In Sheffield, we visited the River Sheaf, which runs underground beneath the city center in a series of 19th-century stone culverts. Sheffield was founded at the confluence of the Sheaf and the larger River Don, and it was a world center of metallurgy, steel production, cutlery, and armaments well into the 20th century.
The city’s metalworking industry developed the two most important processes behind the modern steel industry: the “crucible steel” process in 1740, and the Bessemer Converter in 1856. Stainless steel was invented here in 1912. The city manufactured decorative metalwork and household wares as well, especially after a Sheffield cutler invented an early method of silver-plating (“Sheffield Plate”) in 1742.
When visiting the town in 1762, the writer Daniel Defoe wrote:
This town of Sheffield is very populous and large, the streets narrow, and the houses dark and black, occasioned by the continued smoke of the forges, which are always at work: Here they make all sorts of cutlery-ware, but especially that of edged-tools, knives, razors, axes, & and nails….
These knives had been the core of the city’s production since the Middle Ages, and had made Sheffield famous throughout England and the world. In the 14th-century Canterbury Tales, one of the characters in the Reeve’s Tale carries a “Sheffeld thwitel,” or knife. Sir Walter Scott lived four centuries later, but he set his novel Ivanhoe in the 12th century and the first character in the book carries “…one of those long, broad, sharp-pointed, and two-edged knives, with a buck’s-hoon handle, which were fabricated in the neighborhood, and bore even at this early period the name of a Sheffield whittle.” Sheffield knives came the U.S. as well. (As did the word “whittle,” now used as a verb.) The humble Barlow knife, oft considered an American classic, was invented in Sheffield by Obadiah Barlow in 1670. Bowie knives were invented by the American Colonel Jim Bowie—but within a few years of his invention, Sheffield was producing most of the Bowie knives sold in America.
The River Sheaf and its smaller neighboring streams provided the power behind this long tradition of metalsmithing. Neither the Sheaf nor the Don were big enough to navigate with a cargo-carrying boat of any large size (although smaller boats on the Don provided vital transportation of raw materials for the knifemakers), but the Sheaf was fast-flowing, with steep grades that could drive waterwheels. Smaller tributaries of the Sheaf flowed equally swiftly, and small water-powered mills were built in the area as early as the 12th century. In the centuries leading to the Industrial Revolution (and for many years after), waterwheels moved bellows, powered forge hammers, and drove the machines that rolled and cut metal for these knives and tools.
Most importantly for Sheffield’s development, water was able to power grinding mills, which was a necessity for any serious cutlery manufacturing. (Cutlery includes edged weapons and tools like hoes, shovels, and axes as well as knives and tableware.) Without waterpower from the Sheaf or Porter Brook, Sheffield could not have developed the early industries and technologies that allowed the city to become a leader in the industrial production of metal products into the modern age.
To get into the tunnel of the Sheaf, we followed the old course of the Porter Brook, which had once been a long and winding stream that flowed from across the city to merge with the Sheaf. The little stream had been altered almost beyond recognition, however, by mills seeking to use its water for power in the 18th century. Millraces had re-channeled the water into a series of millponds that only vaguely followed the Brook’s original path. Now the remnants of the stream—an ankle-high trickle—flows through concrete troughs and into its own tunnel, and then merges with the Sheaf underground. John, Chris and I followed the water until we came to the concrete mouth of the Porter’s culvert. Turning on headlamps and tugging up our waders, we plunged into the darkness.
SHEFFIELD: THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
When we came to the confluence of Porter Brook and the Sheaf, we were also directly underneath the Midland train station. This had been one of the first sections of the river to be covered over, when the station was built in 1870. The station was widely hailed as an engineering masterpiece for utilizing the site over the river, as this meant supporting the culvert against the weight of heavy trains. Looking around, we found ourselves in wide, low tunnel, divided into three channels, with each channel about twelve feet wide and a little taller than my head. Between the channels a series of heavy rough-stone arches looked like they would hold for the next thousand years. But the water level seemed low. The stream mostly flowed in just one or two of the channels, and we were able to walk dry in the third.
By the time Midland Station was built, the city had already turned its back on the Sheaf, though the river was not yet buried. A century before, in 1770, there had been 133 “wheels” (the general name for a factory/mill building with multiple workrooms), which used waterpower to run 896 “troughs,” or individual grinding-wheel workstations. The first steam-powered grinding wheel in Sheffield was installed in 1786, however, and by 1840 the power sources were evenly split. By 1865 there were 132 steam-powered factories and few, if any, that used waterpower.
A copy of a map from the 1890s showed us the factories and mills that had existed close to where we now stood, still at the confluence of the Porter and the Sheaf. There had been over a dozen cutlery, gilding, and silver plate factories within a five-block radius, places like the Pond Hill Works, the Clarence Works, and the Queens Plate and Cutlery Works. There were massive steel and iron mills: the Scandanavian Steel Works, the Soho Rolling Mills, the Central Hammer Works, and others. Larger than anything else, and closest to where now stood, there had been the giant Albion Saw Mills and the Sheaf Saw Mills. Their timber yards abutted the railroad tracks of Midland Station, and like the station the yards had been built over the underground Sheaf. Though next to the Sheaf, these factories and sawmills had all been powered by steam.
Almost all of these business had sprung up in that heady time between about 1819, when the Sheffield Canal was opened to provide a navigable waterway along the River Don, and 1890, when the city had become the undeniable center of the world’s steel and cutlery industries. The population growth during this period had been extremely rapid, from about 65,000 in 1819 when the Canal opened, to 161,475 in the 1851 census just thirty years later. By 1900, the city was close to a half-million, nearly the same as the population today.
Just as in the other industrializing cities of Britain, the downside of this fantastic growth was absolutely terrible conditions for the workers. Grinders suffered from silicosis and tuberculosis, and at mid-century nearly sixty percent of fork, needle, razor, and file grinders would die before age thirty. Children worked ten or twelve hour days in many factories, and an 1862 “Children’s Employment Commission on the Metal Manufactures of the Sheffield District” records witnesses such as William Henry Widdicombe, age 8, grinder; Thomas Darwin, age 6, grinder; Maria Lansley, age 9, hand-fly operator; Henry Kay, age 10, riveter; Joseph Broadhead, age 10, saw-glazer; and Sarah Ann Tingle, age 9, fork-filer.
Concomitant with the factory work were terrible, overcrowded living conditions for the workers. This translated into terrible pollution of the Sheaf, as it became both a trash dump and the primary sewer for the dense worker housing along its shores. A doctor speaking at an 1886 commission on contagious diseases complained that the river was “...filthy and disgusting,” and went on to describe what he’d found in the old millponds (or lakes) and in the river itself:
The bed of the River Sheaf, the bottom of the lakes, and the ground occupied by the mill reservoir, are extensively covered with black, decomposing mud, much of which still consists of putrefying organic matter; and, taking note of the dead dogs and cats which may be seen there….the whole appearance of the river and its tributaries, as they pass between and below the houses of Sheffield, is abominable. Offensive gases are constantly escaping in bubbles from the filthy deposit…
Other doctors at the conference agreed that “[t]he state of the Porter and the Sheaf is a disgrace to the civilization of the nineteenth century.” However, with no real possibility of cleaning up the river, their only serious proposal was to make a covered sewer around the last two miles of the Sheaf, between the neighborhood of Heeley and the confluence of the Don. The full length of this proposed culvert was never built, but the doctors would doubtless be gratified to know that by the early twentieth century, a little more than a mile of the river had been almost completely covered over.
By the time Midland Station was built, the city had already turned its back on the Sheaf, though the river was not yet buried. A century before, in 1770, there had been 133 “wheels” (the general name for a factory/mill building with multiple workrooms), which used waterpower to run 896 “troughs,” or individual grinding-wheel workstations. The first steam-powered grinding wheel in Sheffield was installed in 1786, however, and by 1840 the power sources were evenly split. By 1865 there were 132 steam-powered factories and few, if any, that used waterpower.
A copy of a map from the 1890s showed us the factories and mills that had existed close to where we now stood, still at the confluence of the Porter and the Sheaf. There had been over a dozen cutlery, gilding, and silver plate factories within a five-block radius, places like the Pond Hill Works, the Clarence Works, and the Queens Plate and Cutlery Works. There were massive steel and iron mills: the Scandanavian Steel Works, the Soho Rolling Mills, the Central Hammer Works, and others. Larger than anything else, and closest to where now stood, there had been the giant Albion Saw Mills and the Sheaf Saw Mills. Their timber yards abutted the railroad tracks of Midland Station, and like the station the yards had been built over the underground Sheaf. Though next to the Sheaf, these factories and sawmills had all been powered by steam.
Almost all of these business had sprung up in that heady time between about 1819, when the Sheffield Canal was opened to provide a navigable waterway along the River Don, and 1890, when the city had become the undeniable center of the world’s steel and cutlery industries. The population growth during this period had been extremely rapid, from about 65,000 in 1819 when the Canal opened, to 161,475 in the 1851 census just thirty years later. By 1900, the city was close to a half-million, nearly the same as the population today.
Just as in the other industrializing cities of Britain, the downside of this fantastic growth was absolutely terrible conditions for the workers. Grinders suffered from silicosis and tuberculosis, and at mid-century nearly sixty percent of fork, needle, razor, and file grinders would die before age thirty. Children worked ten or twelve hour days in many factories, and an 1862 “Children’s Employment Commission on the Metal Manufactures of the Sheffield District” records witnesses such as William Henry Widdicombe, age 8, grinder; Thomas Darwin, age 6, grinder; Maria Lansley, age 9, hand-fly operator; Henry Kay, age 10, riveter; Joseph Broadhead, age 10, saw-glazer; and Sarah Ann Tingle, age 9, fork-filer.
Concomitant with the factory work were terrible, overcrowded living conditions for the workers. This translated into terrible pollution of the Sheaf, as it became both a trash dump and the primary sewer for the dense worker housing along its shores. A doctor speaking at an 1886 commission on contagious diseases complained that the river was “...filthy and disgusting,” and went on to describe what he’d found in the old millponds (or lakes) and in the river itself:
The bed of the River Sheaf, the bottom of the lakes, and the ground occupied by the mill reservoir, are extensively covered with black, decomposing mud, much of which still consists of putrefying organic matter; and, taking note of the dead dogs and cats which may be seen there….the whole appearance of the river and its tributaries, as they pass between and below the houses of Sheffield, is abominable. Offensive gases are constantly escaping in bubbles from the filthy deposit…
Other doctors at the conference agreed that “[t]he state of the Porter and the Sheaf is a disgrace to the civilization of the nineteenth century.” However, with no real possibility of cleaning up the river, their only serious proposal was to make a covered sewer around the last two miles of the Sheaf, between the neighborhood of Heeley and the confluence of the Don. The full length of this proposed culvert was never built, but the doctors would doubtless be gratified to know that by the early twentieth century, a little more than a mile of the river had been almost completely covered over.
SHEFFIELD: SHEFFIELD BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
We walked along in a darkness alleviated only by our headlamps. The water was still shallow, never occupying more than two of the three channels. The arched stonework was beautifully laid, though still of rough stones, and it felt to me like we were in the foundations of a cathedral. The thick stonework completely insulated us from the sounds of the city, and in this silence the trickling and gurgling of the water sounded loud.
“It is no great tax on the imagination to divest the Sheffield of to-day of its furnaces, its rumbling rolling-mills, and its brick and mortar, and to clothe its sharp crests and undulating hollows with their primaeval timber and pristine verdure,” a writer opined in The English Illustrated Magazine in 1884. As I walked along, I tried to imagine that I was walking alongside the full, unpolluted river that Sweyn, the Saxon lord of Sheffield Manor, had looked upon in the 11th Century AD.
“….the Sheaf in those days was an unspoiled, very charming stream with plenty of fish in it, and the banks edged with flowers,” I had read in a book called The Making of Sheffield. The fish had always been so plentiful, in fact, that even into the 19th century some apprentice indenture contracts specified that the master could not make the apprentice eat salmon more often than twice a week. The water that flowed next to me seemed clean enough, with no more refuse than is expected in an urban stream, but I was completely unable to imagine fish in it.
I couldn’t imagine what the river would look like with “primaeval timber and pristine verdure,” either, and so after the trip I looked at old maps of Sheffield to try to see how the river and town had changed. A map from 1780 showed me the Sheaf in a nearly-natural state: far from being covered over, the river was crossed by only a single bridge. The Porter Brook fed two small ponds for watermills—the “Forge Pond,” the water from which went to power grindstones and tilt hammers, and the “Mill Pond,” which powered a mill for grinding grain.
A map from 1832, fifty years later, showed surprisingly few differences. As on the 1780 map, the industrial district seemed to contain only a few mills clustered around the two central millponds. Most of the forges and grinding mills at the time would still have been located in small hamlets outside of town, with a large workshop/mill building employing a dozen people, and with various machinery all powered by a single waterwheel. In a grinding mill, for example, one waterwheel would power six to ten “troughs,” or individual grinding-stations; at each station, the grinder would side or lie in a wooden framework that suspended him over the six-foot-diameter stone grinding wheel.
By 1855, maps began to show an inchoate version of the modern city layout Porter Brook was no longer visible, the water channeled instead through a series of millponds and underground millraces. Three bridges cross the Sheaf in the downtown area, and though the factories and millponds had proliferated since 1832, they remained consolidated in a small area, only about a half-mile square. Just to the south, an expanse of land labeled “The Farm” began around Granville Square, where today’s culvert around the Sheaf ends. In the contemporary city, this landmark is memorialized with a two-block-long street called Farm Road.
“It is no great tax on the imagination to divest the Sheffield of to-day of its furnaces, its rumbling rolling-mills, and its brick and mortar, and to clothe its sharp crests and undulating hollows with their primaeval timber and pristine verdure,” a writer opined in The English Illustrated Magazine in 1884. As I walked along, I tried to imagine that I was walking alongside the full, unpolluted river that Sweyn, the Saxon lord of Sheffield Manor, had looked upon in the 11th Century AD.
“….the Sheaf in those days was an unspoiled, very charming stream with plenty of fish in it, and the banks edged with flowers,” I had read in a book called The Making of Sheffield. The fish had always been so plentiful, in fact, that even into the 19th century some apprentice indenture contracts specified that the master could not make the apprentice eat salmon more often than twice a week. The water that flowed next to me seemed clean enough, with no more refuse than is expected in an urban stream, but I was completely unable to imagine fish in it.
I couldn’t imagine what the river would look like with “primaeval timber and pristine verdure,” either, and so after the trip I looked at old maps of Sheffield to try to see how the river and town had changed. A map from 1780 showed me the Sheaf in a nearly-natural state: far from being covered over, the river was crossed by only a single bridge. The Porter Brook fed two small ponds for watermills—the “Forge Pond,” the water from which went to power grindstones and tilt hammers, and the “Mill Pond,” which powered a mill for grinding grain.
A map from 1832, fifty years later, showed surprisingly few differences. As on the 1780 map, the industrial district seemed to contain only a few mills clustered around the two central millponds. Most of the forges and grinding mills at the time would still have been located in small hamlets outside of town, with a large workshop/mill building employing a dozen people, and with various machinery all powered by a single waterwheel. In a grinding mill, for example, one waterwheel would power six to ten “troughs,” or individual grinding-stations; at each station, the grinder would side or lie in a wooden framework that suspended him over the six-foot-diameter stone grinding wheel.
By 1855, maps began to show an inchoate version of the modern city layout Porter Brook was no longer visible, the water channeled instead through a series of millponds and underground millraces. Three bridges cross the Sheaf in the downtown area, and though the factories and millponds had proliferated since 1832, they remained consolidated in a small area, only about a half-mile square. Just to the south, an expanse of land labeled “The Farm” began around Granville Square, where today’s culvert around the Sheaf ends. In the contemporary city, this landmark is memorialized with a two-block-long street called Farm Road.
SHEFFIELD: TO THE RIVER DON
The tunnel changed shape and size several times, marking different eras of construction of the culvert. All were stone or brickwork. Above, Sheaf Street followed our exact route; most of the street had been laid directly over the culvert. Close to the Don, we were now in an older area of the city, where some of the first millponds had been. Appropriately, the neighborhood that was above us is named Pond Hill, and nearby is Pond Street.
The tunnels under Pond Hill were the largest we’d yet seen, and they were made of finished stone instead of the rough blocks we’d seen earlier. I estimated that the arched channels are about twenty feet high. The Brobdingnagian proportions seemed ludicrous when compared with the twelve-inch-deep stream that flowed past our boots. Incredibly, the tunnel expanded again as we came into sight of the outlet to the River Don: a truly vast chamber, with an arched ceiling that made me think of being in a cathedral or a stadium. I later found out that the masonry arch that loomed over us had originally been the Canal Bridge, which had connected the city center (just to the west of the Sheaf) to the Sheffield Canal basin (just to the east of the Sheaf).
The water has not always been so low. On the night of March 11th, 1864, heavy rains caused Sheffield’s new water-supply dam to break a few miles east of town. Nearly three million tons of water roared down the Loxley River valley, into the Don, and through the center of town. Between 240 and 290 people were killed. The London Times reported that sleeping residents were drowned “like rats in a hole.” The water was high enough near the mouth of the Sheaf (where it connects with the Don) that children were drowned in their second-story bedrooms, and the next day corpses were found stuck in a tree and lodged at the top of a haystack.
Maybe this had been on the mind of the builders of the tunnel when they made it so grand. In fact, the Sheaf has continued to flood occasionally, and in sections where its channel is not quite as large, it has burst its banks and flooded nearby areas. Just a few months prior to our visit, on June 25, 2007, heavy rains had caused both the Sheaf and the Don to swell over their banks; a 13-year old boy was wept away and drowned by the Sheaf.
The River Don was the end of our journey, and we climbed along the waterline and up the riverbank, streaming water. I was happy that we’d come out here; just about where we climbed up the riverbank, I knew, there had once been the clearing that gave Sheffield its name—a field along the Sheaf (or Shef) River, where a Saxon village developed. After the Norman conquest of 1066 AD, a castle had been built on the same spot, and just as the Sheaf is below the contemporary city, fragments of the old castle still exist beneath today’s Castle Market.
In fact Sheffield history can be traced back much further even than that. The very oldest evidence of human-built dwellings in England—remnants of a hut from 10,000 years ago—was discovered in a region in northern Sheffield. The residents of these earliest built structures doubtless drank and fished in these same rivers and streams, and perhaps it would be possible find out enough to determine just how their community interacted with rivers and other still-extant parts of their environment. But I was satisfied already. The River Sheaf has flowed through all of Sheffield’s history, and with it as a connecting thread we had already explored nearly a thousand years of the city’s past. That’s plenty for one day. We packed up our gear and set off to walk back to the car—aboveground, and fully in the present.
The tunnels under Pond Hill were the largest we’d yet seen, and they were made of finished stone instead of the rough blocks we’d seen earlier. I estimated that the arched channels are about twenty feet high. The Brobdingnagian proportions seemed ludicrous when compared with the twelve-inch-deep stream that flowed past our boots. Incredibly, the tunnel expanded again as we came into sight of the outlet to the River Don: a truly vast chamber, with an arched ceiling that made me think of being in a cathedral or a stadium. I later found out that the masonry arch that loomed over us had originally been the Canal Bridge, which had connected the city center (just to the west of the Sheaf) to the Sheffield Canal basin (just to the east of the Sheaf).
The water has not always been so low. On the night of March 11th, 1864, heavy rains caused Sheffield’s new water-supply dam to break a few miles east of town. Nearly three million tons of water roared down the Loxley River valley, into the Don, and through the center of town. Between 240 and 290 people were killed. The London Times reported that sleeping residents were drowned “like rats in a hole.” The water was high enough near the mouth of the Sheaf (where it connects with the Don) that children were drowned in their second-story bedrooms, and the next day corpses were found stuck in a tree and lodged at the top of a haystack.
Maybe this had been on the mind of the builders of the tunnel when they made it so grand. In fact, the Sheaf has continued to flood occasionally, and in sections where its channel is not quite as large, it has burst its banks and flooded nearby areas. Just a few months prior to our visit, on June 25, 2007, heavy rains had caused both the Sheaf and the Don to swell over their banks; a 13-year old boy was wept away and drowned by the Sheaf.
The River Don was the end of our journey, and we climbed along the waterline and up the riverbank, streaming water. I was happy that we’d come out here; just about where we climbed up the riverbank, I knew, there had once been the clearing that gave Sheffield its name—a field along the Sheaf (or Shef) River, where a Saxon village developed. After the Norman conquest of 1066 AD, a castle had been built on the same spot, and just as the Sheaf is below the contemporary city, fragments of the old castle still exist beneath today’s Castle Market.
In fact Sheffield history can be traced back much further even than that. The very oldest evidence of human-built dwellings in England—remnants of a hut from 10,000 years ago—was discovered in a region in northern Sheffield. The residents of these earliest built structures doubtless drank and fished in these same rivers and streams, and perhaps it would be possible find out enough to determine just how their community interacted with rivers and other still-extant parts of their environment. But I was satisfied already. The River Sheaf has flowed through all of Sheffield’s history, and with it as a connecting thread we had already explored nearly a thousand years of the city’s past. That’s plenty for one day. We packed up our gear and set off to walk back to the car—aboveground, and fully in the present.
BRADFORD: BACKGROUND & BRITAIN’S WOOL TRADE
It’s in the very nature of this green and pleasant land
you’re bound to find a watercourse runs very close at hand—
our rivers and canals are full of good ol’ English rain,
but if you come to Bradford you will look for one in vain!
From somewhere up near Allerton, I tumble down to town
but the pleasure ends near Four Lane Ends as I’m shoved underground.
And what goes on as I flow on
nobody gives a damn
Instead of being a chuckling stream
a sewer’s what I am!
Lyrics from “Bradford Beck,” composed and sung by Eddie Lawler, 2002.
Bradford grew incredibly during the Industrial Revolution, exploding from a population of just 13,264 in the 1801 census to 104,000 by 1850. Historically a center for Yorkshire-region wool, it had started to become the national center for woolens and worsteds in the 18th century as new mechanical processing replaced the hand-spinning techniques that were still guild-protected in the older wool centers to the south. As steam power began to be used around 1800, Bradford and its neighbor Leeds also found themselves to be perfectly positioned “where the coal supply of south Yorkshire [met] the wool supply of north Yorkshire.” By 1819, Bradford was considered the “centre and principal seat of the stuff trade in the kingdom.”
The wool trade continued to centralize around Bradford and Leeds throughout the 19th century, each specializing in certain types of production—Bradford’s specialty was made clear by its nickname “Worstedopolis.” As the processing centers for most of Britain’s wool, it would be hard to overstate the importance of these two cities to the economy of the Empire. “Only light and frivolous persons,” one historian wrote sternly, “will consider wool as too slight a basis for the foundation stone of the empire on which the sun never sets.” Wool had long been the country’s chief export, and poetic descriptions from prior centuries had called it “the flower and strength and revenue and blood of England” and “eminently the foundation of English riches.” Wool from the British Isles had been valued on the Continent since Roman days, and since the 14th century the official seat of the Lord Chancellor of England has been the ‘Woolsack,’ quite literally a sack filled with wool as a symbol the nation’s trade and wealth. Through the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th, Bradford would have a key role in producing that wealth.
BRADFORD: PREPARING FOR THE BRADFORD BECK
To see what we could of Bradford’s underlying history, John, Chris, and I hoped to visit the Bradford Beck, a river that now runs underneath Bradford in a series of culverts and bypasses. The river flows toward Bradford in a nearly straight line from the west, curves in a U-shape beneath the very heart of the city, and then meanders north-east to join the River Aire, about four miles away. Along the way it passes nearly underneath the 19th-century City Hall building, and flows along the side of the 15th-century Bradford Cathedral.
We met with Will, a Bradford native, who would guide us through the Beck. “It’s not as big as Sheffield’s tunnels,” he told us, “but it’s a lot longer. It goes about six or seven kilometers underground.”
With Will, we had two cars, which was convenient in allowing us to leave one car at our exit, instead of having to walk back wet to one car through sub-freezing weather. (It would be much warmer than that underground, protected from the wind and warmed by the city above.) We deposited the car and drove back toward our entrance, where we suited up with hip- or chest-high waders, jackets, gloves, hats and headlamps, a carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide gas meter, and more.
In the parking lot where were getting dressed, our preparations seemed a little ludicrous for what was, essentially, a walk through a city. We’d never be more than a few dozen linear feet distant from busy roads and sidewalks where people in normal clothes went about their lives without worrying about backup headlamps, spare batteries, or gas meters. Nonetheless, I was enjoying our preparations. They helped to accent the fact that we weren’t simply visiting the Bradford that everyone else sees. Venturing into this unfrequented and usually unseen layer of the urban fabric, we would indeed be cut off from the surface, and the fact that our destination was so removed from the contemporary, aboveground city made it all the easier for me to imagine that we were actually journeying into the city’s past.
When we were finally ready, we climbed down an embankment and into shallow but fast-moving water in a wide open-cut channel. We followed it downstream, and soon came to the beginning of the main culvert under Ingleby Road. We were under the eastern neighborhood of Four Lane Ends; we would not come back aboveground until we had passed Canal Road near Frizinghall, having covered more than half of the distance between the Bradford city center and the Bradford Beck’s outfall into the River Aire.
We met with Will, a Bradford native, who would guide us through the Beck. “It’s not as big as Sheffield’s tunnels,” he told us, “but it’s a lot longer. It goes about six or seven kilometers underground.”
With Will, we had two cars, which was convenient in allowing us to leave one car at our exit, instead of having to walk back wet to one car through sub-freezing weather. (It would be much warmer than that underground, protected from the wind and warmed by the city above.) We deposited the car and drove back toward our entrance, where we suited up with hip- or chest-high waders, jackets, gloves, hats and headlamps, a carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide gas meter, and more.
In the parking lot where were getting dressed, our preparations seemed a little ludicrous for what was, essentially, a walk through a city. We’d never be more than a few dozen linear feet distant from busy roads and sidewalks where people in normal clothes went about their lives without worrying about backup headlamps, spare batteries, or gas meters. Nonetheless, I was enjoying our preparations. They helped to accent the fact that we weren’t simply visiting the Bradford that everyone else sees. Venturing into this unfrequented and usually unseen layer of the urban fabric, we would indeed be cut off from the surface, and the fact that our destination was so removed from the contemporary, aboveground city made it all the easier for me to imagine that we were actually journeying into the city’s past.
When we were finally ready, we climbed down an embankment and into shallow but fast-moving water in a wide open-cut channel. We followed it downstream, and soon came to the beginning of the main culvert under Ingleby Road. We were under the eastern neighborhood of Four Lane Ends; we would not come back aboveground until we had passed Canal Road near Frizinghall, having covered more than half of the distance between the Bradford city center and the Bradford Beck’s outfall into the River Aire.
BRADFORD: WOOL PRODUCTION AND BRADFORD’S EARLY HISTORY
Between 1066, when the De Laci (or De Lacy) patriarch had come to the country with William the Conqueror, and 1311, when the last heir of the family died, the entire region under which we walked had been the estate of the De Lacis. The region was conducive to sheep farming and many of their tenants and burgesses raised sheep. In the first recorded use of the Bradford Beck to power wool-processing machinery, the De Lacis built a water-powered fulling mill, of which their many sheep-herding tenants and burgesses were permitted free use. Fulling was a difficult process of agitating and beating wool cloth to both lock the fibers together and to clean them; it was a vital finishing step for cloth woven or knitted from yarn, and was even more important in the process of making more primitive felted cloth.
The labor-saving water mill was the first step in the centralization of the region’s wool productions. Along with a mill for grinding grain (also built by the De Lacis, and powered by a waterwheel on the Beck), it was the focal point for a slow agglomeration of sheep-farmers and others into a village that would eventually grow into the world’s largest center for processing wool. By the early 16th century, Bradford had already begun to grow on the basis of its wool and cloth production. “[It is] a pretty, quick, market town….It standeth much by clothing,” the writer John Leland wrote in his Itinerary after a visit in 1536.
In many respects, Bradford was ideally located in terms of its natural resources. The Bradford Beck, though the largest, was not the only stream serving the town; there were more than a dozen tributaries that fed into it, ranging in size from the large Bowling Beck to small streams known as “sykes.” As in Nottingham, this plethora of watercourses assisted in irrigation and in raising livestock, and because they were generally fast-flowing, with large vertical drops from the surrounding hills, these streams also easily served to power watermills. The many streams also helped in washing wool, a process that required constantly moving water to carry away the large deposits of grease, lanolin, and dirt that accumulated on sheep. More importantly, the water of the region was particularly soft, which was ideal for washing wool. Along with these natural advantages, “the persevering industry of the inhabitants, and the abundant supplies of water-power, of coal, and of building stone….maintained Bradford in its position as one of the great manufacturing towns of West Riding,” wrote the historian Thomas Baines about 17th- and early 18th-century Bradford.
However, Bradford lacked a navigable watercourse. The Beck was rapid but shallow, despite its many tributaries. Leeds was less than ten miles away from Bradford, but it was connected to the coast by the large River Aire, and this was probably a factor in the huge success of its cloth market—described by Daniel Defoe in 1724 as “a Prodigy of its Kind, and perhaps not to be equaled in the World.”
Doubtless inspired by the success of its neighbor, Bradford began two ambitious projects in the 1770s: the construction of Piece Hall, where weavers and merchants could buy and sell “pieces” of finished cloth, and the Bradford Canal, which would connect the city to the River Aire and to the Liverpool & Leeds Canal. Piece Hall, finished in 1773, was one of the first dedicated marketplace buildings of its kind in the country, though soon similar venues would be built in many other cities as well. Even more important was the Bradford Canal, completed in 1774. It ran four miles to the Aire, and was probably the most vital infrastructure investment that Bradford could have made for its future. Via the Aire, the canal connected to the Humber Estuary on the east coast, and in 1816, the completion of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal connected it with the Liverpool’s port on the west coast as well. The water of the Bradford Beck was diverted into the canal to fill it, and the cheap waterborne shipping the canal provided—on Bradford Beck water—was in a large part what paved the way for the explosion of population and industry over the next seventy-five years.
The labor-saving water mill was the first step in the centralization of the region’s wool productions. Along with a mill for grinding grain (also built by the De Lacis, and powered by a waterwheel on the Beck), it was the focal point for a slow agglomeration of sheep-farmers and others into a village that would eventually grow into the world’s largest center for processing wool. By the early 16th century, Bradford had already begun to grow on the basis of its wool and cloth production. “[It is] a pretty, quick, market town….It standeth much by clothing,” the writer John Leland wrote in his Itinerary after a visit in 1536.
In many respects, Bradford was ideally located in terms of its natural resources. The Bradford Beck, though the largest, was not the only stream serving the town; there were more than a dozen tributaries that fed into it, ranging in size from the large Bowling Beck to small streams known as “sykes.” As in Nottingham, this plethora of watercourses assisted in irrigation and in raising livestock, and because they were generally fast-flowing, with large vertical drops from the surrounding hills, these streams also easily served to power watermills. The many streams also helped in washing wool, a process that required constantly moving water to carry away the large deposits of grease, lanolin, and dirt that accumulated on sheep. More importantly, the water of the region was particularly soft, which was ideal for washing wool. Along with these natural advantages, “the persevering industry of the inhabitants, and the abundant supplies of water-power, of coal, and of building stone….maintained Bradford in its position as one of the great manufacturing towns of West Riding,” wrote the historian Thomas Baines about 17th- and early 18th-century Bradford.
However, Bradford lacked a navigable watercourse. The Beck was rapid but shallow, despite its many tributaries. Leeds was less than ten miles away from Bradford, but it was connected to the coast by the large River Aire, and this was probably a factor in the huge success of its cloth market—described by Daniel Defoe in 1724 as “a Prodigy of its Kind, and perhaps not to be equaled in the World.”
Doubtless inspired by the success of its neighbor, Bradford began two ambitious projects in the 1770s: the construction of Piece Hall, where weavers and merchants could buy and sell “pieces” of finished cloth, and the Bradford Canal, which would connect the city to the River Aire and to the Liverpool & Leeds Canal. Piece Hall, finished in 1773, was one of the first dedicated marketplace buildings of its kind in the country, though soon similar venues would be built in many other cities as well. Even more important was the Bradford Canal, completed in 1774. It ran four miles to the Aire, and was probably the most vital infrastructure investment that Bradford could have made for its future. Via the Aire, the canal connected to the Humber Estuary on the east coast, and in 1816, the completion of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal connected it with the Liverpool’s port on the west coast as well. The water of the Bradford Beck was diverted into the canal to fill it, and the cheap waterborne shipping the canal provided—on Bradford Beck water—was in a large part what paved the way for the explosion of population and industry over the next seventy-five years.
BRADFORD: STEAM AND SEWAGE
Where we had first entered the culvert, it had been constructed of large stone blocks, with a flat floor and a rounded stone arch at the top. The shape and composition of the tunnel varied widely as we waded along, however, ranging from rounded brick conduits that looked like Victorian-era sewers to stone-walled, flat-ceilinged sections that had clearly been open channels before being covered. In some areas the stream ran through foundations of old buildings, which may or may not have still existed on the surface. Shafts of sunlight found us once or twice; some of the older industrial buildings had been built over the Beck before it was completely covered, and when one of them was torn down and replaced with a smaller building, small gaps were left. Side channels connected to the main tunnel occasionally, either outlets for anonymous, culverted tributary streams, or overflow outfalls for the sewer system. Though I couldn’t identify it, I knew that one of the inflowing channels we saw was the Goit, a now-culverted bypass channel that served as a millrace for watermills from as early as the 14th century well into the 19th.
Steam power had begun to replace waterpower in Bradford in 1798, when the first factory powered by a steam engine was set up on Edmund Street, just a few hundred feet south of where we walked through the tunnel. (The first attempt to bring in steam power for a mill had been in 1793, but a conservative group of merchants had brought suit against the mill owner to block the installation of the engine, worrying that “the smoke from the engine furnace would be a nuisance.” ) At the time there was still only limited mechanization in the wool industry; fulling was done with water or steam-powered machinery, of course, but the 1801 the census of Bradford recorded only one spinning mill in operation—most was still done by hand.
By 1841, however, there were thirty-eight worsted spinning mills in Bradford itself, seventy in the region, and an incredible two-thirds of all England’s wool was being processed in or near the city. By 1850 the city had 129 mills—now running on steam—employing thousands of workers, and drawing labor from throughout Europe. The result was an eight-fold increase over the 1801 population in a period of just fifty years, with over 100,000 people in the city by mid-century; this would double again to over 200,000 by the end of the century.
As with other industrial boom-towns, the surge in population turned the town’s streets and rivers into open sewers. As early as 1837, a sanitary surveyor declared Bradford to be “the most filthy town I visited," full of “open cesspits, pig styes and slaughterhouses and effluent-laden watercourses.” The greasy wastes from the wool industry were a particular problem, and the nature of the Beck changed almost overnight. Residents of the town could still remember catching trout in a sparkling stream when they’d been boys, but by 1840 both the Beck and the Aire had been turned into “the receptacles of all kinds of filth, and tippings, and the trout, graylings, eels and tench, were exterminated.”
By the 1850s, it was even worse. “This brook at present runs the colour of ink,” declared a reporter for London’s Morning Chronicle about the Beck. The same waters fed the Bradford Canal, and the industrial pollution actually made the waterway flammable. Local boys would light it on fire for fun, and according to testimony at an 1867 commission on river pollution, the flames would rise six feet and would run along the water “for many yards, like a will-o-the-wisp.” Canal boats nearby would be “so enveloped in flame as to frighten persons on board.”
Even more dangerous than fire or industrial pollution was disease. “[L]ike a filthy open sewer, [the canal] runs along the border of the town, breathing pestilence and death,” testified another resident in 1866. This was hardly an exaggeration. As happened with all cities of the era whose expanded population created irredeemably unsanitary conditions, cholera, typhoid, and other diseases were spread through tainted water. Significant cholera epidemics had already occurred in 1832, 1849, 1853, 1854 and 1856. Partly because of diseases, the life expectancy was the lowest in the region, with an average of only about eighteen years. Less than one-third of the children of textile workers would live past the age of fifteen.
In 1867, the city prohibited the use of Bradford Beck water in the canal, which soon ran dry. The Beck’s only real utility to the town was now as a main sewer, and in that capacity the stream served as the depository for all of the town’s waste. Even when sewer pipes had first been installed in Bradford, in the mid-19th century, they merely dumped the (untreated) sewage directly into the Beck, to the deep unhappiness of downstream landowners on both the Beck and the Aire. In 1869 one of these landowners, a William Stansfield of Esholt Hall, obtained an injunction mandating that Bradford treat its sewage before releasing it into the river. The first treatment plant proved to be a failure as the grease from the wool mills made the sewage exceptionally difficult to treat, but continued injunctions forced the city to continue investing in treatment facilities. Ironically, in 1899, the city took over William Stansfield’s Esholt estate on the Aire for a new treatment plant, and the Esholt Sewage Works continues to be Bradford’s main treatment plant today. In the 1920s, the three-mile Esholt Sewage Disposal tunnel was dug to directly connect the city’s sewer system to the Esholt works, and the Bradford Beck was finally freed of its sewerage burden. By this time, however, the river had already been completely culverted through the center of town, and so few fully appreciated the change that had taken place.
Steam power had begun to replace waterpower in Bradford in 1798, when the first factory powered by a steam engine was set up on Edmund Street, just a few hundred feet south of where we walked through the tunnel. (The first attempt to bring in steam power for a mill had been in 1793, but a conservative group of merchants had brought suit against the mill owner to block the installation of the engine, worrying that “the smoke from the engine furnace would be a nuisance.” ) At the time there was still only limited mechanization in the wool industry; fulling was done with water or steam-powered machinery, of course, but the 1801 the census of Bradford recorded only one spinning mill in operation—most was still done by hand.
By 1841, however, there were thirty-eight worsted spinning mills in Bradford itself, seventy in the region, and an incredible two-thirds of all England’s wool was being processed in or near the city. By 1850 the city had 129 mills—now running on steam—employing thousands of workers, and drawing labor from throughout Europe. The result was an eight-fold increase over the 1801 population in a period of just fifty years, with over 100,000 people in the city by mid-century; this would double again to over 200,000 by the end of the century.
As with other industrial boom-towns, the surge in population turned the town’s streets and rivers into open sewers. As early as 1837, a sanitary surveyor declared Bradford to be “the most filthy town I visited," full of “open cesspits, pig styes and slaughterhouses and effluent-laden watercourses.” The greasy wastes from the wool industry were a particular problem, and the nature of the Beck changed almost overnight. Residents of the town could still remember catching trout in a sparkling stream when they’d been boys, but by 1840 both the Beck and the Aire had been turned into “the receptacles of all kinds of filth, and tippings, and the trout, graylings, eels and tench, were exterminated.”
By the 1850s, it was even worse. “This brook at present runs the colour of ink,” declared a reporter for London’s Morning Chronicle about the Beck. The same waters fed the Bradford Canal, and the industrial pollution actually made the waterway flammable. Local boys would light it on fire for fun, and according to testimony at an 1867 commission on river pollution, the flames would rise six feet and would run along the water “for many yards, like a will-o-the-wisp.” Canal boats nearby would be “so enveloped in flame as to frighten persons on board.”
Even more dangerous than fire or industrial pollution was disease. “[L]ike a filthy open sewer, [the canal] runs along the border of the town, breathing pestilence and death,” testified another resident in 1866. This was hardly an exaggeration. As happened with all cities of the era whose expanded population created irredeemably unsanitary conditions, cholera, typhoid, and other diseases were spread through tainted water. Significant cholera epidemics had already occurred in 1832, 1849, 1853, 1854 and 1856. Partly because of diseases, the life expectancy was the lowest in the region, with an average of only about eighteen years. Less than one-third of the children of textile workers would live past the age of fifteen.
In 1867, the city prohibited the use of Bradford Beck water in the canal, which soon ran dry. The Beck’s only real utility to the town was now as a main sewer, and in that capacity the stream served as the depository for all of the town’s waste. Even when sewer pipes had first been installed in Bradford, in the mid-19th century, they merely dumped the (untreated) sewage directly into the Beck, to the deep unhappiness of downstream landowners on both the Beck and the Aire. In 1869 one of these landowners, a William Stansfield of Esholt Hall, obtained an injunction mandating that Bradford treat its sewage before releasing it into the river. The first treatment plant proved to be a failure as the grease from the wool mills made the sewage exceptionally difficult to treat, but continued injunctions forced the city to continue investing in treatment facilities. Ironically, in 1899, the city took over William Stansfield’s Esholt estate on the Aire for a new treatment plant, and the Esholt Sewage Works continues to be Bradford’s main treatment plant today. In the 1920s, the three-mile Esholt Sewage Disposal tunnel was dug to directly connect the city’s sewer system to the Esholt works, and the Bradford Beck was finally freed of its sewerage burden. By this time, however, the river had already been completely culverted through the center of town, and so few fully appreciated the change that had taken place.
BRADFORD: AT THE END AND THE BEGINNING
By now, the tunnel we had come through had varied from all the way from 20th-century concrete with rusted steel girders supporting brick-arch roofs to sections that seemed drawn from the Neolithic era, with rough blocks forming the side walls and huge rectangular slabs of quarried stone stretching ten feet across from wall to wall to form the top of the culvert. We knew we were under Centenary Square at the heart of Bradford, however, when we came out into a magnificent chamber of stone-work arches. It looked like the crypt of a remarkably beautiful cathedral, though in fact the Bradford Cathedral was still a short distance ahead. Instead, we were almost directly under Bradford’s ornate Victorian-era City Hall. In addition the beautiful construction of this underground room—one of the first sections to be covered in the late 19th century—another landmark that showed our location was the confluence of our tunnel with another that contained an almost equally powerful flow of water. This was the Bowling Beck, the Bradford Beck’s largest tributary.
The combined flow of water, we quickly realized, was powerful enough that it could actually move us slowly along even when we stood still, with both boots planted; there was not enough traction on the slippery floor to resist the push of the current. This made our wading more difficult, and when we reached a wider section we decided to rest along the raised stone path at the side. Small, fibrous tree roots had infiltrated through the rotten mortar between stones, and stalactite formations showed the age of the tunnel. We were approximately next Bradford Cathedral, the oldest building in Bradford. This meant that we were also at Bradford’s origin, as the “broad ford” that gave both the city and the river their names is generally agreed to have been just at the spot where the Beck passes the Cathedral. Somewhere very close to where we sat was the ancient site of the crossing, the original center of Bradford.
Parts of the Cathedral date back to the 15th century, when it was still the Parish Church of St. Peter, and the 15th century church replaced another from the 14th century or before. Fragments of Saxon crosses have been found on the same site, meaning that some sort of settlement had existed here since at least the 10th century, and probably much earlier than that.
I looked at the water flowing over my boots. For more than a millennium, people had been right here with this same flow of water, dipping their feet in it, drinking from it, fouling it with waste, wading through it, fishing in it, washing in it.
In the light of my headlamp, it still sparkled.
The combined flow of water, we quickly realized, was powerful enough that it could actually move us slowly along even when we stood still, with both boots planted; there was not enough traction on the slippery floor to resist the push of the current. This made our wading more difficult, and when we reached a wider section we decided to rest along the raised stone path at the side. Small, fibrous tree roots had infiltrated through the rotten mortar between stones, and stalactite formations showed the age of the tunnel. We were approximately next Bradford Cathedral, the oldest building in Bradford. This meant that we were also at Bradford’s origin, as the “broad ford” that gave both the city and the river their names is generally agreed to have been just at the spot where the Beck passes the Cathedral. Somewhere very close to where we sat was the ancient site of the crossing, the original center of Bradford.
Parts of the Cathedral date back to the 15th century, when it was still the Parish Church of St. Peter, and the 15th century church replaced another from the 14th century or before. Fragments of Saxon crosses have been found on the same site, meaning that some sort of settlement had existed here since at least the 10th century, and probably much earlier than that.
I looked at the water flowing over my boots. For more than a millennium, people had been right here with this same flow of water, dipping their feet in it, drinking from it, fouling it with waste, wading through it, fishing in it, washing in it.
In the light of my headlamp, it still sparkled.
SOURCES: SHEFFIELD
“Children’s Employment Commission on the Metal Manufactures of the Sheffield District.” 1862. Online at: http://youle.info/history/fh_material/childrens_employment_1862.txt
“What are the best means of preventing the spread of Contagious Disease?” Statements of Dr Stevenson Macadam, Edinburgh, and Dr J.C. Hall, Sheffield. Report of the proceedings of the "Conference on Temperance Legislation, London, 1886.” Edited by George Woodyatt Hastings, Andrew Edgar, Charles Wager Ryalls, Edwin Pears. Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science.
Baines, Edward. History, Directory & Gazeteer, of the County of York. Published 1822; sold by Hurst and Robinson.
Baines, Thomas. Yorkshire, Past and Present. 1877.
BBC News. Online at http://news.bbc.co.uk. Articles: “Three dead following flood chaos,” June 26 2007; “Two die in Sheffield flood chaos,” June 25, 2007
BarlowGeneology.com. “The Barlow Knife.” Online at http://www.barlowgenealogy.com/Edson/barlowknife.html
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales: Reeve’s Tale. Excerpt:
Ay by his belt he baar a long panade,
And of a swerd ful trenchant was the blade.
A joly poppere baar he in his pouche;
Ther was no man, for peril, dorste hym touche.
A Sheffeld thwitel baar he in his hose.
Children’s Employment Commission on the Metal Manufactures of the Sheffield District, 1862, referenced at http://youle.info/history/fh_material/childrens_employment_1862.txt
Defoe, Daniel. A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, divided into circuits or journies (London, 1726), Letter 8, Part 3: South and West Yorkshire.
Department Town & Regional Planning research group of the Sheffield Centre for Geographic Information and Spatial Analysis (SCGISA), at the University of Sheffield. “The Changing Face of Sheffield.” Accessed online at http://www.shef.ac.uk/~scgisa/
Domesday Book, 1086. The full reference to Sheffield (translated): [At] Attercliffe and Sheffield, two manors, Sweyn had five carucates of land [approximately 120 acres]. There may have been about three ploughs [=about 24 oxen, or three teams of 8]. This land is said to have been the inland demesne [domain] of the manor of Hallam.
Great Britain Historical GIS Project.”Sheffield District: Total Population.” Part of A Vision of Britain Through Time. Online at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield#Population_change
Hunter, Joseph. Hallamshire. The History and Topography of the Parish of Sheffield in the County of York, Chapter III. Published by Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Jones. London 1819. Online at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hallamshire._The_History_and_Topography_of_the_Parish_of_Sheffield_in_the_County_of_York
Illustrated London News. “BURSTING OF THE BRADFIELD RESERVOIR, NEAR SHEFFIELD. — TWO HUNDRED LIVES LOST.” Saturday, March 19, 1864, (No. 1250, Vol. XLIV), online at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mossvalley/mv2/sheffield-flood.html
Illustrated London News. “THE SHEFFIELD CALAMITY.” Saturday, March 19, 1864, (No. 1250, Vol. XLIV), online at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mossvalley/mv2/sheffield-flood.html
Lee, Chris. “The Porter Brook Home Page: Old Maps of the Porter Brook.” Online at: http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~leebase/Pages/Old%20Maps.htm
Map: 1890 OS Map, accessed through Sheffield Urban Contextual Databank (SUCoD), The University of Sheffield, School of Architecture, 2001-2003; http://sucod.shef.ac.uk/
Map: Gosling, “A Plan of Sheffield,” 1736
Orwell, George. Diary, dated March 5 1936. Online at http://www.chrishobbs.com/orwellsheffield1936.htm
Palmer, Henry J. “Cutlery and Cutlers at Sheffield.” The English Illustrated Magazine, August 1884
Pollard, S. The History of Labour in Sheffield. Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1959. P. 53. Chapter 2 online at: http://youle.info/history/Pollard/Chapter_2.html
Scott, Walter. Ivanhoe: A Romance. Reprinted by Signet Classic, 2001.
Stainton, J.H. The Making of Sheffield, 1865-1914.
White, William. History, gazetteer, and directory, of the west-riding of Yorkshire. 1837.
Williamson, William R. “BOWIE KNIFE.” The Handbook of Texas Online. Online at: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/BB/lnb1.html
“What are the best means of preventing the spread of Contagious Disease?” Statements of Dr Stevenson Macadam, Edinburgh, and Dr J.C. Hall, Sheffield. Report of the proceedings of the "Conference on Temperance Legislation, London, 1886.” Edited by George Woodyatt Hastings, Andrew Edgar, Charles Wager Ryalls, Edwin Pears. Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science.
Baines, Edward. History, Directory & Gazeteer, of the County of York. Published 1822; sold by Hurst and Robinson.
Baines, Thomas. Yorkshire, Past and Present. 1877.
BBC News. Online at http://news.bbc.co.uk. Articles: “Three dead following flood chaos,” June 26 2007; “Two die in Sheffield flood chaos,” June 25, 2007
BarlowGeneology.com. “The Barlow Knife.” Online at http://www.barlowgenealogy.com/Edson/barlowknife.html
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales: Reeve’s Tale. Excerpt:
Ay by his belt he baar a long panade,
And of a swerd ful trenchant was the blade.
A joly poppere baar he in his pouche;
Ther was no man, for peril, dorste hym touche.
A Sheffeld thwitel baar he in his hose.
Children’s Employment Commission on the Metal Manufactures of the Sheffield District, 1862, referenced at http://youle.info/history/fh_material/childrens_employment_1862.txt
Defoe, Daniel. A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, divided into circuits or journies (London, 1726), Letter 8, Part 3: South and West Yorkshire.
Department Town & Regional Planning research group of the Sheffield Centre for Geographic Information and Spatial Analysis (SCGISA), at the University of Sheffield. “The Changing Face of Sheffield.” Accessed online at http://www.shef.ac.uk/~scgisa/
Domesday Book, 1086. The full reference to Sheffield (translated): [At] Attercliffe and Sheffield, two manors, Sweyn had five carucates of land [approximately 120 acres]. There may have been about three ploughs [=about 24 oxen, or three teams of 8]. This land is said to have been the inland demesne [domain] of the manor of Hallam.
Great Britain Historical GIS Project.”Sheffield District: Total Population.” Part of A Vision of Britain Through Time. Online at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield#Population_change
Hunter, Joseph. Hallamshire. The History and Topography of the Parish of Sheffield in the County of York, Chapter III. Published by Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Jones. London 1819. Online at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hallamshire._The_History_and_Topography_of_the_Parish_of_Sheffield_in_the_County_of_York
Illustrated London News. “BURSTING OF THE BRADFIELD RESERVOIR, NEAR SHEFFIELD. — TWO HUNDRED LIVES LOST.” Saturday, March 19, 1864, (No. 1250, Vol. XLIV), online at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mossvalley/mv2/sheffield-flood.html
Illustrated London News. “THE SHEFFIELD CALAMITY.” Saturday, March 19, 1864, (No. 1250, Vol. XLIV), online at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mossvalley/mv2/sheffield-flood.html
Lee, Chris. “The Porter Brook Home Page: Old Maps of the Porter Brook.” Online at: http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~leebase/Pages/Old%20Maps.htm
Map: 1890 OS Map, accessed through Sheffield Urban Contextual Databank (SUCoD), The University of Sheffield, School of Architecture, 2001-2003; http://sucod.shef.ac.uk/
Map: Gosling, “A Plan of Sheffield,” 1736
Orwell, George. Diary, dated March 5 1936. Online at http://www.chrishobbs.com/orwellsheffield1936.htm
Palmer, Henry J. “Cutlery and Cutlers at Sheffield.” The English Illustrated Magazine, August 1884
Pollard, S. The History of Labour in Sheffield. Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1959. P. 53. Chapter 2 online at: http://youle.info/history/Pollard/Chapter_2.html
Scott, Walter. Ivanhoe: A Romance. Reprinted by Signet Classic, 2001.
Stainton, J.H. The Making of Sheffield, 1865-1914.
White, William. History, gazetteer, and directory, of the west-riding of Yorkshire. 1837.
Williamson, William R. “BOWIE KNIFE.” The Handbook of Texas Online. Online at: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/BB/lnb1.html
SOURCES: NOTTINGHAM
“Nottingham Chamberlain’s Account Book, listing the costs, repairs, and expenses made by John Coste and John Howett, chamberlains of the town of Nottingham, from 29 September 1485 to the same date in 1486.” Nottinghamshire Archives. Transcription in: Stevenson, W.H., ed. Records of the Borough of Nottingham. London and Nottingham, 1883, vol. 3. (Original language was Middle English; translation available at http://www.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/florilegium/community/cmfabr11.html)
Aldous, R.C., Assoc. M.Inst. C.E., Deputy City Engineer, Nottingham. “Nottingham Main Drainage Works.” In The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, 1936; 57; 100; DOI: 10.1177/146642403605700206; online at http://rsh.sagepub.com.
Deering, Charles. Nottinghamia Vetus Et Nova, or an Historical Account of the Ancient and Present State of the Town of Nottingham. Printed by and for G. Ayscough & T. Willington, Nottingham, 1751.
Diocesan Advisory Committee for the Care of Churches, Diocese of Southwell & Nottingham. “Church History Project Database: Nottingham St. Catherine.” Online at http://southwellchurches.nottingham.ac.uk/n10/hhistory.html
Aldous, R.C., Assoc. M.Inst. C.E., Deputy City Engineer, Nottingham. “Nottingham Main Drainage Works.” In The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, 1936; 57; 100; DOI: 10.1177/146642403605700206; online at http://rsh.sagepub.com.
Deering, Charles. Nottinghamia Vetus Et Nova, or an Historical Account of the Ancient and Present State of the Town of Nottingham. Printed by and for G. Ayscough & T. Willington, Nottingham, 1751.
Diocesan Advisory Committee for the Care of Churches, Diocese of Southwell & Nottingham. “Church History Project Database: Nottingham St. Catherine.” Online at http://southwellchurches.nottingham.ac.uk/n10/hhistory.html
SOURCES: BRADFORD
SOURCES: BRADFORD
"Address before the National association of wool manufacturers, at the first annual meeting in Philadelphia, Sept. 6, 1865,” by John L Hayes, Secretary. Published by John Wilson and Sons, Cambridge, MA, 1865. Online at http://www.archive.org/stream/addressbeforenat00hayeiala/addressbeforenat00hayeiala_djvu.txt
“Inquisition Post Mortem, on the death of Henry De Laci the last Earl of Lincoln, 1311, 5th Edward II” reproduced in: Baines, Thomas. Yorkshire, Past and Present. 1877, Vol 2. P. 251
“Sanitary Report by Mr. Smith of Deanston, 1837.” Referenced in Ginswick, Jules, Ed. Labor and the Poor in England and Wales: 1849-1851. Vol. 1. Routledge, 1983.
Baines, Thomas. Yorkshire, Past and Present. 1877.
City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council. “Bradford’s History.” Online at: http://www.bradford.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/hobbies_and_interests/bradfords_history.htm
Clapp, B.W. An Environmental History of Britain. London, 1994.
Crosier, Pete. “The Victorian way of...death!” BBC. Online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/sense_of_place/hidden_death_3.shtml
Defoe, Daniel. A tour through the whole island of Great Britain: Divided into circuits or journeys. Printed for S. Birt, T. Osborne, 1748. P. 119.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911. “Wool, worsted and woollen manufactures.” Online at http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Wool,_worsted_and_woollen_manufactures
Garnett, Breedge. “Esholt: A suitable case for treatment!” BBC. Online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/sense_of_place/hidden_esholt_1.shtml
Ginswick, Jules, Ed. Labor and the Poor in England and Wales: 1849-1851. Vol. 1. Routledge, 1983.
James, John. Continuation and Additions to the History of Bradford, and Its Parish. 1866.
James, John. History of the Worsted Manufacture in England: From the Earliest Times; with Introductory Notices of the Manufacture Among the Ancient Nations, and During the Middle Ages. First published in 1857. Reprint: Routledge, 1968.
James, John. The History and Topography of Bradford, (in the County of York). 1841. Quoted in: Baines, Thomas. Yorkshire, Past and Present. 1877. Vol 2.
Lawler, Eddie. “Bradford Beck” (song.) Online at: http://www.eddie-lawler.co.uk/
Leland, John. Itinerary. First published approx. 1846. This modernized translation is quoted in: Yorkshire, Past and Present , by Thomas Baines, 1877, page 261.
Royal Commission (UK). The Pollution of Rivers. 1867.
Shaw, Dave. “Saltaire: A successful industrial township.” Part of “The Industrial Revolution and its social consequences.” BBC. Online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/work/england/bradford/article_1.shtml
Skempton, Sir Alec, Ed. The Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 1. Everyman Publishers plc in assoc. with English Heritage, London, 2001. ISBN 1-84159-047-9
Testimony of Angus Reach. Originally published in The Morning Chronicle (1849). Reprinted in Labour and the Poor in England and Wales, 1849-1851. J. Ginswick, Ed. Routledge, 1983. P. 175.
Tucker, Irwin St. John. A History of Imperialism. Published by Rand School of Social Science, New York, 1920.
Turner, J Horsfall. Ancient Bingley, or, Bingley, Its History and Scenery. Thomas Harrison and Sons, Bingley, Yorks, 1897.
Wood, Janet. “Hidden Water” (Song.) from Bradford: The Musical. Performed at the 2005 Bradford Festival.
Yorkshire History Pages, The. “West Yorkshire: Leeds and Bradford History.” Online at: http://www.northeastengland.talktalk.net/WestYorkshire.htm#BRADFORD
"Address before the National association of wool manufacturers, at the first annual meeting in Philadelphia, Sept. 6, 1865,” by John L Hayes, Secretary. Published by John Wilson and Sons, Cambridge, MA, 1865. Online at http://www.archive.org/stream/addressbeforenat00hayeiala/addressbeforenat00hayeiala_djvu.txt
“Inquisition Post Mortem, on the death of Henry De Laci the last Earl of Lincoln, 1311, 5th Edward II” reproduced in: Baines, Thomas. Yorkshire, Past and Present. 1877, Vol 2. P. 251
“Sanitary Report by Mr. Smith of Deanston, 1837.” Referenced in Ginswick, Jules, Ed. Labor and the Poor in England and Wales: 1849-1851. Vol. 1. Routledge, 1983.
Baines, Thomas. Yorkshire, Past and Present. 1877.
City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council. “Bradford’s History.” Online at: http://www.bradford.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/hobbies_and_interests/bradfords_history.htm
Clapp, B.W. An Environmental History of Britain. London, 1994.
Crosier, Pete. “The Victorian way of...death!” BBC. Online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/sense_of_place/hidden_death_3.shtml
Defoe, Daniel. A tour through the whole island of Great Britain: Divided into circuits or journeys. Printed for S. Birt, T. Osborne, 1748. P. 119.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911. “Wool, worsted and woollen manufactures.” Online at http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Wool,_worsted_and_woollen_manufactures
Garnett, Breedge. “Esholt: A suitable case for treatment!” BBC. Online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/sense_of_place/hidden_esholt_1.shtml
Ginswick, Jules, Ed. Labor and the Poor in England and Wales: 1849-1851. Vol. 1. Routledge, 1983.
James, John. Continuation and Additions to the History of Bradford, and Its Parish. 1866.
James, John. History of the Worsted Manufacture in England: From the Earliest Times; with Introductory Notices of the Manufacture Among the Ancient Nations, and During the Middle Ages. First published in 1857. Reprint: Routledge, 1968.
James, John. The History and Topography of Bradford, (in the County of York). 1841. Quoted in: Baines, Thomas. Yorkshire, Past and Present. 1877. Vol 2.
Lawler, Eddie. “Bradford Beck” (song.) Online at: http://www.eddie-lawler.co.uk/
Leland, John. Itinerary. First published approx. 1846. This modernized translation is quoted in: Yorkshire, Past and Present , by Thomas Baines, 1877, page 261.
Royal Commission (UK). The Pollution of Rivers. 1867.
Shaw, Dave. “Saltaire: A successful industrial township.” Part of “The Industrial Revolution and its social consequences.” BBC. Online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/work/england/bradford/article_1.shtml
Skempton, Sir Alec, Ed. The Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 1. Everyman Publishers plc in assoc. with English Heritage, London, 2001. ISBN 1-84159-047-9
Testimony of Angus Reach. Originally published in The Morning Chronicle (1849). Reprinted in Labour and the Poor in England and Wales, 1849-1851. J. Ginswick, Ed. Routledge, 1983. P. 175.
Tucker, Irwin St. John. A History of Imperialism. Published by Rand School of Social Science, New York, 1920.
Turner, J Horsfall. Ancient Bingley, or, Bingley, Its History and Scenery. Thomas Harrison and Sons, Bingley, Yorks, 1897.
Wood, Janet. “Hidden Water” (Song.) from Bradford: The Musical. Performed at the 2005 Bradford Festival.
Yorkshire History Pages, The. “West Yorkshire: Leeds and Bradford History.” Online at: http://www.northeastengland.talktalk.net/WestYorkshire.htm#BRADFORD
Article by Bill Wheeler & Josh Yaffa: "Urban Cowboys" on Good.is
"Urban Cowboys"
by William Wheeler & Joshua Yaffa
GOOD Magazine online, 4/16/09
http://www.good.is/?p=14862
by William Wheeler & Joshua Yaffa
GOOD Magazine online, 4/16/09
http://www.good.is/?p=14862
Into the Night: Night Photography Symposium at B&H
I was recently invited to speak at a day-long symposium on night photography at B&H Photo in New York, organized by Jill Waterman (author of the recent book Night and Low Light Photography). Also on the panel were some very accomplished photographers, whose work I've admired in the past, including Tom Paiva, Mark Jeremko, Lance Keimig, Helen Garber, and Daryl-Ann Saunders. I felt very privileged to be included.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/eventDetails.jsp/id/342
Monday, March 9, 2009 | 10:30 AM - 4:30 PM
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/eventDetails.jsp/id/342
Monday, March 9, 2009 | 10:30 AM - 4:30 PM
Photo courtesy of Tom Dowling/TomBrooklyn
NY Post: Notes from the Underground
"Notes from the Underground," New York Post, 3/6/09
Story by Don Kaplan, photos by Steve Duncan
Had a great time working on this story with Don Kaplan, who writes a fascinating set of feature stories for the New York Post.
Article:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/03062009/entertainment/notes_from_the_underground_158320.htm
Photo Gallery:
http://www.nypost.com/photos/galleries/entertainment/pp_20090306_mole/photo01.htm
Story by Don Kaplan, photos by Steve Duncan
Had a great time working on this story with Don Kaplan, who writes a fascinating set of feature stories for the New York Post.
Article:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/03062009/entertainment/notes_from_the_underground_158320.htm
Photo Gallery:
http://www.nypost.com/photos/galleries/entertainment/pp_20090306_mole/photo01.htm
"Night Moves: Angles of View" @ Farmani Gallery, March 5-April 11 2009
Four of my photos will be included in "Night Moves," a group show of night photography curated by Jill Waterman and Daryl-Ann Saunders. This is a two-part show taking place in two galleries at once: "Night Moves: Angles of View" in the Farmani Gallery and "Night Moves: Exploring the Horizon" at the Safe-T-Gallery in the same building.
Opening: Thursday March 5th, 6-8pm
At the Farmani Gallery in DUMBO, 111 Front Street, Suite 212, Brooklyn.
March 5 - April 11, 2009
Hours: Wed-Sat 12-6pm
Opening: Thursday March 5th, 6-8pm
At the Farmani Gallery in DUMBO, 111 Front Street, Suite 212, Brooklyn.
March 5 - April 11, 2009
Hours: Wed-Sat 12-6pm
Photos at Life Cafe, Bushwick, Brooklyn, through March 2009
Some of my photos are on view at Life Cafe, an excellent bar/restaurant/cafe at 983 Flushing Avenue (at Central Avenue) in Bushwick, Brooklyn, near the Morgan Avenue L train stop. Good place for dinner or a weekend brunch, or just a quick beer. Come visit!
e-Oculus: Sewers Reveal Deep Topography Below
Review of my slideshow at the Center for Architecture on 1/27/09, by Lisa Delgado in the 2/24/09 issue of e-Oculus (publication of the AIA New York).
http://www.aiany.org/eOCULUS/newsletter/?p=2405
http://www.aiany.org/eOCULUS/newsletter/?p=2405
The Architect's Newspaper Blog: Underground Man
Review of slideshow at the Center For Architecture by Julia Galef:
http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/2009/02/12/nderground-man/
http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/2009/02/12/nderground-man/
Welt Der Wunder, February 2009 (photo credits)
Welt Der Wunder, February 2009 (German)
Article on underground NYC
Photo credits on five of the images used
Article on underground NYC
Photo credits on five of the images used
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