RECENT coverage in the Telegraph & Argus of the demolition of York House has prompted reader VINCENT FINN to recall the area he grew up in - which changed forever when tower blocks were built.

Writes Vincent: In recent months the T&A has published articles on the closing and demolition of blocks of flats, the most recent being York House at Thorpe Edge. Reading them brought to mind how the construction of tower blocks brought radical changes to the city and the lives of people who came to live in them. They would ultimately change our neighbourhoods forever.

I grew up in the Barkerend Road area, which encompassed St Mary’s parish. It was a huge neighbourhood that had hundreds of streets lined with stone and red brick houses. I always imagined that since it was an old, well established neighbourhood it would last forever. Within a few short years that turned out not to be the case.

Some streets around the Cathedral and Wapping were slated for demolition before World War 1 but with the economic crash of 1929 this was delayed. Captain Street, North Street and some houses on Wapping Road were eventually demolished just before World War 11, but as a boy living and going to school in the area, I thought it would last forever.

There hadn’t been any major building in Bradford from the late 1880s to the early 1950s. In the immediate post-war years there was only a small number of builders in Bradford: Totty, L & W Morrell, J&J Obank, PR Procter, Thomas Feather. Then came a boom in development. Large estates at Fagley, Holme Wood, Thorpe Edge and Woodside grew rapidly, opening the way for large-scale relocation of people and thus the eradication of local neighbourhoods.

The first major changes in Bradford came in the Church Bank/Otley Road area in the early 1950s. The road between the Cathedral (Stott Hill) and Otley Road (Church Bank)was lined with shops and a pub, the Churchill. When it was demolished it was replaced with a new pub of the same name across the road.

By 1952-53 the area was changing. The whole area was demolished and three blocks of eight-storey flats were built on Church Bank and the bottom of Otley Road. This development was by a company soon to be a household name: George Wimpey & Co. These were the first multi-storey blocks built in the city. I used to pass the site every day and remember an advertising sign which said they were built in a ‘no fines’ construction. This new form of concrete mix had little sand added, allowing buildings to be erected at a faster rate than the old method. Another construction site was underway at the time; an extension to the Cathedral by J&J Obank.

By the mid 1960s the Otley Road and Wapping area, all the way to Undercliffe Street, was gone. The new road linking Canal Road to Wakefield cut through what was left of the old neighbourhood, isolating St Mary’s Church and the school, which stood empty for years. The Barkerend flats (Newcastle House, Fairfax House and Ruth House) are the last symbols of 1960s high rise urban renewal left in Bradford. The city is currently undergoing a new re-development, along with a new pattern of housing in the centre and outskirts.

My old neighbourhood, with its church, boys and girls schools, Barkerend Mills, cinemas, East Ward Club, City Band Club and maze of streets - why wouldn’t I think it would all last for a long time to come?