Place:Bradley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Bradley is a district of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England, 3 miles north-east of the town centre. It is generally just off the A62 Leeds Road and west of the River Colne and the Huddersfield Broad Canal. Located north of Deighton and east of Brackenhall (via Bradley bar), the area has two primary schools, a secondary school and three churches, (one Catholic, one Protestant and another converted to a gymnasium).

• All Saints' Catholic College, previously All Saints' Catholic High School (which serves the towns of Brighouse and the Huddersfield) is situated in the district. Built in 1960 and formerly two schools, (St Gregory's R.C. Grammar and St. Augustine's R.C. Secondary Modern) the two were combined in 1973 to form the currently large high school.
• Bradley has a council estate with the Keldregate thoroughfare running parallel to Leeds Road (A62), as well as two private developments which effectively constitute villages in themselves.
• It has many Robin Hood references in the area, including 'Sherwood Avenue', 'Huntingdon Avenue' and a former pub site called the 'Little John'.
• The area used to be part of a larger Bradley estate known as 'West Bradley' in comparison to 'East Bradley' which included most of Deighton and a part of Leeds Road.
• Has the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) award-winning White Cross Inn public house on Bradley Road.
• Bradley Park is a 17-acre sports and recreation ground adjacent to Wilton Avenue. In December 2017 ownership of Bradley Park transferred from Kirklees Council to Friends of Bradley Park as part of a community asset transfer. Friends of Bradley Park is a registered charity that was set up for the purpose of owning, running and developing Bradley Park for the benefit of the local community.
• In the area there is also the 18-hole Bradley Park municipal golf course.
• There are 2 pubs in the area, the High Park (on Bradley Road) and the White Cross (at the intersection of Bradley Road and Leeds Road). The Woodman Inn (on Leeds Road) has been demolished as has the Badger (on Bradley Road) and the Little John (on Keldregate).
• Bradley was served by Bradley railway station which was closed in 1952, it was situated on Station Road which joined Leeds Road near the Woodman Inn.
• Bradley Viaduct is a 15 arch rail bridge crossing the Huddersfield Broad Canal and River Colne now converted to a cycleway.

The school TV series How We Used To Live used Bradley as the name for a whole town, clearly located in West Yorkshire.

Historically, Bradley was in the ecclesiastical parish of Huddersfield in the Agbrigg division of the wapentake of Agbrigg and Morley.

Research Tips

• GENUKI on Bradley. The GENUKI page gives numerous references to local bodies providing genealogical assistance.
• The FamilySearch wiki on the ecclesiastical parish of Huddersfield provides a list of useful resources for the local area.
• A Vision of Britain through Time on Bradley.
• A Vision of Britain through Time provides links to maps of the West Riding, produced by the United Kingdom Ordnance Survey, illustrating the boundaries between the civil parishes and the rural districts at various dates. The location of individual settlements within the parishes is also shown. These maps all expand to a very large scale.

• Ordnance Survey West Riding 1888. The "Sanitary Districts (which preceded the rural districts) for the whole of the West Riding.
• Ordnance Survey West Riding North 1900 and Ordnance Survey West Riding South 1900. The rural and urban districts, not long after their introduction. NOTE: In 2022 the map of the southern section is not available through the Vision of Britain website. It is unknown if this omission is accidental or if the copy used by the university has been damaged in some way.
• Yorkshire West Riding South and Yorkshire West Riding North revised_1944. These two maps illustrate the urban and rural districts of the whole of the West Riding after the revisions of 1935.
• A further useful map on A Vision of Britain through Time is a boundary map dated 1917. This shows all the boundaries of villages, townships and parishes in the Holmfirth area.