Old Photographs: Church Street
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Click on the thumbnail pictures for a larger view
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Bradford commemorated the death of King Edward VII in 1910 with a parade and a service at the parish church. On the right, the buildings of Church Street Mill are unoccupied and windows have been smashed. They were still at their full height and there was a floor for drying handles of teazels, used for raising the pile on cloth.
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A meeting of the Avonvale Hunt at the junction of Church Street and Market Street in about 1912.
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The old Church Hall, provided by Thomas Horton at the beginning of the 16th century, had been divided into houses and had acquired some dormer windows and gables. The photograph, from the beginning of the 20th century, shows how it was before restoration in 1925. It now belongs to the Freemasons.
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Hang Dog Alley, leading from Church Street to the Bullpit on the river, was a picturesque corner of Bradford until the gabled 17th century houses were demolished in the 1960s.
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The late 17th century building next to the Church Hall was once a public house, called at different times the Carpenters’ Arms or the Ship. It was demolished, probably around 1925 and the space has been converted into a small garden.
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Workers of the Spencer Moulton rubber company lined up in Church Street, outside Abbey Mill. The date is probably around 1920. Each man seems to be holding a length of pipe in the manner of a rifle, standing at ease ready for an inspection, or perhaps just for the photograph.
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At the other end of Abbey Mill’s use as a rubber factory, the crane is carefully backing into the yard to remove machinery in about 1995. The works were then converted into housing.
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The upper part of Church Street, looking towards the Georgian frontage of The Chantry, with the windows of Holy Trinity Church on the left and Church Cottages and the Trinity National School on the right.
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The late 17th or very early 18th house opposite the church goes under the name of Orpin’s House, recalling the Parish Clerk Edward Orpin, who is buried just across the road. The front of the house is little changed, but extensions have been built at the rear. The wrought iron railings went for scrap to help the war effort in the early 1940s.
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