Did Horsforth change from an agricultural village into an industrial town

We first of all take our relevant evidence such as the 1851 census to create of Horsforth in this year. The census is a primary source which displays all the people their occupations and where they lived in a certain year , this is very useful to us as it is primary , we can see it is quite reliable as we can back the layout of the town up with maps that we also have from this period , by looking at what most peoples occupations are , we can see what type of town it was , for example a farming village would contain many farm labourers and maps would show that there would be a mass of farmland , also we had a site visit to see whether there is any residual evidence from that period.

We first have to establish what Horsforth was like before we can see whether there was change and what the catalysts were for it. The Stanhopes also built a church , 'the Bell Chapel' which we have evidence of the remains at the bottom of horsforth town street, but this was demolished in 1833 because of the building of St Margarets church on the hill as the growing importance of the church of England. This to me creates an image of a small village that didn't have a church and so must of not been an important town . Farming towns must have been second priority to towns with a larger job basisWe can see from the census that the majority of people had jobs to do with agriculture and farming and all the housing was in 5 minutes walking distance from grounds of Horsforth hall The fact that most jobs were in agriculture at this time can also be made more reliable by secondary evidence to back up our primary , for example pub names in Horsforth now such as 'the black bull' and 'the grey horse' also give evidence of an agricultural past plus the maps which show us that there is vast amounts of farmland outside of the central settlement in Horsforth.

Pictures of farm housing that we can see in modern day horsforth which were on the records of the census in 1851 also telling us that a farmer still lived there so we can still see that in 1851 it was a farming community. The only method of transport in an agricultural town would of been of course on foot but also horse and carriages , as at this time there was no railway in horsforth , or canal so as horse and carriage was the only way to transport goods to your market Public houses in these times were inns or 'Stage Coach Hotels' . vidence as it shows us an agricultural side to horsforth that we have already been able to establish but also gives us a clue of as to a change. This is the first clue as to a change in horsforth. From all the evidence , both primary and secondary that are relevan to the years of 1851 and the years before we have discovered that horsforth was a farming community.Horsforth had a reletively small population with stage coaching inns for people who need to transport their produce to market of horsforth.

If people used stagecoaches than we could presume that there was no railway, which would bring a large change to the town if it ever came about . The Stanhope's lived in a manor house in Hall Park grounds a large piece of land making them powerful in horsforth .Religion was a big part of peoples life as we can see from the secondary source written by Whitfield , how people walked six miles to Guisley to go to church until the Stanhope's built the bell chapel making people who farmed their land happier , as we can see they voted the Stanhope's Horsforth's MP but according to Whitfield they became less interested in Horsforth , which could be backed up with the fact that the Stanhope's moved away from Horsforth in the 1830'sThe Railway in horsforth was built in 1847 This would bring radical change to the area as goods could be transported to a larger market in a matter of ours in stead of days and with a larger load. To look at if there was a change in horsforth we can look at a number of sources such as the evidence we obtained from the site visit cross reference with the census and also the knowledge learned about that period , we can look what factors contributed to a change , if any.The 1851 census reports an explosion in population in the Horsorth area especially in the fink hill area we can look for explanations in this by looking at other sources such as the evidence we obtained from the site visit.But why was there an explosion in the population of the fink hill area in the 10 years between the census' records of 1851 and 61 , with the coming of the railway and the stanhopes leaving the area Industrialization could well be the most possible answer because people move to where the jobs are and if there was suddenly an increase in jobs in the local area the number of people that would re-locate to the area would equal even surpass this , more people will need an increase of accommodation so therefore the fink hill housing and the increase of people in the horsforth area.

This would explain and back up the evidence for the explosion in population especially around the fink hill area and with people's job descriptions on the 1861 census displaying factory worker and also there was no factory in the 1851 census so all this ties in with he evidence gathered so far. As both sources back each other up we could see that they are very reliable and also there is nothing to discount the evidence that we have collected.With an increase in population that drastic these people would need places to socialise and these were now the old coaching inns that were becoming less popular for the coaching side as the railway was quicker and cheaper and so more efficient although there were already public houses these would quickly fill up as the population got bigger and bigger and so in the year of 1878 the kings arms was extended as we can see from the new stone separating it from the old stone and date stone to show us the year,horsforth must have been becoming a popular place .An increase in the town and the working climate this would effect other aspects of peoples lives , drinking , we can see must have been a large problem at the time as an anti drinking movement was set up in rivalry to the kings arms across the street called temperance court.

Also from evidence at the time we can see that religion was changing , the fact that we have the Methodist church being set up as a 'working mans' church but frowned upon drinking also showed change in attitude but we can also see that the church of England must have lost out because of this , as the St. Margarets church built a spire as did 6 more churches across the Leeds area to show power and attract people to the church. This would support the fact that there was a great increase in the industrial occupations in Horsforth for a church to be set up that would favours their views.I believe the one thing that made this change possible was the railway , this allowed people to move large shipments to bigger markets , relatively cheaply which would eventually make the stagecoach's and the stage coaching hotels obselete , so to stay in business things had to change to keep custom, so coaching inns simply changed into pubs for the new working population from a factory , that was only able to set up because of the railway.These pubs that were set up caused problems as alcoholism must have been a big problem for an opposed to alcohol movement to set up in horsforth opposite its opponent making a big statement to the newly extended kings arms. Peoples opinions at the time made Methodism a popular choice due to its drinking rules this was a direct rivalry to the church of England so they built the spire to try to show power and attract people back.

Some of the evidence collected on its own would be useless we had something to backup and cross reference it , such as our bricked up archway until we could see it had something to do with the fact the railway had come to town , and the kings arms had obviously become a public house that we can see from the site visit and the existence of temperance court across the street this cross reference adds weight to the conclusions that we came up with and makes each source involved more reliable and discounts ant dubious sources we may of encountered .In this I only used sources that had a degree of historical value to them , even if they were just used to back up another souce this could be very usefull to a historian as it could add to the amount of reliable information that could be obtained from other sources.The census , a primary evidence document proved very use full in proving the change in horsforth as it would rove to be a basis to base our secondary sources on such as the big change in population on fink hill between the census dates we had , as we found out they were high density housing and from a housing profile these were factory workers houses as they were cheap for a factory owner to buy , and the fact that there was a factory was backed up both by the previous point and the fact that the census in 1861 recorded a great increase in factory workers and a lot of these were in the high density housing on fink hill.All of the evidence used needed to be reliable otherwise our claims to a change would have no weight to them so in some cases I used the primary evidence such as census and maps which on their own are quite reliable as well as the information gained from the sit visit to cross reference over secondary sources to prove it or vice versa . Primary sources have a great strength in being collected for the specific purpose which is what some written secondary sources lack because of this strength we can usually gather a lot of information from them and is why we can use them to verify secondary and weaker sources.