Hopefully, some of you will have managed to get into the garden before the onset of winter and finished off that all important cutting back in preparation for the new 2024 gardening season. It is very much fingers crossed hoping that the really bad weather does not kill off any of the garden shrubs.
For the first time we paid to have it all done for us and what great job they have done, and they took all the cuttings away as well. I wondered what they did with it all. Apparentl it wastane to a farm and they do what ever they do with it all. A job well done.
I have already visited a garden centre to buy some bark for ground cover to stop the weeds appearing when the warmer weather arrives. Talking of garden centres, one name that springs to mind of course is Kershaw’s Garden Centre in Halifax Road. But wait a minute wasn’t there another Mr Kershaw who had a thriving seed and nursery business on Bradford Road between Brighouse and Bailiff Bridge?
Lister Kershaw's nursery on Bradford Road between Bailiff Bridge and Brighouse c1895
Looking at this pen and ink drawing illustration which appeared in an 1895 copy of the Brighouse and District Illustrated, a business directory. It is difficult to imagine such a huge nursery business could have existed on Bradford Road. It will probably surprise many readers to learn just where it was.
Lister Kershaw was the owner and he was a highly successful seedsman and nurseryman. However, he didn't start with such a large and impressive site, like all businesses he also started in a small way and gradually built it up over a number of years.
It was in1847 when he originally started the business in the Waring Green area. This fledging business developed very quickly and resulted in him soon having to look further afield for a new and much larger location to maintain his growing business. In 1860 he found and purchased the Bradford Road site and not long after he had to buy a further two plots at Lightcliffe and Clifton which amounted to a combined acreage of some 14 acres.
He took the decision not long after starting his business to open a seed and flower shop business at 40, Commercial Buildings in the town centre. He occupied these premises for almost 25 years, and it was only a short time before his death that he moved and opened a shop at 80, Briggate.
Following his death in 1891 the business was taken over by his son John Richard Kershaw.
At any one time the business was reputed to have 200,000 plants in stock. With almost every fruit tree imaginable being cultivated on his nursery sites.
Another aspect of this considerable business was landscape gardening. Some of his work included the laying out of Bowling Park, Bradford the Municipal Park at West Hartlepool and Devonshire Park at Keighley. The company was awarded numerous financial prizes for its work in the area of public parks.
This photograph shows just some of the greenhouses that Lister Kershaw's business had on the Bradford Road site.
Walking along Bradford Road today you would certainly not find the site now. I remember it being used as the offices and depot of John Jagger's the builders and in more recent years after they closed the site and sold it off it was re-developed with a number of dwellings being built under the hillside which was once the home of some of Lister Kershaw’s 200,000 plants and shrubs.
The nursery site has gone and the demolition men have started to prepare the site for the builders to move in.
This photograph was taken in September 1989.
This photograph was taken in September 1989.
Courtesy of Betty Longbottom on Geograph - 2009.
Here are just some of the finished properties in 2009. The street was named after Oakroyd Drive which is a cul-de-sac of houses behind this new street.
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