Little Germany

Bradford Literature Festival 2018, Juliet Barker (bottom right) talking about EB, tour of Little Germany

Bradford Literature Festival 2018
In the year of Emily Brontë’s (birth) bicentenary it was a treat at the Bradford Literature Festival to attend talks about the Haworth woman who published just one novel (and a raft of brilliant poems) but who, in my view, is a trailblazer and a genius. Our other highlight at the Festival was a tour of Bradford’s Little Germany. In the early part of the nineteenth century, Leeds had more worsted merchants than Bradford but by 1861 Bradford had 157 to Leeds’s 17. The massive success of the textile industry in Bradford was largely a result of the immigration of a group of German Jews.

Hall Ings and the rise of a citadel
These immigrants – Schuster (who led the way by building a warehouse in Hall Ings in 1836), Behrens (whose gates can still be seen – see pic in collage at top of this blog), Zossenheim, Semon, Moser and Julius Delius (whose son Frederick became known as a typically-English composer) – served the city and the region and built up its reputation and wealth over the central part of the 1800s. The Wool Exchange (now housing an awesome branch of Waterstone’s bookshop) was central to the economic bustle. Merchants from every country of the British Empire – as well as Iceland, America, Tibet and China – were known to haggle for the hundreds of types of wool and hair (including that of alpacas from Titus Salt of Saltaire fame.) And just up the hill, you can walk round the unique collection of imposing listed buildings known, probably forever, as Little Germany.