Newby School

Terrace houses surrounded Newby in the 1960’s. The SpACe is located on what was a row of houses. The seating area by the St Stephen's Rd entrance is built on a huge block of concrete that is actually the inside of an old cellar.

Newby can be seen in the bottom left hand corner of the photograph (taken in 1970). Notice how the terraces have been cleared and the school stands almost alone in a clearance area. Note also the new blocks of flats that have now been cleared and the stepping stones (flats increasing in height) at the town end of Manchester Rd. This area is currently being improved by Trident.

.

The Ryan St. School football team in 1926 with Head teacher Mr Law. The Newby team are currently playing very well and regularly reach the last four in Bradford tournaments. Last year one pupil was asked to represent Bradford against Leeds.

Local history

The following notes are taken from the West Bowling Local History Group web site. Please contact Samina Hussain (01274 739346) at the school community room if you have experiences of West Bowling that you would wish to share.

Newlands Mill: a local disaster

The site of the mill is very close to school and children often walk past on their way to Newby.

On Wednesday, 27th December, 1882 workers returned to Newlands Mill in West Bowling after their Christmas break.

The following day, shortly after 8am, workers were at their morning breakfast break when the mill's massive chimney collapsed. 54 people were killed and many more injured. Had the chimney fallen earlier, during the early morning shift, many more people would have been killed.

Many workers had gone home for the break but those who breakfasted at their looms were caught up in the disaster. Whole families were lost and many of the survivors were seriously injured.

Newlands Mill was part of the vast Ripley Mills complex which spanned Parma Street and Upper Castle Street. Over 2,000 people worked in the mills and many were children.

The Newlands Mill chimney was 255 feet high and weighed 4,000 tons. It stood behind the boiler house which provided the steam power to drive the spinning frames and looms.

There had been extensive coal and iron mining on the site of the mill complex and a warren of tunnels and excavations ran under the buildings. Despite some opposition at the time the tall chimney was built directly over the old pit shaft which had been filled in with wood and other debris.

The chimney suffered continually from structural problems and by 1882 cracks, and even a bulge, had appeared and masonry was beginning to fall from the structure. Some repair work had been undertaken during the Christmas break.

Although largely forgotten for 120 years a commemorative stone has now been unveiled in memory of those killed in the disaster. This is part of a general scheme to improve the environment and provide landscaping in the St Stephen's Road area.

An underground stream and the Manchester Road footbridge.
By Jane Binns.

The bridge is a well known local landmark. Newby sits almost underneath the West Bowling side of the bridge.

Jane Binns and her family had lived in the corner house on St Stephen’s Road in West Bowling since the 1950s. Their home was unusual insofar as it had its very own natural water supply, which trickled into the cellar from an underground stream! It got so bad once that Jane called out officials from the old Bradford Water Board to check out the problem. Jane tells me they returned to pour some dye into the pool which later turned up in a stream outlet beneath Nelson Street near Bradford city centre! It's unclear where the underground stream’s water supply began, perhaps higher up Manchester Road in the Wibsey area? Wherever its source its clear that underground streams ran beneath various parts of West Bowling, Manchester Road and, indeed, the Marshfields area which Jane tells me, takes its name from underground stream waterlogging.

During the 1960s Bradford city council had been making increasingly loud noises about how Manchester Road was “inadequate in its present shape to meet present day traffic needs” and proposals were put forward to widen the road including the demolition of many family homes, especially on the east side, at the end of Cotewall Road, St Stephen’s Road, Donisthorpe Street and Baxandall Street. Also targeted for demolition was the Towers Hall cinema lower down Manchester Road, the old Library and Public Baths at the end of Ryan Street and the Carlton Cinema opposite Donisthorpe Street and St Stephen’s Road (please see sketch road map below).

A war of words followed leading to a full Public Enquiry in November 1969 where alternative proposals were submitted by Odsal man F.J.Corina who had waged a long 4-year campaign against the scheme, but the Government ruled in favour of the city council and road widening work began in November-December 1971. One of the houses affected was the home of Jane Binns and her family in St Stephen’s Road but they soon found another home in nearby Donisthorpe Street.

When digging work began on foundations for the pedestrian footbridge spanning Manchester Road at the bottom of Ryan Street – just where the old Public Library and Baths had been – Jane tried to warn them about the underground stream but no-one took any notice. When the diggers finally struck water just as Jane had predicted council officials, planners and contractors had to quickly alter their foundation work plans accordingly! Now whenever I pass beneath that footbridge while riding on a bus up and down Manchester Road, I always think of the stream that ran into the cellar of Jane’s old home in St Stephen’s Road.

Now 82 years young Jane Binns really has crammed some adventure into her life, as a mother and homemaker, a long-time textile pattern weaver and trade union convenor, a welfare rights advice worker and benefits tribunal advocate. Indeed, it is largely due to Jane’s welfare rights voluntary work in West Bowling between 1980-98 that we now have the marvellous West Bowling Advice Centre in Clipstone Street, which opened in December 1994. Having chatted with Jane several times now she really is one of the most fascinating women I’ve ever met. Quick-witted with a razor-sharp intellect and a lovely sense of humour Jane has been a real inspiration and I thank her very much indeed for sharing some thoroughly absorbing memories with me, some of which have gone into this article.

Some stories about old “Little India”, West Bowling, and some characters that lived there.
By Jane Binns.

Jane Binns has lived in West Bowling since 1952 and knows the area and its history very well indeed. Here below are just a couple of stories she told me quite recently.

The site where Dixons CTC and the Jackie Smart estate now stand was once known as “Little India” because of the old local Calcutta, Bombay and Bengal street names and over 700 houses occupied the site between Ripley Street, Bowling Old Lane and St Stephen’s Road. Built by textile mill owners in the 1860s-70s to house local mill workers, they were back-to-back properties, very basic and poorly built. Jane tells me that when they were finally demolished in 1965-6 they virtually fell down under their own weight once the slate tile roofs had been removed!

But, going back to times when a very poor and hard-working community lived there, Jane told me stories about some of the local characters. One was about a local married man and ‘regular’ at the old Red Ginn pub in Bowling Old Lane who staggered home one evening, then peacefully fell asleep in his easy chair in the living room. Leaving him there, his wife went on upstairs to get some sleep herself but just as she opened the bedroom door the entire room collapsed into the living room below! Buried beneath a pile of debris and covered in dust, her husband soon sobered up and amazingly was unhurt apart from a few scratches and bruises! Dazed and confused, and before he realized what had happened, he may have thought the ale at the pub had been extra strong that evening! He probably felt he deserved another pint, too, following that sobering experience!

Jane told me another story about another local family who worked the streets of Bradford in the rag & bone trade with a horse and cart collecting scrap metal and old clothing, etc, and kept their horse in the living room once the day was over!

Jane adds, on a sadder note, that when the properties were demolished in the mid-1960s, the local community was then scattered and re-housed in council houses at Delf Hill, Low Moor, at Woodside Estate just off Halifax Road, and even as far away as Allerton.