This is another of John Illingworth’s collection of almost 200 postcards of Lightcliffe, all dating from the early decades of the twentieth century. The view is Knowle Top Road from the top of Coach Road, and much of it is still familiar. The houses on the right still exist, as does the school wall on the left, with the horse chestnut flourishing then as now. Just visible, also, is Perth House, past the top of the school field. The telegraph poles probably mean the photograph was taken within a few years of the end of the First World War.
On the right above the houses, now the entrance to Knowle Top Drive, is Harry Gough’s joiner’s shop, previously a smithy. H. Gough and Son Ltd. described themselves, in the 1927 Official Guide to Hipperholme, Lightcliffe and District, as ‘Joiners, Builders, Ecclesiastical Woodworkers and Undertakers’. They submitted designs for ‘bedroom furniture, panelled rooms and fitments, wireless cabinets etc.’, and supplied ‘household specialities’, such as the ‘Go-Light tea wagon’. Their telephone number was Hipperholme 47.
Above Gough’s, but not visible, was, and is, Knowl House, residence at the time of Charlie Dickenson, Hipperholme councillor and Hipperholme Grammar School governor, who later moved to Stoneyhurst on Wakefield Road. Knowl House was then taken by Dr. J. Gatherer Brown, who held his surgery in the premises. His son, Dr. Ian G. Brown, eventually took over both house and practice. Perhaps the vehicle belonged to Mr. Dickenson. Cecil Avenue, at the time, consisted of just two buildings.
A Mr. Midgley, who lived at the house at the corner of Knowle Top Road and Wakefield Road, grew vegetables and kept hens on the area which was to become Knowle Top Drive. In 1936 the land was bought by F.P. Leach and Sons of Girlington, Bradford, from the Brighouse Industrial Society for £899.2s.0d. In 1938 No. 6 was sold for £725 to William Irwin, a gents’ outfitter with a shop at 5, Denholmegate Road, Hipperholme. He remained in the shop until his death in 1957, when it was taken over by Dennis Bottomley and his television business, which moved to Leeds Road in 1962.
RMH