Bradford: the Works (Mainly Photographic)

My great-great-grandfather was in wool. Quite a lot of Yorkshire was, and did very nicely out of it, thank you. There's a reason for the dead sheep in Leeds' coat of arms (it's actually a fleece). While the family lived in Leeds, the works were in Bradford, and I made that my first stop.

To aid me in my search I had the address, the picture above, and the following helpful text message from my father:

Robt Jowitt&Sons, 153SunbridgeRd, Bradford BD1 2PA, on left leaving city, offices 1st, entrance to yard next, mill buildings behind, some lower. Foto coming :-)

So, really, it ought to be pretty easy so long as I could find Sunbridge Road. I decided to go to the National Media Museum first, and look for the works later. The museum closed in two hours. The works had closed years ago. Happily, I saw Sunbridge Road as I walked to the museum:



Emerging two hours later, I started at about number 29 and followed the road out of the city. Having once seen the old photo, the building was instantly recognisable, even though the trolleybuses are long gone.



The name is still over the door...



Actually, that's a window, but you take my point. But the actual door is shuttered...



... and the yard is empty...



... though the chimney still stands...



It felt very bleak, all abandoned like that. (The plan, I am reliably informed, was to sell the office off for conversion to luxury flats, but then the recession happened.) It didn't help that the sun was stubbornly lighting up the other side of the street. It felt, too, as if the part of me that is descended from these Quaker Yorkshire wool-merchants didn't recognise it as home. (But then, was I expecting it to?) As if it was all to do with some other Jowitts entirely.

I'm glad to have seen it, and I'm glad to have seen it now, while it's in good, recognisable shape. Whatever happens in the future, be it conversion to flats or descent into dereliction, will change it, and the name will come down. I'm glad to have seen it while it's still, in some little way, mine.