of the proximity of this part of Ripley Road to;
- the northern site of Ripley Ville, Bradford’s only industrial model village
- the pedestrian paths that made and still offer links to what was the Bowling Dyework’s site and Ripley Ville
That mitigation requirement can apply to the Registered Historic Park (Bowling Park) ought to mean that mitigation requirements could be applied to the Ripleyville/Bowling Dyework’s sites. They are of equal significance. Ripley Ville was completed, with the removal and rebuilding of the Alms houses to New Cross Street on the village’s southern site, a year after Bowling Park was officially opened. They date from the same period.
Ripley Ville Alms houses on New Cross St, West Bowling
Recent research, summarised in an earlier post which corrects the errors on Wikipedia, makes clear the local and national significance of the Ripley Ville Working Mens Dwellings with their water-closets in the basements.
Grants or Gains
Another possibility is that some kind of planning gain/grant application (e.g. from Landfill Tax) could be looked for. Heritage signage, minor works, path clearance and reinstatement and the planting of trees, shrubs could be used to enhance the setting of what remains of the Victorian industrial landscape and the northern site of the village after demolition and improve access routes to these.
Action
Ripleyville is a crucial but forgotten part of Bradford’s Victorian Heritage. Make your voice heard in the efforts to promote it to its rightful place in the city’s Victorian history and its heritage.
Here’s some things you can do:-
- Tell people about this article. Copy and send them the link to this 100 Up page : Heritage Matters page; http://wp.me/p2qxEI-2hc
- Look at the planning document and in your response make sure the planners know about Ripley Ville and take it into account in future planning decisions.
- Copy & paste the 100 Up : Heritage Matters page link http://wp.me/p2qxEI-2hc into your comments to the planners.
Responses to the planning policy document can be made on-line or by other means. These are identified in page 3 of the document. Here’s the link again.
The relevant paragraphs, including the e-mail address for comments on page three, are:-
Delving into History & rRV Membership
Copyright R L (Bob) Walker 2012-2015. All rights reserved. (See sidebar left)
The first part of this post picks up on Graham Wilkinson’s comment about ‘delving into history’ and outlines an idea for a Victorian history and heritage project for Bowling, south Bradford. The second explains the present and likely future position on Membership of the rRV project and for people who have signed up as ‘Friends’ of ‘rediscovering Ripleyville’. Looking towards the future, the post ends on a positive note.
City and Facebook
Copyright R L (Bob) Walker 2012-2015. All rights reserved. (See sidebar left)
I’m breaking my blogging silence for a very brief post.
Can’t let Bradford City’s well-deserved ‘biggest FA cup upset’ win against Chelsea go by without a mention.
I have also this week backtracked from taking rediscovering Ripleyville onto Facebook, or more accurately getting myself on there as well. They seem to want to know your inside leg measurement and which way you dress before your personal profile is ‘complete’. O K I’m exaggerating but sorry Face-bookers I’ve looked at it and it’s just not my thing. So, the ‘Rediscovering Ripleyville’ Facebook page will be deleted. This will happen, in their words, ‘within the next 14 days’.
Any rRV up-dates to the end of February will now go through this site.
2015/01/25
Copyright R L Walker 2015. All rights reserved.
Cloth & Memory {2} : Mutable Frame of Reference
Maxine Bristow’s work ‘Mutable Frame of Reference – Installation – Material’, in the Cloth & Memory {2} exhibition in the Spinning Room at Salt’s 1853 Mill, is conceptually challenging. This post gives a personal but historically contexted reading of the installation that acknowledges the fluid frames, mutability and associative resonances of the work. Through these readings and the memories that the structural frameworks and curtaining evoke, the post settles, unsettlingly, on ideas of ‘warded’ space. From there it moves on to an account of an incident in the early 1860s when the ‘Lancashire Cotton Famine’ was near its peak and then comes back by way of the worsted trade to Bowling Dyeworks, the industrial model village of Ripley Ville and Salts Mill.
This is the second in a series of four posts on the Cloth & Memory {2} exhibition. A previous post has reviewed 6 other exhibits adding a commentary, in the form of supplements, that make connections between the exhibits and worsted dyeing, Bowling Dyeworks and Bradford’s ‘other’ industrial model village; Ripley Ville.
Theoretical underpinning
A future post ‘Colour Supplement’ engages with the theoretical positions that inform Maxine Bristow’s work (see Cloth & Memory {2}, page 38) and within their context uses the idea of ‘the supplement’ to critique Bradford’s understanding of its Victorian history and what this means for its heritage offer. This post revolves around and then enters into the exhibit to settle, unsettlingly on the idea of warded space. This is an idea that connects to the theory of a ‘surveillance and a carceral society’ , associated with Michel Foucault and his account of structural (epistemic} changes in the relations between state, society and the individual in the early 19th century.
Cloth & Memory {2} : Mutable Frame of Reference
Occupying a central space in the Spinning Room of Salts 1853 Mill in Saltaire, Maxine Bristow’s work ‘Mutable Frame of Reference – Installation – Material’ is designed to be conceptually challenging. It is one of 23 exhibits in the Cloth & Memory {2} exhibition that runs for its final week until Sunday, November 3rd.
Image : copyright R L Walker 2013
At a distance, in spite of its central location, the tonal values of the cloths and the runs of matt metal rails allow an assimilation of the installation to the space of the Spinning Room. Approached, incongruities appear. The ‘Scandinavian’ blond-wood, the bent-wood components and smaller dimensions of the railings suggest technologies and a modern structure from the late 1950s or 1960s, certainly from a period that came after the hundred years when the Mill was in its prime.
rediscovering Ripley Ville 
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