Bradford grew slowly over the next two-hundred years as the woollen trade gained in prominence.ĭuring the Civil War the town was garrisoned for the Parliamentarians and in 1642 was unsuccessfully attacked by Royalist forces from Leeds. In the reign of Henry VIII Bradford exceeded Leeds as a manufacturing centre. Edward IV granted the right to hold two annual fairs and from this time the town began to prosper. During the Wars of the Roses the inhabitants sided with House of Lancaster. In 1316 there is mention of a fulling mill, a soke mill where all the manor corn was milled and a market. īy the middle ages Bradford, had become a small town centred on Kirkgate, Westgate and Ivegate. The manor then passed to the Earl of Lincoln, John of Gaunt, The Crown and, ultimately, private ownership in 1620. There is evidence of a castle in the time of the Lacys. It then became part of the Honour of Pontefract given to Ilbert de Lacy for service to the Conqueror, in whose family the manor remained until 1311.
Early historyĪfter an uprising in 1070, during William the Conqueror's Harrying of the North, the manor of Bradford was laid waste, and is described as such in the Domesday Book of 1086. The name Bradford is derived from the Old English brad and ford the broad ford which referred to a crossing of the Bradford Beck at Church Bank below the site of Bradford Cathedral, around which a settlement grew in Anglo-Saxon times.
Bradford has also emerged as a tourist destination, becoming the first UNESCO City of Film with attractions such as the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford City Park, the Alhambra theatre and Cartwright Hall.īradford will become the UK City of Culture in 2025 having won the UK City of Culture designation on. Bradford has a significant economy within the Yorkshire and the Humber region it is the third-largest at around £10 billion, which is mostly provided by financial and manufacturing industries. Since local government reform in 1974, Bradford's city limits have been within the City of Bradford metropolitan borough.įrom the mid-20th century, deindustrialisation caused Bradford's textile sector and industrial base to decline and, since then, it has faced similar economic and social challenges to the rest of post-industrial Northern England, including poverty, unemployment and social unrest. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897.
Lying in the eastern foothills of the Pennines, the area's access to supplies of coal, iron ore and soft water facilitated the growth of Bradford's manufacturing base, which, as textile manufacture grew, led to an explosion in population and was a stimulus to civic investment Bradford has a large amount of listed Victorian architecture including the grand Italianate City Hall. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, and amongst the earliest industrialised settlements, rapidly becoming the "wool capital of the world" this in turn gave rise to the nicknames "Woolopolis" and "Wool City". Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bradford rose to prominence in the 19th century as an international centre of textile manufacture, particularly wool. The larger City of Bradford district borough governed from the city had a population of 539,776, the 7th most populous district in England. It is the second-largest subdivision of the West Yorkshire Built-up Area after Leeds, which is approximately 8.6 miles (14 km) to the east. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 census.