Calderdale history timeline 1810 - 1850AD
Industrial Revolution
From
the late eighteenth century, technological innovation in the textile
industry advanced. It led to the proliferation of more water-powered
cotton and worsted spinning mills and woollen scribbling (carding)
mills. Also, their dams, goits and sluices in the tributary
valleys of the Calder. The need for more effective means of transportation
resulted in the construction of canals. Also, a network of turnpike roads
along the valley bottom. This progressively replaced the old hillside
packhorse ways. See the Acts
of Parliament, 1757, 1769, 1810 and the plan of the river Calder
above.
During
this first phase of industrialisation, religious nonconformity underwent
a dramatic renewal, reinforcing the industrial work ethic. By
1800 both chapel and mill were beginning to make their mark on an
increasingly urbanised landscape (see Square chapel opposite).
Although there is clear surviving evidence of its pre-industrial origins. The spatial structure of present-day Halifax is very much a product of the complex process of industrialisation. this took place between the mid 18th and late 19th centuries.
In
1750, Halifax was a small but busy market town, with a population of
approximately 6,000 inhabitants. It was served by a network of ancient packhorse
causeways. The common fields and waste had long since become a series
of dry-stone wall enclosures. The growing numbers of inns and
streets must have given the town something of an urban atmosphere. Most
of the population was centred on the small urban nucleus however. Public buildings, such as the church and manorial moot hall, were
still medieval in origin. Almshouses, an orphan hospital, charity
schools, a mulcture hall, workhouse and cloth halls made their
mark on landscape.
By
1800 the town of Halifax was expanding and the population had increased
to almost 9,000. Elegant Georgian mansions were built, like Clare Hall (1764),
Hope Hall (1765) and Somerset House (1766 - see opposite). This was the emergence of a narrow band of upper status mercantile households
on the outskirts of the business district. The
pre-eminence of Halifax as a cloth marketing centre received its most
striking expression in the Piece Hall (1779). This opened as certain
aspects of the domestic era were already drawing to a close.
During
the first half of the 19th century a second wave of industrialisation
swept through the upper Calder valley. This dramatically transformed the
landscape and the whole social fabric of the district. With the introduction
of steam power, the textile industry moved to the more accessible
valley bottom settlements. These were Todmorden,
Hebden Bridge, Mytholmroyd,
Sowerby Bridge, Halifax,
Elland and Brighouse.
This left more ancient communities stranded on the hillsides and taking
with it an expanding population of millworkers. In Halifax, steam
powered textile factories spread rapidly and by 1850 there
were 24 mills in the town. The largest of which were at Boothtown
(James Akroyd & Son) and Dean Clough (John Crossley & Sons).
Rapid
industrialisation was accompanied by dramatic demographic expansion. By the middle of the century the population of Halifax had risen
to over 25,000. Much of the urban growth in this period comprised
a process of 'infilling'. It involved the
built-up in the central area being more intense. The result was the creation of a series of congested
commercial, industrial and residential courtyards or 'folds'. This
development was accompanied and followed by progressive expansion
from the central urban nucleus, initially to the West and North. It created a Halifax 'conurbation' that led to the municipal annexation
of adjacent territory in Northowram and Southowram townships.
The
appalling living and working conditions in these expanding mill
towns initially went unheeded. The new textile factories stood
side by side with barrack-like back-to-back slums along the congested
valley floors. While double-decker terraces clung precariously to
the steep hillsides. In Halifax, cellar dwellings and open sewers
presented an ever-increasing challenge to the newly created borough
authority. The booming Pennine town paid little attention initially
to basic public amenities. In 1843 it was described as a 'mass of
little, miserable, ill-looking streets, jumbled together in chaotic
confusion'.
