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. 2^nd 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.