A settlement at Bradford first grew up in Saxon times. After an uprising in 1070, during William the Conqueror’s Harrying of the North, the manor of Bradford was laid waste. By the middle ages Bradford, had become a small town centred on Kirkgate, Westgate and Ivegate. In 1316 there is mention of a fulling mill, a soke mill where all the manor corn was milled and a market. During the Wars of the Roses the inhabitants sided with House of Lancaster. Edward IV granted the right to hold two annual fairs and from this time the town began to prosper. Bradford grew slowly over the next 200 years as the woollen trade gained in prominence.

During the Civil War the town was garrisoned for the Parliamentarians and in 1642 was unsuccessfully attacked by Royalist forces from Leeds, but later was besieged and surrendered. The Civil War caused a decline in industry but after the accession of William and Mary in 1689 prosperity began to return. The launch of manufacturing in the early 18th century marked the start of the town’s development while new canal and turnpike road links encouraged trade.

In 1801, Bradford was a rural market town of 6,393 people, where wool spinning and cloth weaving was carried out in local cottages and farms. The wider district had a population of 40,000 – by 1881, this had peaked at over 300,000 thanks to the Industrial Revolution.

Blast furnaces were established in about 1788 and iron was worked by the Bowling Iron Company until about 1900. Yorkshire iron was used for shackles, hooks and piston rods for locomotives, colliery cages and other mining appliances where toughness was required. When the municipal borough of Bradford was created in 1847 there were 46 coal mines within its boundaries. Coal output continued to expand, reaching a peak in 1868 when Bradford contributed a quarter of all the coal and iron produced in Yorkshire.

In 1825 the wool combers’ union called a strike that lasted five months but workers were forced to return to work through hardship, leading to the introduction of machine-combing.Wool was imported in vast quantities for the manufacture of worsted cloth in which Bradford specialised, and the town soon became known as the wool capital of the world.

Exclusive census analysis from data website TheGenealogist.co.uk shows that wool weavers and combers, and other textile-related occupations, were in particular abundance in both 1841 and 1911; plus coal miners in 1841.

The Genealogist’s data also reveals that common surnames in the city have included Firth, Wilkinson, Greenwood, Holdsworth, Holmes and Rhodes; plus Walker, Brook, Hartley, Illingworth, Jowett, Thornton, Barraclough and Sugden were common in 1841 and Mitchell, Harrison, Hudson, Jackson and Barker in 1911.

Unprecedented growth created problems with over 200 factory chimneys continually churning out black, sulphurous smoke, Bradford gained the reputation of being the most polluted town in England. There were frequent outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, and only 30% of children born to textile workers reached the age of 15.

In the 1840s Bradford’s population was significantly increased by migrants from Ireland, particularly rural Mayo and Sligo.

During the 1820s and 1830s, there was also immigration from Germany. Many were Jewish merchants and they became active in the life of the town.

The Bradford Pals were three WW1 battalions raised in the city. On the morning of 1 July 1916, an estimated 1,394 young men from Bradford and district left their trenches for the Battle of the Somme. Of these, 1,060 were either killed or injured.

West Yorkshire Archive Service has a branch in Bradford (wyjs.org.uk/archive-service). Find Bradford Museums and Galleries at bradfordmuseums.org .