Transcribed from the 1906 Smith, Elder, and Co. edition by DavidPrice, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
The Leeds and Skipton railway runs along a deep valley of the Aire;a slow and sluggish stream, compared to the neighbouring river of Wharfe. Keighley station is on this line of railway, about a quarter of a milefrom the town of the same name. The number of inhabitants andthe importance of Keighley have been very greatly increased during thelast twenty years, owing to the rapidly extended market for worstedmanufactures, a branch of industry that mainly employs the factory populationof this part of Yorkshire, which has Bradford for its centre and metropolis.
Keighley is in process of transformation from a populous, old-fashionedvillage, into a still more populous and flourishing town. It isevident to the stranger, that as the gable-ended houses, which obtrudethemselves corner-wise on the widening street, fall vacant, they arepulled down to allow of greater space for traffic, and a more modernstyle of architecture. The quaint and narrow shop-windows of fiftyyears ago, are giving way to large panes and plate-glass. Nearlyevery dwelling seems devoted to some branch of commerce. In passinghastily through the town, one hardly perceives where the necessary lawyerand doctor can live, so little appearance is there of any dwellingsof the professional middle-class, such as abound in our old cathedraltowns. In fact, nothing can be more opposed than the state ofsociety, the modes of thinking, the standards of reference on all pointsof morality, manners, and even politics and religion, in such a newmanufacturing place as Keighley in the north, and any stately, sleepy,picturesque cathedral town in the south. Yet the aspect of Keighleypromises well for future stateliness, if not picturesqueness. Grey stone abounds; and the rows of houses built of it have a kind ofsolid grandeur connected with their uniform and enduring lines. The frame-work of the doors, and the lintels of the windows, even inthe smallest dwellings, are made of blocks of stone. There isno painted wood to require continual beautifying, or else present ashabby aspect; and the stone is kept scrupulously clean by the notableYorkshire housewives. Such glimpses into the interior as a passer-byobtains, reveal a rough abundance of the means of living, and diligentand active habits in the women. But the voices of the people arehard, and their tones discordant, promising little of the musical tastethat distinguishes the district, and which has already furnished a Carrodusto the musical world. The names over the shops (of which the onejust given is a sample) seem strange even to an inhabitant of the neighbouringcounty, and have a peculiar smack and flavour of the place.
The town of Keighley never quite melts into country on the road toHaworth, although the houses become more sparse as the traveller journeysupwards to the grey round hills that seem to bound his journey in awesterly direction. First come some villas; just sufficientlyretired from the road to show that they can scarcely belong to any oneliable to be summoned in a hurry, at the call of suffering or danger,from his comfortable fireside; the lawyer, the doctor, and the clergyman,live at hand, and hardly in the suburbs, with a screen of shrubs forconcealment.
In a town one does not look for vivid colouring; what there may beof this is furnished by the wares in the shops, not by foliage or atmosphericeffects; but in the country some brilliancy and vividness seems to beinstinctively expected, and there is consequently a slight feeling ofdisappointment at the grey neutral tint of every object, near or faroff, on the way from Keighley to Haworth. The distance is aboutfour m