page_title: Ripley Ville
section_title: Vicarage and almshouses
hierarchical_section_title: Ripley Ville / Vicarage and almshouses
caption_attribution_description: English: Front elevation and garden of vicarage of St Bartholomew's completed 1875 by T.H and F. Healy. The picture dates from that time.
context_page_description: Ripley Ville or Ripleyville was an estate of model houses for the working classes in Broomfields in the East Bowling ward of the City of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England.
  Started in 1866 the development was built for the industrialist, politician and philanthropist Henry William Ripley. It was intended as a commercial development of model houses but when completed in 1881 had many aspects of an industrial model village – although residency was not limited to Ripley's employees. It was the only model village in the Borough of Bradford and can be compared with Akroydon in Halifax, built by Ripley's friend and schoolmate Edward Akroyd, Saltaire and model housing schemes in other West Riding textile towns.
  Ripley Ville contained 196 workmen's cottages, a school and teacher's house, a church, allotment gardens and, on a separate site about a half-mile distant, a vicarage and ten almshouses which are still standing although all the other buildings had been demolished by 1970.
context_section_description: The first vicar, Mr Rice, lived in a rented house at 22 Edmund Street which still exists. The parish, under the leadership of Ripley, decided a more permanent arrangement was needed. Ripley donated the site (0.406 acres) on New Cross Street about half a mile south of the church. The architects were T.H and F Healy who placed an invitation to tender in the Bradford Observer on 26 February 1874. The vicarage was completed in 1875, costing £2,050. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners provided £1,300 and the parish raised £750 from benefactions. Contemporary press articles describe it as "on the scale of a "gentleman's residence" and as having "both day and night nurseries". No plans survive but from the large scale Ordnance Survey map its ground area can be measured as 2036 sq.ft compared with the 505 sq.ft. ground area of a type 1 Ripley Ville house.
  By the late 1920s the vicarage was uneconomic. Vicars' salaries were insufficient for domestic servants and it may have been affected by mining subsidence.(The adjacent Durston's House was demolished about that time.) It was sold to a property developer who demolished and replaced it with a row of houses by 1931. The parish took the lease of a detached house at 205 Hall Lane until 1942 when on amalgamation of the St Luke's parish with St Bartholomew's the former St Luke's vicarage in Caledonia Street became available. Both the vicarages were early-19th century houses of elegant classical design. The Caledonia Street house had been built for a local mill owner in 1834
  In 1881 Ripley paid for ten almshouses in New Cross Street a short distance from the vicarage. Six replaced alms houses built in 1857 by his parents near their house, Bowling Lodge. The old almshouses site had been partly taken over by the GNR line from Ripleyville to Thornton. The commemorative plaque of 1857 was re-affixed to the new almshouses which are grade II listed. The architect was James Ledingham who had worked as an assistant to Andrews and Pepper.
  Plans deposited by Ledingham show that each house had a ground area of about 350 sq. ft.(the projecting end of terrace houses were slightly larger) with a frontage of about 18 ft. On the ground floor front was a living room containing a range. To the rear was a scullery with a sink and access to a back yard containing an ash house, coal store and a gate to a service road. On the first floor front was a bedroom with a fireplace and walk in wardrobe. On the mezzanine level was a WC.
  The relative isolation of the area where the vicarage and almshouses were built was greatly reduced in 1881 when the GNR opened Bowling Junction station, about 50 yards distant from the almshouses. It had services to Bradford (about 5 minutes journey time), Leeds, Halifax and Wakefield.
  Occupancy of the almshouses was not limited to former Ripley employees but was open to all old residents of Bowling. Occupants received an allowance of 3/- per week.
caption: St Bartholomew's vicarage c1880
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