All About Thornton

A check is made for new Planning applications every working day.  A check is made for new events every day. Other updates are shown below.

2024

May 5 The Thornton resources page has been renamed to Resources about Thornton, and is now a subheading of Information and Public Bodies. The Index of Website Content has been renamed to People, Places and Subject Indexes. All indexes have now been compiled and published.

April 16 An index of People is in preparation

April 15 My current plan for the website.

• Given that it includes a great deal of original research, especially of those remembered because of their war service, plus new history of streets, people, and textiles, I must make sure that the Thornton Antiquarian Society volunteers can easily access the website in the future, and have the money for the annual cost of the website being hosted and using thorntonbd13.uk as its address. I am 78 years old and I will not live for ever.

• I will give details on this website of what I’ve researched of the lives of David Wright and his son Jonathan, who opened the first textile mill in Thornton.
• I will give details on this website of the life of Jonas Craven, who with Henry Harrop were textile entrepreneurs.
• I will give details on this website of the rise and fall of Francis Craven, who succeeded his father at Dole Mill
• I will give details on this website of the successors to Simeon Townend at Thornton Mills, George and Wright Townend for 5 years, Theophilus Peel for 35 years, and both the Downs family and Mr. F. W. Coulter for up to 101 years.
• I will tidy up the entries in the gazetteer in respect of textile mills, before researching the other mill owners.
• I will create a subject index to the site.
• I will regularly review all pages, and add to the plan when necessary.
• That’s the plan.

March 15 A new page on the proposed route of the West Bradford Cycle Superhighway, phase 2 from Four Lane Ends to Brontë Place, consisting of 11 plans, can now be seen on the main Home Page, as a sub-heading to the Information and Public Bodies heading.

March 10 details of the lives of Arthur and Alfred Ashcroft, who are remembered on the Kipping Chapel Roll of Honour have been updated.

January 10 A chronology of the life of Simeon Townend, mill owner of Old Mill and Thornton Mills has been written, researched only from online sources.

An index of all people metioned anywhere on the website, except those remembered on the war memorial, war grave etc., pages is being compiled.

2023

21 November Update to Lower Mill, and a seasonal aid regarding theft whil shopping.

20 October To help those who access the website via a mobile phone, tablet or laptop without an attached mouse the very long Gazetteer page has been split into 5 pages: An introduction plus sources, and the 4 pages covering all places, etc, divided into 4 alphabetical blocks, A to D, E to K, L to R and S to Z

18 September Following the discovery that one of the links for walks at Ogden Water no longer worked, I’ve added links to other organisations which have produced walks around / from Ogden Water. Please email aaboutthornton@gmail.com if you discover a link to further details which does not work.

16 September The Other Places heading has been changes to Places with their own page. These places are included in the Gazetteer with links to the individual pages.

16 September The Brontë Birthplace page has been expanded and is now viewable under the Other Places heading as well as the Gazetteer heading.

14 August Photographs of men who are remembered on war memorials have been grouped together.

16 July A link on the Walks page found not to work, leading to the Official Brontë walks website. I have given a new link today, which does work, to the location of the stones.

23 June. I started this website in November 2014, using WordPress dot com’s Free Plan, which had adverts in it.. 2 months ago I started paying a yearly fee for a Premium Plan, which comes without adverts, and allows more customisation. Today I have deleted most of this page. i cannot see the value in keeping the older updates.

10 May. Sometime this month the WordPress theme of this website will change. You should be able to use the website immediately after I change the theme. The home page will change. I am currently working on the content of the new home page so that when the changeover takes place, I can reasonably quickly install a new home page.

13 April The website has been a free WordPress website since 2014. It is now a paid-for website. Two immediate changes – there are no advertisements, and our www address is shorter http://www.thorntobd13.uk The will be another change in a few weeks, which you may not notice but helps me, the compiler.