Layers

peeling
the layers
of a city
past and present
one street sliced

One Street #6

Now the snow has departed I'm back on my One Street, Bradford's Great Horton Road. This has been my almost blip a few times, and is a slightly lazy one as it's only fifty yards up the road from my office, but there's something about this building that draws me.

I have no idea how long it is since a Salami Manufacturer was operating here. It's probably a sign of one of the many waves of migrants to the city that's happened over the past two hundred years. There are many indicators of the historic German community along the road, but I think Salami is more of a southern European thing? But then I'm a vegan, so my knowledge and interest in meat products is shallow.

Despite appearances, the newsagents to the left is operational, it's just that the shop facade of flyposting and phone advertising looks almost identical. The posters mean that the street face of the main shop is ever changing - currently there is a poster battle between the National Asian Wedding Show and various club nights. View large for extra layers of posters. In future years, I'm sure this image will be of more interest as a record of ephemeral advertising than anything else.

Alternatively, in colour.

An outtake from a couple of weeks ago that illustrates the turnover of fly posters.

When I have the time I'll try to dig into some old street directories to see what I can uncover the background to this site.

Postscript: @eagleowl has helpfully added some reminiscences of a time when the shop was still open in the comments below. I've also put out a call on Twitter to see if anyone else has stories about the place. I'll update if I learn anything more.

Postscript 2: Kelly's Bradford Directory for 1917 has 99, Great Horton Road occupied by Leonard Littlewood, Grocer. 97 (now the newsagent) was Granville Smith, butcher. These may pre-date the salami. Thank you Bradford Libraries for putting various street directories online. These will prove a useful resource in peeling back the layers of the street even more.