LOCAL photographs dating back as far as the 1860s tend to be rare, making this old view of the Marquis of Granby at Riddlesden doubly interesting.

The then unusual activities of the photographer have attracted a few bystanders on the left. The landlord and landlady stand proprietorially at the inn door, flanked by their staff and a dog. Each of the genteel ladies’ horses is being held by a boy.

In a rural Riddlesden dark at night, the canal bridge is distinguished by a lamp.

The local stretch of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal had opened in 1773, celebrated by the ringing of church bells and “bonfires, illuminations, and other demonstrations of joy”. Although its entire length was not completed until 1816, emigration agents offered an idyllic passage by canal to “Skipton, Liverpool, and America”!

In 1819 abortive plans for a branch canal from Utley into a central Keighley basin would have given the town a very different face.