Market Street Station?

It is well known that the current Forster Square Station replaced a much larger and more impressive one in 1990, and many there are many Bradfordians who knew the former Forster Square Station. But the earlier history of the station is known to rather fewer, and as I shall show, some of what can be found in the reference books appears to be wrong.

The basic story is not in dispute. The Leeds and Bradford Railway opened their line from Leeds via Shipley to Bradford on July 1, 1846; the Midland Railway subsequently absorbed the L&B, and built a new terminus in 1890; and later this came to be called Forster Square Station. But beyond these basic facts the books disagree with each other and with contemporary records.

The most readily accessible book that gives any kind of detail is Whitaker & Myland 1993 (p. 4):

“In July [1844], they obtained Parliamentary powers for the Leeds and Bradford Railway between Leeds Wellington Street and Bradford via Shipley ... “The public opening was on 1st July, 1846 with the Bradford terminus being just east of Forster Square. Hourly services were introduced to Leeds and through trains started running to London Euston via Derby and Rugby. ... “... The original Midland terminus was replaced in 1890 by the much bigger Market Street which was renamed Forster Square in 1924. ... “The station was demolished in 1992 after being replaced two years earlier by a new three-platform railhead which was intended to form an integral part of a £90 million shopping centre”.

For the most part this is unexceptionable, but there are some errors and omissions:

• ‘East of Forster Square’ must surely be a mistake. Forster Square didn't exist in 1846, but Dixon and Hindle’s map of 1871 (Wilmott 1987) clearly shows the station on the west side of Valley Road, and very definitely west of where Forster Square was later built.
• More importantly, the station that was replaced in 1890 was not the station that was built in 1846. There is an engraving of the original station in the Bradford and Wakefield Observer of July 2nd, 1846, and it is not the same building as the photograph reproduced in both Whitaker 1986 and Firth 1997. Sheeran 1994 explains this discrepancy: he has found a reference in 1853 to the station’s having been lately rebuilt.

But the most intriguing issue is the name of the station, which I consider in the next section.

Market Street

• Firth 1997 (106) says “The first Bradford railway had opened in 1846 between Leeds and Market Street (later Forster Square Station of the Midland Railway) – he does not say ‘Market Street Station’, so this might be taken to be a location rather than a name; but the station was not in Market Street, it was in Kirkgate opposite the end of Market Street, so this interpretation would be strained.
• Dewick 2005 names the station ‘Market Street’ (in 1890).
• Dewick 2002, which attempts to capture the whole history of Britain’s railway stations, shows ‘Market Street’ just to the west of ‘Forster Square (1st)’, but Market Street is coloured red, which indicates that both the name and the station passed out of use before 1901; and the second station is given only the one name ‘Forster Square’ - the ‘1st’ distinguishes it from the current ‘Forster Square (2nd)’ just to the north. This implies that there were two stations on different sites, the first called ‘Market Street’, and the second, built before 1901, named only ‘Forster Square’.

Thus we already have a conundrum: when was the name ‘Market Street’ in use?

My answer, from contemporary records, is ‘never’. I have seen one solitary mention of "Market Street Station" in a national railway guide from 1913, but I have yet to find a single contemporary reference from Bradford to any of the stations as ‘Market Street’, but I have plenty of references which do not use that name. See table 1.

Forster Square

Whitaker 1986 says (p.47):

“Another name change following the 1923 amalgamation of the Midland into the mighty London, Midland and Scottish Railway empire saw the station become Bradford Forster Square with effect from June 2, 1924.”

I can confirm that the name ‘Forster Square’ did start being used for the station in 1924, but I have found no confirmation that this happened on June 2nd: if it did, there was no announcement of the change in the Bradford Daily Telegraph either that day or the next, and nobody – including the railway companies – seems to have referred to it as such for at least a week after that date. See table 2.

It is noticeable that LNER advertisements continue to use the old name well into July, whereas LMS ones switch over to ‘Forster Square’ from June 13, apart from one backsliding on June 19. It is also noteworthy that ‘Market Street’ was no more current in 1924 than it was in 1890.

Conclusion

My conclusion is that, contrary to the modern books, no Bradford station was ever officially named ‘Market Street’, and if one or other was informally so known it was so informal that the newspapers did not use the name.

The L&BR’s 1846 station was simply Bradford Station (there was no other), and both the Midland’s replacement in the early 1850’s, and their grand new development of 1890, were simply referred to as the Midland Station. In mid-1924 the latter started to be referred to as Forster Square station, but if this naming was official there was no report of it in the Telegraph, and some references to it (including those of the LNER) continued to be to the "Midland station" for at least a month.

References

• Dewick, Tony 2002 Compete Atlas of Railway Station Names Ian Allan Publishing. ISBN 0-71110-2798-6
• Dewick, Tony 2005 Rail Atlas 1890 Ian Allan Publishing. ISBN 0-7110-3031-6
• Firth, Gary 1997 A History of Bradford Phillimore. ISBN 1-86077-057-6
• Dixon & Hindle 1871 Plan of the Town of Bradford, ed. Elvira Willmott 1987, as The Ryburn Map of Victorian Bradford, Ryburn. ISBN 1-85331-004-2
• Sheeran, George 1994 Railway Buildings of West Yorkshire, 1812-1920 Ryburn. ISBN 1-85331-100-6
• Whitaker, Alan 1986 Bradford Railways Remembers: Dalesman Books. ISBN 0-85206-870-0
• Whitaker, Alan & Brian Myland 1993 Railway Memories No. 4: Bradford Bellcode books. ISBN 1-871233-03-8

Citations

Table 1: Before 1924

Table 2: 1924

The references in the following table are all to the Bradford Daily Telegraph

Date	Page	Item	Text
21 Jan	9	News item re rail strike	At the Bradford Exchange Station ... At the Midland Station ...
31 Jan	9	News item	Both the Midland and the Exchange Stations ...
1 May	11	LMS Advertisement	BRADFORD (“Midland”)
26 May	10	LMS Advertisement	Bradford (Mid.)
30 May	11	LNER Advertisement	Midland Station
31 May	back	Article	The LMS Station
6 June	4	LNER Advertisement	Midland Station
7 June	back	Article re holiday weekend	... the Midland Station ... ... the Exchange Station ...
9 June	back	Article re holiday weekend	... the Forster Square Station ...
10 June	back	Article re holiday weekend	Exchange Station ... (but did not mention Midland station by name).
13 June	6	Article	... Mr F. W Pugh, stationmaster at Bradford Forster Square Station ...
	10	LMS Advertisement	Forster Square
	14	LNER Advertisement	Midland Station
19 June	8	LMS Advertisement	Midland
20 June	4	LMS Advertisement	Forster Square
	10	LNER Advertisement	Midland Station
27 June	8	LMS Advertisement	Forster Square
	8	LNER Advertisement	Midland Station
28 June	3	LMS Advertisement	Forster Square
12 July	4	LNER Advertisement	BRADFORD (Mid)
14 July	7	LNER Advertisement	BRADFORD (Mid)
19 July	4	LNER Advertisement	Forster Square
25 July	8	LNER Advertisement	Forster Square
8 August	4	LNER Advertisement	Forster Square
	7	LMS Advertisement	Forster Square
29 August	8	LNER Advertisement	Forster Square

Table 2: references in the Bradford Daily Telegraph in 1924

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