Little Germany 2012 Part Three.

Welcome back to part III of our look around the Little Germany area.

The imposing building above is called Eastbrook Hall, one of the more recent buildings in Little Germany, it was finished in 1904. Built by the local Methodist community, it replaced an older Chapel that had stood there since around 1825. Saved by King Charles in 2008, it still has had a uncertain future. The latest proposals will turn it into flats!

Many of the buildings in Little Germany have been listed since the 1980's, but that still has not saved the area which is a shame. Both the Methodists and the Quakers had a strong interest in the area at the time it was developed as well as the incoming German merchants.

Again we see that non conformist Christian religious groups helped and improved the local communities in Great Britain in the 1800's. Not the state or the Church of England, but the Methodists, Quakers, Baptists and other similar religious groups helped improve the fabric, the education and life in general in Victorian Britain. Now many of the non conformist buildings have been torn down, and the state controls everything, but not in a good way.

In Victorian England and especially in the North of England around Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, we see time and time again how industrial working class people helped to educate and improve their own lives, with buildings such as Reading Rooms to help them, this was very common in the areas where textiles were produced in the Lancashire / Yorkshire border country.

There are little details everywhere among these buildings carvings, plaques, intricate windows and doorways. Lets have a look at a few.

This one is my favourite of all, the carving looking almost 3D.

Lets have a look at a few more street scenes before we leave Little Germany, the streets on the edges of this area looked a little down at heel. I wonder if they have survived? I might have to go back this year and see what still is there.

If I were a betting man, my money would be on this one and the building behind it, won't have survived!

Or this one either. I hope I'm wrong.

Hopefully the ones in the centre will survive, but all those above, well I have my doubts!

Being an inquisitive sort of person, I want to know who exactly was Lodge Calvert! Lodge is a very unusual first name, Calvert is a Yorkshire farming name from the Upper Wharfedale and Wensleydale areas. Also who was Blakey Calvert, another unusual name. So after a little digging, I think the stone was in memory of the Lodge Calvert who was born in 1776 in Kettlewell in the Craven area of Yorkshire and moved to Keighley near Bradford in the late 1790's. He became a Cotton and Worsted manufacturer and was heavily involved in the cloth manufacturing scene in Bradford, he was like many of the Millowners of the period a great champion of the poor and was very prominent in the Methodist Church. He had a son called Blakey, so I'm pretty sure this is the correct Lodge and Blakey Calverts. I wonder if Kit Calvert who rescued Wensleydale Cheese production was any relation? There are links, they came from the same area of Yorkshire, but that is all I know. Some Calverts were big Quakers as well as Methodists, so once again we find links to the Non Conformist religions in this area.

So that is about it in our little ramble around Bradford's Little Germany. Built by German immigrants and wealthy German and British Merchants, funded by wealth made from textiles especially fine woollen Worsted and closely linked to Christian Non Conformism, that is Little Germany in a nutshell. Sadly in the latter days of the last century, both textiles and Christian Non Conformism drastically declined as did Little Germany! I don't think we will see the like of it again.