Bradford Canal

From the Archives: NarrowBoat, Winter 2013

Joseph Boughey

Joseph Boughey finds a short length of canal that was converted into a railway in the 1920s

Larger archive collections, like those at Wakefield and Kew, contain records relevant to many individual waterways as well as to waterways in general. Sometimes one waterway features in a local collection, which more general records can supplement. The short, but significant, Bradford Canal, is one such waterway. Many records of its later history can be found in a branch of West Yorkshire Archive Service: Bradford Archives. From December these archives, which were housed in Bradford Central Library, will have their own dedicated facility; this will remain at the present library building in Princes Way, to be known as ‘Knowledge Tower’, when the new city library opens. Research should usually begin by examining what has already been written and published. In the case of the Bradford Canal, Mike Clarke’s Leeds & Liverpool Canal provides a recent account. Gordon Biddle, a co-founder of the Railway & Canal Historical Society, published a detailed account of the c…