Bradford, ENG - Postcode - BD4 8DX

Description of Bradford, England

Bradford, located in the county of West Yorkshire, is the district capital and largest settlement in the City of Bradford. The city sits on the banks of the Bradford Beck in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. At the time of the 2011 census, Bradford was home to 349,561 people, making it the county's second-most populous urban area behind Leeds, located 9 miles (14 km) to the east. All of the towns in the district, including Shipley, Silsden, Bingley, and Keighley, as well as the surrounding areas in the metropolitan county, form a contiguous urban region. Similarly, Bradford Beck is a name for it.

It became a West Riding of Yorkshire municipal borough in 1847 and obtained its city charter in 1897. Bradford City Hall has been the location of Bradford City Council meetings since the reform of local administration that took place there in 1974. With a total population of 539,776, the district is the seventh most populous in England and include both civil parishes and unparished regions.

It became a city in the 19th century, but the century before that it was a center of worldwide textile production. The city's swift rise to prominence as the "wool capital of the world" and the subsequent coining of the terms "Woolopolis" and "Wool City" make it one of the earliest examples of an industrialized community.  The area's proximity to sources of coal, iron ore and soft water started off the expansion of manufacturing which led to a boom in people. In the middle of the twentieth century, deindustrialization caused the textile industry and the rest of the industrial base to decline (including poverty, unemployment and social unrest). Based on finance and industry, the city's economy is over £10 billion, making it the third largest in the Yorkshire and the Humber region.

It was the first UNESCO City of Film, and attractions like the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford City Park, the Alhambra theater, and Cartwright Hall contribute to the city's thriving tourism and media industries. It is the UK City of Culture for 2025 having gained the designation on 31 May 2022.

Geographical Description of Bradford

At 53°45′00′′N 01°50′00′′W, Bradford can be found (53.7500, -1.8333). Geographically, it is part of the South Pennines' eastern moorland.

The city of Bradford is not located on any large body of water, but rather at the confluence of three valleys. One of these valleys is home to the Bradford Beck, which has its origins in the western moorlands and is swelled by the Horton Beck, Westbrook, Bowling Beck, and Eastbrook. The beck makes a sharp swing to the north at the first ford and eventually meets the River Aire at Shipley. This valley is commonly referred to as Bradfordale (or Bradforddale) (see for example Firth 1997). It's technically one of the Yorkshire Dales, but because it cuts through the middle of the city, it's not always recognized as such. The city center beck has been culverted since the middle of the 19th century. On the 1852 Ordnance Survey map it is seen as far as Sun Bridge, near the end of Tyrrell Street, and then from beside Bradford Forster Square railway station on Kirkgate. Culverts extend to Queens Road, however the Ordnance Survey of 1906 has it ending at Tumbling Hill Street, off Thornton Road, and beginning again just north of Cape Street, off Valley Road.

Bradford Beck and its tributaries provided water for the Bradford Canal, which was constructed in 1774 to connect the city to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The supply was often inadequate to feed the locks, and the dirty status of the canal led to its temporary closure in 1866: the canal was abandoned in the early 20th century as uneconomic.

Economy of Bradford

There has been a long-term downturn in Bradford's textile sector, and the city as a whole has seen the effects of de-industrialization. Some parts of Bradford have some of the greatest social deprivation in the UK, with isolated communities of exclusion and unemployment rates that exceed 25%. However, other parts of Bradford have some of the lowest rates of social deprivation in the UK. Bradford's economy is worth over £9.5 billion and is projected to increase to more than £10 billion by 2018. This makes the district the third largest (after Leeds and Sheffield) in Yorkshire & Humber and 8.4% of the region's production. Financial institutions (Yorkshire Building Society, Provident Financial, Santander UK), textile producers (British Wool Marketing Board, Bulmer and Lumb Group), chemical producers (BASF, Nufarm UK), electronic component producers (Arris International, Filtronic), engineering component producers (NG Bailey, Powell Switchgear), and manufacturers (Allen & Overy) all call the city home (Denso Marston, Bailey Offsite, Hallmark Cards UK and Seabrook Potato Crisps). Supermarket chain Morrisons has its head office in Bradford as does water utility company Yorkshire Water.

Provident Financial plc, a financial services firm that focuses on Home Collected Credit (HCC) and owns the credit card issuing institution Vanquis Bank, is a major employer in the area. It's on the LSE and included in the FTSE 100 Index. It was founded in 1880 by Joshua Kelley Waddilove with the goal of serving the needs of low-income families in West Yorkshire with access to credit. It has relocated its offices to a new 250,000-square-foot (23,000-square-meter) facility in the heart of the city at a cost of £45 million. A 200-room Jurys Inn is also located here.

In October 2011, Bradford Council secured £17.6 million of regional growth funding from the government, which it will match to create a £35 million "growth zone" in which companies would get business rate relief in exchange for helping people get training and jobs. This was a boon to plans to regenerate Bradford's city center, which includes the long-delayed Broadway shopping center.

When retail company Freeman Grattan Holdings signed a lease in Bradford in April 2012, they planned to open a new headquarters there to accommodate 300 employees. When the time comes, the mail-order and online retailer Grattan will relocate its administrative offices from Lidget Green, where it has been located since 1934, to a Grade II-listed former wool warehouse on the outskirts of Little Germany.