Bradford wakens from its slumber

THE LAST Millennium didn't have a happy start. King Ethelred the Unready was on the throne in the year 1000 and, despite his name (which actually means he was badly advised), he was very ready indeed to stick his hand in the royal coffers to pay off the invading Danes.

This did not stop them invading (paying somebody not to do something which they like doing, and you can't stop them doing, is pretty poor economics). But it wasn't all a Bad Thing. One of the results was the birth, in a very small way, of Bradford.

The Romans, a thousand years earlier, had steered pretty clear of most of the higher areas of Yorkshire. The Celts - in the shape of a fearsome tribe known as the Brigantes - didn't take kindly to strangers, particularly strangers who spoke Latin, wore armour and were bent on conquest.

Any Roman column venturing into what was then a heavily-wooded region with many steep valleys was simply inviting a boulder on its collective bonce and a run-in with a lot of blokes who dearly loved collecting their enemies' heads as trophies.

So while Bradford's little valley might have been an attractive place for settlers, it remained an under-developed place.

The Saxons, who came from what is now Germany, were quite keen to help the ancient Britons keep the Romans at bay. Eventually the Romans, their home in Italy threatened by a host of would-be invaders, cleared off.

The Saxons didn't. They stayed, encouraged by a fairly friendly welcome and the prospect of land to farm.

By the end of the first thousand years of Christianity, Scandinavian immigration had begun in earnest. The Danes had been settling here for more than a century, though Alfred the Great had managed to contain them.

Ethelred wasn't as canny as his predecessor. In 980 Danish raids began in earnest. The king bought them off, over and over again, but the price kept going up. Eventually Ethelred fled to France in 1013 and Angles, Saxons, Danes and other Scandinavians were left to squabble over a place which had become England.

It was the Normans, invading in 1066, who brought a brutally-won and costly peace.

Bradford by then, for one reason or another, was described as 'waste' and was, when the Domesday Book was published two decades later, in the hands of a Norman knight called Ilbert de Lacy, from Lassy in Normandy.

Ilbert had arrived with William the Conqueror and proved himself a loyal and ferocious ally. When the Norman garrison at York was massacred, William ordered the rebellious north to be 'harried' - a short word for a barbaric massacre. At the end of this 'pacification', Ilbert found himself with 150 manors throughout the old West Riding (a Norse word for a third) and a comfortable castle at Pontefract.

He was without doubt the uncrowned king of Bradford and its surroundings; and in fairness, it has to be said that under the de Lacy family, who held sway for more than two centuries, Bradford prospered.

In 1251 Henry III granted the growing town a market, to be held outside the parish church on a Sunday. By 1277 there is the first mention of cloth-making being done in the area when Evam, a weaver from Gomersal, ended up in jail for an unspecified offence.

And then Bradford more or less slumbered for half a millennium. Wool and its products, and fairly rough hill farming, gave the people a living though they were unlikely to become millionaires.

All that began to change in the second half of the 18th century when James Watt turned the steam engine from a cumbersome, slow-moving device into an efficient and powerful means of driving machinery.

Bradford, sitting on reserves of coal and iron, and crossed by streams full of the soft water which was essential to wool processing, suddenly began to blossom. The Industrial Revolution made it one of the great cities in the greatest empire which ever existed.

Two world wars, cheap imports and a lack of foresight and investment meant that it was a short flowering. But in the 100 or so years in which it was in its pomp, Bradford gave the world a lead in welfare and social experiment which has scarcely been seen since.

In those days, they got the date right!

Bradford won't officially be saying goodbye to the 20th century, just as the city barely greeted its arrival 99 years ago.

Ordinary people, however, will find ways of welcoming the 21st century, just as their grandparents acknowledged the 20th with torchlight processions, comic bands and, according to the Bradford Daily Argus on January 1, 1901, "numerous gangs of grotesquely attired masqueraders, among whom male and female impersonation seemed to be the most popular diversion."

No, the date is correct. The 20th century did not officially begin until 1901 - not 1900.

Strictly speaking, the events planned for December 31, 1999, will be a matter of premature celebration on a world-wide scale. But not in Bradford.

Ninety-nine years ago the city's streets were reportedly deserted half-an-hour after the chimes of midnight were rung out by the bells of Bradford Cathedral, which was the scene of a special service.

Another one was held on the morning of the first day of the new century.

The Mayor, W C Lupton, aldermen, councillors and leading citizens assembled in front of the Town Hall and just after 11am set off along Market Street to the Cathedral.

Large numbers of Artillery and Rifle Volunteer officers in uniform added to the colour of the occasion which was watched by large crowds of people along the route. The Cathedral was packed. The service was cross-denominational.

The future century, the congregation heard, would be one of matchless opportunities, if also one of unknown trials and unknown troubles.

This optimistic message, set against a background report of the city's rush to progress and prosperity during the 19th century, contrasted starkly with the tongue-in-cheek prophecy of playwright George Bernard Shaw.

GBS - one of the founder members of the Independent Labour Party, formed in Bradford in 1893 - proclaimed with mock solemnity "I warn you that in a hundred years we shall all be dead. I encourage you with the reflection that we shall none of us be missed.

"I forecast the twentieth century as a series of experimental proofs that the sort of man our civilisation produces is incapable of politically organising the civilisation."

The Bradford Daily Telegraph, in an article summing up the city's "unique record," was disposed to be altogether more bullish.

In 1800, the township of about 6,000 souls was little more than a valley-dwelling community bounded by Kirkgate, Westgate and Ivegate.

By 1873 there were more than 200 mills within the borough alone; bigger ones, such as Salts Mill, lay beyond the boundary marked by the three gates.

Twenty-six years later in 1899 the city's population had grown to 266,164 with property with a rateable value of £1,396,087.

Bradford had been through a great deal during the tumult of the Industrial Revolution; but our forefathers rightly felt proud of all that had been accomplished.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.