By: Claire Smith

Claire Smith — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 21:42:19 +0000

As a Shipley dweller for 10 years now, and Bradford born and bred I do indeed have comment.
Firstly to the important issue of pubs. I nominate The Shipley Pride, The Branch and The Ring O’ Bells. Not as snazzy as Fanny’s, not as many wheat beers, but yes that’s Shipley. It is much more simple and striaghtforward than Saltaire, but we are so close we get the benefits without having to pay the same rent/mortgage. We have good local amenities. We also have a better railway station!
Did you know the original Agraar started its spicy little life here?
We have lots of lovely Parks/Woods and general green spaces.
We have a Swimming Pool.
Many, many chemists! (think it’s cos we have quite a large ageing population).
Franco’s delicatessen’s – does some proper lovely grub.
We have a pretty sizeable decent library.
We have quite a few charity shops – again possibly linked to the large amount of ageing peeps . Some of them sell a good selection of clothes, some are just fascinating in there oddness!
Shipley Market – ok yes so you wouldn’t actually buy anything there but it’s fascinating to look round!
We have our own bowling alley don’t chya know!
We have a small local art exhibition in the town centre that I have never looked round, and have never seen anyone inside of.
We also used to have a fab little café call Heaven Scent until it disappeared and Cost chuffing Coffee jumped in its grave. The woman who ran it was an ethical trade and a Shipley champion – she is missed.
Shipley waterways are also nationally well known for being the dumping ground of the Crossbow Cannibals victim’s body parts! Not that this is a good thing you understand !
Finally I’d just like to say I’ve always found the canal to be well kept and I have some really key childhood memories from it involving bike riding and nature trails. Not as much attention is given to Shipley in comparison to Saltaire, including its waterways, so people won’t necasserily think of it as significant. People have tried and failed to bring more here in recent times, such as they have with Bradford in general, but we can’t compete with Saltaire just like Bradford cant Leeds. Who wants to though? It is true that Shipley certainly doesn’t have much going for it significantly in terms of cultural attractions. But maybe it is significant in a different way. A significantly lovely place to live. LOTS of amenities, quiet, friendly and un-assuming. It is cheaper to live in than Saltaire and without all the pesky tourists milling around. However it’s so close we still get to enjoy the good bits!
Thanks for reading.
Claire.

By: Simon Brewis

Simon Brewis — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:36:27 +0000

Thanks and apologies go to Ian Watson from shipleyhistory.org.uk who has spotted my error and would like it to be known that Titus Salt was an Independent / Congregationalist Christian and not a Wesleyan, as stated above. But that still means he didn’t like boozers.

Thanks Ian :0)

By: Steve Bottoms

Steve Bottoms — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:29:43 +0000

Just a word in reply here to say that I’ve written a sort of response to Simon’s post in my own post “Invisible…?” Lots of thoughts firing off here…

Comments on: Shipley before the River

By: Claire Smith

By: Simon Brewis

By: Steve Bottoms