A RECENT photograph in the Telegraph and Argus showed the Manningham Mills team from the 1980s, writes local historian Dr Paul Jennings.

Here we are some 40 years earlier in the 1947-48 season. The team in the back row is J. Firm, G. Whitford, L. Atkinson, M. Tordoff, D. Keeton and H. Jackson; front row D. Coucom, D. Racher, H. Jennings, N. Jackson (captain), S. Smith and L. Smith. To the left is J. Watts and to the right J. Austin in the flat cap.

The thousands of employees of Lister’s Manningham Mills supported an incredible range of social, cultural and sporting activities, of which football was just one. For a time, there was a women’s as well as a men’s team.

Just after the First World War, a sports ground was created on Scotchman Road at the side of the mill, including cricket and football pitches, with a new stand in 1929.

By then, there were two cricket elevens plus an inter-departmental league and both senior and junior football clubs. The former came third in the league that year and won the Bradford Senior Hospital Cup and the latter won the Red Triangle League Cup.

After the end of the Second World War, the team was reorganised. My dad, Harry Jennings, who is in the front row in the photograph, remembered how those interested picked all the stones up from the neglected pitch and cut the grass ready to play again. The team all then worked at Lister’s. About the 1947-8 season, the club’s chairman, W. (Willie) Bennett, a leading light for many years in Lister’s social and sporting life, wrote in the company magazine that they had been in the newly formed Premier Division of the Bradford Amateur League and ‘finished among the leaders’. They were runners-up in the Bradford and District Cup, beaten 3-1 by Salts at Valley Parade on April 26 but just four days later, on April 30, won the Bradford Amateur League Cup at Park Avenue, beating the United States Metallic Packing Company 4-1.

The club’s president, director and future managing director of Lister’s, Graham Watson - who will be well remembered not only for his work for Bradford, but for his legacies of land in the Yorkshire Dales to the National Trust and a superb collection of antiquarian books to Emmanuel College, Cambridge which he had attended - presented medals to the players in the works canteen on June 1. They then all adjourned to Lilycroft Working Men’s Club, above the mill on Lilycroft Road, for dancing and entertainment provided by Lister’s ‘artistes’ John Briggs (piano accordion and guitar), Alf Race (guitar) and Alf Illingworth (drums) with Cynthia Normington and Benny Moorhouse vocalists. The evening was ‘one of the most successful and enjoyable during the history of the club’.

I remember well going with dad to Scotchman Road in the mid-1960s to watch the team: the slightly sloping pitch, the old stand, the crowd shouting encouragement and the trainer running on the pitch to an injured player with the ‘magic sponge’.

And, of course, the ‘tea hut’ at half-time.

* Dr Paul Jennings’s article ‘Life at Lister’s - Sport, sociability and culture at Lister’s Mill, Bradford’ was published in The Bradford Antiquary in 2016.

Just after the First World War, a sports ground was created on Scotchman Road at the side of the mill, including a football pitch, with a new stand in 1929.

The team was re-organised after the end of the Second World War. My dad, Harry Jennings, who is in the front row on this photograph, remembered how those interested picked all the stones up from the neglected pitch and cut the grass ready to play again. The team all then worked at Lister’s.

About the 1947-8 season: the club’s chairman, W. (Willie) Bennett, wrote in the company magazine that they had been in the newly formed Premier Division of the Bradford Amateur League and ‘finished among the leaders’.

They were runners-up in the Bradford and District Cup, beaten 3-1 by Salts at Valley Parade on April 26 but just four days later, on April 30, won the Bradford Amateur League Cup at Park Avenue, beating the United States Metallic Packing Company 4-1.

The club’s president, director and future managing director of Lister’s, Graham Watson, who will be well remembered not only for his work for Bradford, but for his legacies of land in the Yorkshire Dales and a superb collection of antiquarian books, presented medals to the players in the works canteen on June 1.

They then all adjourned to Lilycroft Working Men’s Club, above the mill on Lilycroft Road, for dancing and entertainment provided by Lister’s ‘artistes’ John Briggs (piano accordion and guitar), Alf Race (guitar) and Alf Illingworth (drums) with Cynthia Normington and Benny Moorhouse vocalists. The evening was ‘one of the most successful and enjoyable during the history of the club’.

Dr Paul Jennings