THE Broomhill branch of the Keighley Industrial Co-operative Society Ltd is seen here soon after its official opening on Co-operators’ Day, July 7, 1928. Broomhill Avenue has not yet been made up.
Begun in 1920, Broomhill was Keighley’s first council housing estate, the Co-operative Society moving in before its completion. Comprising grocery, butchery, fruit and confectionary departments, this was the society’s largest store apart from its Brunswick Street headquarters. Co-op membership in 1928 stood at 11,845, more than one in four of Keighley’s then population.
Occupying, in the words of the ‘Keighley Co-operative Bee’, a “splendid position overlooking the town and embracing a splendid panorama of the Yorkshire moorland”, the Broomhill store was built to a classical design of the CWS Architectural Department. Its fittings were very up-to-date for the times, substituting tiles for wood wherever possible.
“The building,” declared president Frank Midgley at its opening, “was built on good, strong lines, pleasing to the eye, and built on rock, and like the co-operative principle, would stand all the winds that blew.”
The photograph has been supplied by Mr Kevin Seaton, of Shann Lane, Keighley.
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