When I started posting this series of maps on-line I never dreamt the process would go on for so long. Several maps have been looked at more than once, particularly if I have found a new or additional point of interest.

This particular sale plan contains a gratifying large amount of internal information. It seems that it was published in December 1865 even if that date was subsequently scored through. We know the name of the vendor, the Rev. James Charles Franks, and clearly his land was being offered for sale subdivided into smaller lots suitable for housing development. The vendor was to be responsible for staking out the lots and developing the roadways and causeways. Finally, in the terms and conditions, none of the plots sold were to be used as hotels, public houses, beer houses, manufactories, dyehouses or chandlers’ shops. I don’t know that even today whether Thornton has a really good chandler’s shop!

Upper Kipping Estate, whose name was presumably created by this sale, was the property of Rev James Clark Franks MA: but who exactly was the vendor? The name appears frequently in the Local Studies Library maps of old Thornton. Rev. JC Franks (1793 – 1867) was the Vicar of Huddersfield but he clearly had properties in this area, presumably through his wife who was born in Kipping. Rev. Franks, then incumbent of Sowerby Bridge, married an Elizabeth Firth in 1824 at St Peter’s Church, Bradford (now the Cathedral). He had been a fellow at Trinity College Cambridge and seems to have been quite a distinguished scholar. We also have a railway planning map, dated 1875, entitled ‘Property required from Rev. John Firth Franks, Alderscholes Lane, Thornton’. The limited type of family history research of which I am capable suggests that the two men were father and son. John Firth Franks (1826-1917) survived until the 20^th century and his middle name suggests that the estate passed to his father from Miss Firth by inheritance rather than by purchase.

In the LSL there is also this second, undated but older, map entitled ‘Miss Firth’s estate’; underneath this printed description someone has added, in ink script, ‘Rev J C Franks estate’. Underneath this in turn is a single word in pencil which may be ‘Occupiers’ but is too faint for certainty. If the map is consistent then land-owners of property adjacent to the estate are added in ink, and pencilled names, scarcely legible here, might be the estate tenants.

The use of a first name for Miss Firth would have helped the process of identification enormously. We have the 1770 enclosure map for Thornton which suggests that this estate was on land enclosed before the passing of the late eighteenth century Enclosure Act. One of the names of those subsequently awarded parts of the common was a Dr John Firth. William Cudworth in Round About Bradford mentions a Firth family, and in particular a Joshua Firth, living at nearby Allerton Hall in 1777. In 2009 the Thornton Antiquarian Society published Thornton 1751-1938 which is a fascinating collection of newspaper items mentioning the area which was collected by historian Jean K Brown. One from the Leeds Mercury in 1823 mentions that Kipping Mansion House was ‘presently occupied by Mrs Firth’. I can find a Miss Firth in Land Tax Records for 1821 and 1823 but since no first name is provided there either I’m not much further forward.

The new point of interest I have found in the main map can be seen in this detail. In the top centre of the detail is a building described as Methodist Free Church. For the last two years I have been trying to draw up a register of Victorian places of worship and locate them on LSL maps and images. I have found 4-5 Methodist Free Churches, the nearest to this being at Egypt a hamlet north of Thornton, famous for ‘the walls of Jericho’. Historian William Cudworth writes that the ‘present chapel’ originally formed part of the circuit of Wesleyan Reformers but 11 years before he published Round About Bradford it was joined to the Bradford Circuit of the United Methodist Free Churches (an amalgamation of Wesleyan Reformers with the Wesleyan Association). In the 1914 OS map it has become the United Methodist Chapel, and I believe it is still present today but converted into two domestic dwellings.

The church was constructed in 1857 and, as you can easily see, is aligned on the turnpike – now Thornton Road. The two properties to the right, one the Wellington Inn, are not aligned like this and so are very easy to spot on maps. That being the case you can see that the land boundaries have not changed between Miss Firth’s plan (blue outline) and Rev. Franks plan but none of the properties with Thornton Road frontages had been constructed when the older plan was surveyed.