'In Bradeford'
Screen print (real size 30 x 40 cm) made at Bradford Cathedral Centre.
One of fifteen
Three photographic stencils on screens , and printed in three colours:
Three photographic stencils on screens , and printed in three colours:
- blue blend,
- yellow/orange blend
- black,
Bradeford Peace
The city of Bradford, in its Dale, on the edge of the Pennines in West Yorkshire, lives and breaths a rich heritage of different cultures.
In the background is an old map of Bradford, and the texts say 'Bradford' in different languages. Bradford meant 'Broad Ford', in Old English. There was a ford, at the crossing of the Bradford Beck at Church Bank below the site of Bradford Cathedral, around which a settlement grew in Saxon times. Bradford Beck is still there, but it is culverted through the city.
Beck is a Danish word for stream. There are many Danish words in Yorkshire place names and in the yorkshire dialects, because the 'Viking' Danes colonised this area from the 9th century. They took York in 866 AD and the north and east of England, (including East Anglia) was ruled by the 'Danelaw'.
African Heritage
From a wide range of evidence, including that in archeological finds and in our DNA, modern humans are thought to have arisen around 200,000 years ago in Eastern Africa. About 75,000 years ago there was a drastic reduction of the human population in Africa (and the middle east, where they had spread) due to climatic stress, caused by dry conditions during the ice ages, and also the eruption of Mount Toba in Indonesia. This small group of survivors was possibly as low as 2,000 people. Homo sapiens nearly died out! From this, they spread back over Africa, and then through the middle east to the rest of the world.
As there was an ice age, humans were quite late in arriving in north west Europe, which therefore lagged behind the development of human culture in Africa. The cave paintings of Lascaux date from 30,000 years ago.
Globe trotters
This wave of settlement of new lands by modern humans left evidence such as settlements in caves and shelters, and tools like harpoons. Of course we do not know their languages, except in the form of their art: carved stone and bone, burials with red ochre, and cave paintings. These show a great concern with the spirit world of the animals that they relied upon for food.
Honoring the spirits was possibly a way of ensuring a good hunt in the season to come. The people would have followed herds just as hunter gatherers do today. From the animals which they hunted (such as mammoths, wild aurochs (a wild cow), woolly rhinoceras and reindeer) they got meat for food, hides for clothing and shelters, sinew for cord, and bones for tools,
For most of our history we have been hunter gatherers, with developments in art, and stone tool technology being apparent in archaeological sites.
From about 5,000 years ago, agricultural ways of life had replaced hunter gathering. This resulted in larger and more settled populations, and massive impacts on the landscape, such as deforestation, grazing with livestock, drainage and soil erosion. Through the discovery of bronze then iron, our effectiveness at ploughing the land, chopping wood, and meat, and making crafts developed.
By the middle ages Bradford became a small town, at the hub of an agricultural economy centred on the streets of Kirkgate, Westgate and Ivegate. In these street names, the word 'gate', comes from the Danish 'Gata' meaning street.
After the Norman conquest in 1066 Bradford became part of the Honour of Pontefract given to Ilbert de Lacy for service to the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. There is evidence of a castle at Bradford in the time of the Lacys. Ilbert was clearly in good favour, for that is huge area from Bradford to Pontefract ! Was he given it all? I suppose so . At that time Bradford was a large village with about 300 people in it.
Explanation of the print
Starlings
The little flying features are meant to be starlings. It was so spectacular: the mesmerising flocks swirling over the city centre at dusk in the autumn and winter. They circled around, splitting apart, joining again, millions of them, moving as one like a giant amoeba in the sky. Then they roosted in the cherry trees behind the town hall, making such a din, and plenty of droppings ! Fantastic.
There were several cities where they did this, in the 1980's and early 1990's, including Bradford and Bristol.
But they do not do this now. You can still see starlings gathering in huge flocks in places like the Somerset levels. Maybe the change in behaviour and/or migration is due to global warming.....
The building : Bradford City Hall. This beautiful building forms an elegant focus to the whole city. It was designed in the Venetian style by Lockwood and Mawson, and opened in 1873. The bell tower was inspired by Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, and the bells in it weigh 17 tons!
The map
The map in the background is of the Bradford area in 1776. It shows that Bradford was just a village at that time. This was before the industrial expansion of the 19 th century. The other villages which are now parts of the city can be seen, such as Frizinghall, Bolton, Manningham.
Another map by Saxton, from 1613, (not in the print) shows how the great fields and individual strips (that date back to the communal management of the manors in early medieval times), have been perpetuated in the modern street layout of Bradford.
This point is described in the 'Geography of Bradford' by Clem Richardson:
Thus the ....''old tracks, once carrying farm produce and farmworkers from manorial centre to Bradford, and forming the main borders of the large open fields, became the principal radial roads of the modern city.''
For example, Whetley Lane is named after Whetley Field ,and ''...Toller Lane separated the Old Manningham Field from the West Field....''
But what is more, because the old strips had not been amalgamated, that is farmers had strips scattered through the dale, when they were bought up for development in the 19th century, the development of streets followed those strip patterns:
''Thus the lines followed by the plough of the medieval farmer, as he carved the great open fields into working units, determined the lines of Bradford' nineteenth century streets.''
Words
The writing shows Bradford as it was spelt at different times in history, and in different scripts of today representing some of the communities in the city.
I found old maps and documents in the library. And I got the different language scripts from various sources.
Top:
'In Bradeford'
At the top is the title for the entry for Bradford in the Domesday book, 1086, spelt 'Bradeford'. I suppose the pronunciation of that time placed the vowel 'e' between syllables, where we have now dropped it.
Below it and to the right in blue and black, is Bradford in Arabic. A friend wrote this for me.
Then below that 'Bradford' is written: from a document of 1542. By then the 'e' between the two syllables has been dropped. There is a curved flourish above the left-leaning 'd'. This curved pen stroke was for aesthetic affect I suppose. I have placed the Arabic word above it so that the curve of one joins the curve of the other, as the art work emphasises connections.
On the tower:
Bradford in Hindi. It is from a council leaflet. I cheekily split the characters into two lines to fit on the tower and I hope it makes sense. This needs some feedback form Hindi speakers.
Below that is 'Bradforth' from a 16th century document. 'Ford' and 'forth' were clearly interchangeable.
I think spelling in general was not so standardised as today. Apparently Shakespear used to make up words if there wasn't one suitable.
Then below that is Bradford in Urdu, again from a council leaflet.
Below that I did have Bradford in Gujerati which someone wrote for me, but I then realised it was wrong, there was a character missing, which is why I blanked it out.
So the next one down at the bottom of the tower is Bradford in Panjabi, again from a council leaflet !
Both the Urdu and the Panjabi scripts I have joined to the roads of 1776. So the writing becomes the lanes. The aim of this is to show how the different communities are linked to the history, and how we are all part of the heritage of a place. By nurturing a pride in where you are from, and a fascination in it, children grow up feeling a part of the place where they are born. And also through the celebration of their community's heritage, they are connected to that piece of the earth where their ancestors were born. One example of this would be the countryside of Mirpur in Pakistan.
To the left of the tower
Here there is Bradford in Greek. This was done on a computer.
And more of the same map, but on its side. Don't ask me why. But you can clearly read more of the local place names: Bolling Hall, Bierley chapel, Little Horton.
To the right of the tower
These squiggles in blue are runes. But they do not say 'Bradford'.
This represents the Viking Danes. They spoke Old Norse. But Old Saxon and Old Norse were similar enough that people could understand each other.
A gradual merging of cultures and languages was taking place. In the areas of the Danelaw, what emerged was an Anglo-Scandinavian language by 1100.
Some place names of Yorkshire are still viking/danish. eg, Garth, By, Thorpe, carr, dale, rigg, ridings or ruddings and reins, rakes and gaits, dyke and beck, stell and keld.
Also Wyke and Wick, which may be the same as the Yorkshire dialect word: 'weeks' which means the corners of your mouth, and the corners of your eyes ! Used in the landscape it means a creek, or a bay, and inland, maybe it means small steep valley.
YORKSHIRE FOLK-TALK
According to Rev. M.C.F. Morris , in 1892, in a piece called 'Yorkshire folk Talk', the word Viking, comes from ' Vik' which is the same as this yorkshire word 'weeks'. The vikings came from the creeks and bays of Scandinavia and Denmark. They were the people from the Viks (the creeks), called the 'vikings' in the same way that you may say faroings, for the people of the Faroes.
He records that the folk speech of East Yorkshire' bears resemblances to the folk speech of West Jutland and North Slesvig.
Yorkshire dialect was comprehensible to a Danish person who visited Yorkshire in the 1800's. He did not speak much English but could understand Yorkshire dialect, according to Rev. Morris!
So Danish culture has certainly hung around, Danish is still in Yorkshire words, especially words describing the landscape.
eg. Ings (as in. Hall Ings in the centre of Bradford): 'Ings' meant 'wet boggy meadow'.
Other words from Old Norse are: Husband, Egg and Law.
In the Danish language today spoken in Denmark there are some English-derived words, such as Kristne, to Christianise. (because the Anglo-Saxons were the route through which Christianity came to the Danes.)
Whilst I gathered scripts, I did get cyrillic from a ukrainian genteman, Chinese, Hebrew and Japanese. But did not manage to include them all.
The Norman Conquest
The Normans came from northern France but they had come from Scandinavia a couple of centuries earlier. Their language was a mix of Old French and Old Norse.
After they conquered England in 1066, they surveyed the country and produced the Domesday Book in 1086. It took that long to survey. They wished to see what they owned, how much tax it would raise, and what lands the king could give his knights.
The entry for Bradford is:
''In Bradeford...8 ploughs are possible. Ilbert has it. Waste. Value before 1066, ₤4....''
This meant there was land enough to use 8 ploughs, and to raise raise ₤4 a year. The word waste may suggest it had been depopulated and vandalised as part of the conquest , called 'the harrying of the north'... This implies that people did not readily accept the new rulers. There was a lot of rebellion and retribution until Tudor times. And as mentioned above, Ilbert had it.
William as the king, owned all the land. He leased lands to his barons, and they leased it to knights. So the old Saxon/Danish manors came to be owned by Normans.
This change in ruling culture did not bring about a change in place names, most of which stayed as they were.
The Indo-European Family of Languages
Indo-european is the root language that gave rise to European and Asian languages. By analysing 439 languages and dialects, across a vast area from Britain, to India, it can be seen that there are common words, and a common origin is deduced that is at least 5,000 years old.
From 10,000 - 5,000 years ago people in the middle east and Europe, gradually took on the use of agriculture. There was a different type of stone tool and settlement. The practice of agriculture, and the animals they used spread from the east across Europe. It seemed to come with this new 'Indo-European' language and a new set of beliefs. But there is a theory that the indo-european influence represents a second wave of agriculture. It came in more than one way.
The original Indo-European language was spoken around 5,000 BC by a people who either lived:
- between the Vistula River in Poland and the Caucasus Mountains in the Southwestern USSR
- or in Anatolia in modern day Turkey.
These people and their culture spread out both to the west and to the east. As agriculture came, with this culture, speaking this language perhaps came to be the way to network, and learn. The hunter gathering languages and their cultures died out. Perhaps a modern example of this would be the loss of culture after colonisation, for example in the Native North Americans.
Remnants of these pre-Indo-European hunter gatherer cultures are seen in current languages: Basque (between Spain and France) , Nihali (India), and Burushaski (Pakistan). Most of these languages died out, including Minoan, on Crete.
English is derived from the Germanic part of the indo-european family. Both Saxon and Danish are part of germanic europe. But we also have words from Latin, and french (from latin), which are part of the Italic branch of the Indo-european family. Greek is also part of this family, and we have many Greek words in our language. These come from the use of Greek in science, and literature, after the renaissance.
The Germanic and the Italic languages became the dominant languages of Britain, after the Romans left, and they eventually fused into Old English sometime after the norman conquest (1066).
Celts
But before the Romans, who brought Latin, the languages here were Celtic. The Romans may not have changed how the Britain's spoke very much. The Celtic languages continued whilst the ruling class of Romano-British took on some Latin. But after the Romans left and the Germanic peoples and their cultures came to dominate, Celtic language and culture became marginalised and persisted only in the west, the north and in Ireland, where they still thrive as Gaelic, Cornish, welsh and Manx .
Celtic languages are a branch of the Indo-European family, that is thought to have come into Britain, in the Bronze ages, (perhaps 1000 BC) and at that time the Celtic cultures flourished across Europe..
Who knows what the Bradford area was called by these celtic cultures, but you can be sure it did have a name. There are Iron Age settlements from this time, in the Aire Valley.
New Languages
In the 20th century people have come from further afield with different languages.
The Textile industry offered business opportunities, and employment, from the 18th century onwards.
People came from:
- rural England, Ireland, Scotland,
- Germany, Italy, Poland, Ukraine,
- India, Pakistan, Bangladesh
And many more besides.
As it happens most of the languages of these people are all part of the Indo-European family. They came from that area mentioned above, and then spread west and east.
Panjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujerati - are all derived from Sanskrit, the Indic side-branch of the Indo-Iranian branch - of the Proto Indo European language.
Information from Wikipedia:
Hindi and Urdu both derived from the Khariboli, a dialect of the Delhi area.
Hindi:
Written in the Devanagari script. Devanagari is part of the Brahmic family of scripts of India, Nepal, Tibet, and South-East Asia.[2] It is a descendant of the Gupta script, along with Siddham and Sharada.[2] Eastern variants of Gupta called nāgarī are first attested from the 8th century CE.
The Hindus looked to the Ancient Vedic culture for inspiration.
Urdu
This is similar to colloquial Hindi, but it was associated with Muslim culture, which looked to Persian for its inspiration so developed a different script that looks more like Arabic.
Panjabi
A very widely spoken language in the UK. Possibly the third most spoken after English and Polish.
Punjabi is unusual among modern Indo-European languages because it is a tonal language. That is it uses pitch to convey meaning.
Punjabi is spoken as a first language by the majority population of Pakistan and it is the primary language of the Sikh people in India and third-most spoken language in South Asia. (Wikipedia:)
Many Bollywood songs are in Panjabi.
It is a descendant of the Shauraseni language, which was the chief language of medieval northern India. Punjabi emerged as an independent language in the 12th century
The script is known as Mahji.
Pakistani Punjabis have been using the Shahmukhī script from the times of the Muslim Empires in the region, created from modification of the Persian-Nasta’liq script.
Cheddar Man
Although there have been waves of movement of different peoples and cultures across continents, there has also been a lot of 'staying put'. For example, a history teacher in Cheddar, in Somerset, UK, was found to be descended from someone 9,000 years ago whose skeleton was unearthed in Cheddar Gorge. An analysis of the DNA of the skeleton and the DNA of local people showed that some were direct descendents . All the waves of incoming Indo-Europeans, of Celts, then Romans, Saxons, then Normans did not change this line of descent. This shows that many of the original hunter gatherers who spread here from Africa, have stayed put. The different ruling cultures and influences have come and gone, brought new people, but they have always integrated, interbred and left genes to be found thousands of years later ! The population was quite stable and adapted to the new influences and cultures that came its way.
Our future
The flux of cultures continues, the kaleidoscope of peoples is amazing and fascinating. By networking, humans have proved to be clever at surviving. They share insights, practical and spiritual ways to be. We can strive to be better, to live with peace and justice, and to develop ecologically sustainable and wonderful cultures for our future.
Long live peace in Bradeford !
I recommend this blog about the streams of Bradford:
http://sevenstreams.blogspot.co.uk/2010_10_01_archive.html
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