for: City of Bradford

Bradford (pronunciation) lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. The City of Bradford metropolitan borough comprises Bradford itself and smaller outlying settlements. Bradford has a population of 293,717, whilst the wider metropolitan borough has a population of 493,100.

Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bradford rose to prominence during the 19th century as an international centre of textile manufacture, particularly wool. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, and amongst the earliest industrialised settlements, rapidly becoming the "wool capital of the world". The area's access to a supply of coal, iron ore and soft water facilitated the growth of Bradford's manufacturing base, which, as textile manufacture grew, led to an explosion in population and was a stimulus to civic investment; Bradford has fine Victorian architecture including the grand Italianate City Hall.

Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897. Following a boundary reform in 1974, city status was bestowed upon the wider metropolitan borough.

The textile sector in Bradford fell into a terminal decline from the mid-20th century. Since this time, Bradford has faced similar challenges to the rest of the post-industrial area of Northern England, including deindustrialisation, economic deprivation and housing problems. Since the 1950s Bradford has experienced significant levels of immigration, particularly from Pakistan, and consequently has the fourth highest proportion of Muslims in England and Wales. Since the decline in heavy industry, Bradford has emerged as a tourist destination with attractions such as the National Media Museum, Cartwright Hall, and Saltaire, a World Heritage Site.

History

The name Bradford is derived from the "broad ford" at Church Bank (below the site of Bradford Cathedral) around which a settlement had begun to appear before the time of the Norman Conquest ("Bradeford" in the Domesday book of 1086). The ford crossed the stream called Bradford Beck.

Bradford, for long a centre of the West Riding wool industry, was one of the many English towns which became prosperous during the Industrial Revolution. Bradford's textile industry dates back as far as the 13th century, but it was not until the 19th century that it became world-famous. Wool was imported in vast quantities for the manufacture of worsted cloth in which Bradford specialised. Other fibres were also processed, including alpaca. Yorkshire had plentiful supplies of soft water, which was needed in the cleaning of raw wool, and locally mined coal provided the power that the industry needed. Sandstone, Bradford's local stone, was an excellent resource for the building of the mills, and the large population of West Yorkshire provided a readily available workforce.