Bradford

Bradford was at various times dubbed 'the largest village of Britain' or 'Worstedopolis', both of which terms conveyed important aspects of the development of the city. It lay at the heart of the woollen textile district of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Bradford became the mercantile centre of the wool textile industry and the maNufacturing centre of worsteds. A worsted was a smooth type of woollen cloth, which was later combined with cotton warp from the 1830s to give a cheaper and lighter cloth. Bradford was also from the 1830s the centre of the wool-dyeing industry. The mechanisation of the wool textile industry east of the Pennines came later than that of its cotton counterpart in Lancashire, but the expansion of the industry was as rapid, and Bradford shared in this meteoric growth. A number of factors account for Bradford's rise to dominance in the industry. These included connection to the canal system from the 1770s, easy access to the iron and coal supplies necessary to build and drive textile machinery, the concentration of the marketing of the product within the locality, the serviceable and cheap type of cloth produced, and the heavy capitalisation and centralisation of the West Riding industry. The significance of the religious faith of many of the leading entrepreneurs in the industry should not be discounted, either, their attitudes to work and investment being shaped by their Quaker and Nonconformist sensibilities. The export trade in particular was increasingly dominated by the West Riding, leaving the Norfolk and the West of England woollen industries far behind and having to concentrate on specialised fabrics for the home market. Mechanisation of the industry was complete by the 1850s, by which time Bradford had 32 per cent of the spindles, 40 per cent of the power looms and 32 per cent of the labour force of the worsted industry. I By 1885 it was estimated that 92 per cent of the British worsted industry was based in the Bradford area. At that date women made up two-thirds of the adult workforce.2

The worsted industry was at its peak in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, beginning its long decline in the face of increasing foreign competition in the Great Depression after 1874. Alongside textiles, the associated industries of coal, iron and engineering made up much smaller subsidiary sectors of the local economy, and were important in the surrounding region.