Bradford is a city in West Yorkshire, England. Together with neighbouring towns and villages, Bradford forms the metropolitan district of the City of Bradford. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897. The city status was transferred to the metropolitan district when it was formed in 1974. It has a population of 293,717 with the district as a whole having 485,000 inhabitants. By urban sub-area, it is the 11th largest settlement in England. Unusually for a major city, Bradford is not built on any substantial body of water. The ford from which it takes its name (Broad-Ford) was a crossing of the stream called Bradford Beck. The beck rises in the Pennine hills to the west of the city, and is swelled by tributaries such as Horton Beck, Westbrook, Bowling Beck and Eastbrook. At the site of the original ford, just below the present Bradford Cathedral, it turns north, and flows more or less straight towards the River Aire at Shipley.Bradford Beck's course through the city centre is entirely underground, and was mostly so by the middle of the 19th century. On the 1852 Ordnance Survey map of Bradford[8] it is visible as far as Sun Bridge, at the end of Tyrrell Street, and then again from beside the Railway Station at the bottom of Kirkgate. On the 1906 Ordnance Survey,[9] it disappears at Tumbling Hill Street, off Thornton Road, and first appears again north of Cape Street, off Valley Road, though there are further culverts as far as Queens Road. This is substantially the position today. More on Bradford 

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