Approximate Population: 293,717

Unusually for a major city, Bradford, West Yorkshire, is not built on any substantial body of water. The ford from which it takes its name (Broad-Ford) was a crossing of the stream called Bradford Beck. The beck rises in the Pennine hills to the west of the city, and is swelled by tributaries such as Horton Beck, Westbrook, Bowling Beck and Eastbrook. At the site of the original ford, just below the present Bradford Cathedral, it turns north, and flows more or less straight towards the River Aire at Shipley.

Bradfordale (or Bradforddale) is a name given by geographers to the valley of Bradford Beck (see for example Firth 1997. It can reasonably be regarded as one of the Yorkshire Dales, though as the site of a big city, it is often not recognised as such.

The beck’s course through the city centre is entirely underground, and was mostly so by the middle of the 19th century. On the 1852 Ordnance Survey map of Bradford it is visible as far as Sun Bridge, at the end of Tyrrell Street, and then again from beside the railway station at the bottom of Kirkgate. On the 1906 Ordnance Survey, it disappears at Tumbling Hill Street, off Thornton Road, and first appears again north of Cape Street, off Valley Road, though there are further culverts as far as Queens Road. This is substantially the position today.Bradford Beck is now a central element of the Alsop plan to regenerate the city centre. ‘The Bowl’ is an ambitious project to open up the beck and create a huge pool to act as the pivotal point of the new city centre.

The Bradford Canal, built in 1774, took its water from Bradford Beck and its tributaries. This supply was often inadequate to feed the locks, and the polluted state of the canal led to its temporary closure in 1866: the canal was closed in the early 20th century as uneconomic. ‘The Channel’ is another facet of the Alsop plan, envisaging the creation of a new canal-side community through its reopening.

Chartered Surveyors Bradford West Yorkshire

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