Now nature has reclaimed milltown’s pleasure gardens
ON A fine spring morning the only sounds emanating from the heather and bracken along the eastern side of Shipley Glen were a green woodpecker’s yaffles, the tinkle of meadow pipits and mewing of a common buzzard overhead.
It is hard to believe that more than a century ago this lovely wooded valley to the north of Bradford had the candyflossinfused air of a land-locked Scarborough or Bridlington.
It was where millworkers came in their thousands on Sundays and bank holidays to play as well as to court, as evinced by a music hall song of the period, Meet me Gwen on
Shipley Glen, which has the lines: “You’ll get the Saltaire [tram], and you’ll fancy you’re out by the sea.”
A toboggan slide built in 1897 sent small cars full of shrieking passengers careering down a steep bank to the small reservoir on the floor of the Glen.
However, on Whit Sunday 1900 a cable broke and five people were injured. The ride was instantly closed and soon afterwards dismantled, but today it is possible to find the cast iron pins that secured it to the long outcrop of millstone grit on the Baildon side.
There was also a static amusement park, the remnants of which were still thrilling children a decade ago, and a Yorkshire entrepreneur’s interpretation of an ornamental Japanese Garden. This had a circular lake complete with grottos and Koi bridges, and for a small charge visitors could book cruises. A popular fairground ride known as The Chicken was even imported from Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
Today, the only surviving feature from Shipley Glen’s seaside resort days is its famous Tramway, a funicular or cablehauled railway dating from 1895, which runs downhill for just 440 yards. The amusement park has been redeveloped for housing but everything else has – to use the modern conservation term – rewilded.
That is, nature has claimed back what it lost, and the valley once again looks like an unspoiled Pennine clough with the exception of the small reservoir and its water source, Loadpit Beck, which are the regular haunt of kingfishers, little grebes and herons.
The woodland that fills the Glen is carpeted with bluebells and wild garlic in spring. That it looks so unblemished is thanks to a campaign in the 1900s. After the toboggan slide accident, Bradford Corporation – anxious to encourage visitors to keep using Shipley Glen rather than taking trains to the coast, and also keen to provide work for the unemployed – drew up plans for wide paths on either side of the beck.
A cartoon at the time purported to show an artist’s impression, with advertisement boards and shacks serving ice creams, tea and sausages, and a public outcry was whipped up by the wonderfully named Bradford
Jackdaw magazine. Announcing the success of its campaign, the
Jackdaw said: “To have spoilt this beautiful natural glen would have been a serious loss not only to the present but to the future inhabitants of Bradford.”
The latter would certainly agree.