Look back: Craven Heifer on Manchester Road in Bradford

The Craven Heifer is a common pub name around Yorkshire. The actual cow was bred near Bolton Abbey in 1807 and exhibited to the public on its journey south to Smithfield Market. Such displays of prize animals were then common and other pubs have similar names from prize beasts, like the Durham Ox.

This particular Craven Heifer was opened around 1830, shortly after the completion of the new Manchester Road, which provided a straighter route from the town to the south than the old Bowling Lane (now Bowling Old Lane) and was located at its junction with Smiddles Lane. It was thus a convenient halt for travellers and also a new local for the people round about. Like pubs generally at this time, it was also used for events like auctions of property.

The pub was owned by Sir Francis Sharp Powell of Horton Hall but at some date was bought by landlord Joseph Pearson, who is described in the 1891 census as a publican and butcher and 10 years later as an innkeeper and farmer. His son Walter took over in 1909 and the pub was sold in 1925 for £10,000 to the Leeds and Wakefield Brewery Company, known as the Melbourne Brewery from 1957, as is shown on the photograph. The company’s trademark courtier can be clearly seen. At the time of the purchase the property consisted of the pub and adjoining butcher’s shop, together with several cottages, a smithy, barn, workshops and outbuildings.

In 1969 the property was subject to a Compulsory Purchase Order to make way for the construction of the new Manchester Road and was then sold to Bradford Council in 1973.

Before its demolition, however, then owners Tetley of Leeds had built a new pub further back from the new road, as may just be seen on the left of the photograph, in a style used for a number of new pubs around the city, like the Airedale on Otley Road, for example, or the Lilycroft Hotel in Manningham.

It was not a pub to which I often went; maybe readers will have memories to share. But when I was younger, nearly 60 years ago now, I knew the area well. I revisited it recently for a look around. The Craven Heifer was closed but the building was still there, now the Al-Khair Foundation, according to a sign. In front were the six lanes of Manchester Road and a huge road junction. The open ground adjoining, where once a fair and circuses were held, was built over.

On the opposite side of Smiddles Lane, the ‘wooden hut’ fish and chip shop had gone, as had a row of old cottages, one of which housed the penny-tray shop, although others were derelict even then. A bus stop had replaced it, full of rubbish that morning and apparently for sale. Behind it, Dovesdale Baptist Church, later a working men’s club, had also gone. New housing was being built facing Dovesdale Road.

* Paul Jennings is the author of Bradford Pubs and The Local: A History of the English Pub.