Lying to the south of Bradford city centre, East Bowling is part of the historic township and manor of Bowling in West Yorkshire. The area takes a roughly triangular shape, with its southern apex near Croft Street approximately 350 metres from the city centre. Wakefield Road is the main thoroughfare running through East Bowling, while Bowling Back Lane traces the northern boundary and Rooley Lane and Sticker Lane define the southeastern edge. East Bowling now falls within the Bowling and Barkerend ward.
History of the Township
Bowling became a ward of the newly created Borough of Bradford in 1847. In 1882, the ward was divided into East and West Bowling, with the northern boundary running along the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and the southern boundary following Hall Lane and Bolling Hall Lane. The principal historical source for the area is William Cudworth’s History of Bowling, published in 1891. Cudworth acknowledged from the outset that no published record had previously existed on which to base his account. The township covered 1,561 acres at a time when the total acreage of the Borough of Bradford was 10,776.
Landscape and Land Use
The township of Bowling occupied a varied terrain. At its northern edge, where Bowling came within a few hundred yards of Bradford’s centre, the altitude was around 360 feet above sea level. To the south, the land rose considerably – reaching 600 feet at Laisterdyke and 700 feet at Odsal Top – following the watershed between Bradford Dale to the north and tributaries of the Aire and Calder to the south and southwest. Most of the township sat above the 500-foot contour. The soil was boulder clay, unsuitable for arable farming, which meant crops were limited largely to barley and oats rather than wheat. Outside the parks of Bowling Hall, the land was divided into small walled closes used for pastoral purposes, a pattern that had continued since ancient times. There was no common land in Bowling, and no inclosure act had ever been passed. Several small becks drained the area, including Bowling Beck and Law Beck (also recorded as Claw Beck and Low Beck), whose water fed the Bowling manorial corn mills – though those mills were frequently halted by a shortage of water.