When a city grows as fast as Bradford did in the middle of the last century, it becomes a magnet for the ambitious.

Some of them changed it for the better and some of them changed it in a way which is still visible a century or more later.

Michael John Barry was such a man.

He was born in County Monaghan in Ireland in 1846 and, when still little more than a lad, arrived in Bradford to be apprenticed to John Wesley Smith, a tinsmith in Westgate.

When Smith retired in 1869, the 23-year-old Michael John took over the running of the firm and turned it into a company with first a national and later a world-wide reputation for its brazed copper bath boilers, copper circulating cylinders, cisterns, tanks, ventilators and copper lamps.

The developments which made the firm's reputation, though, were a ventilator using the Archimedean screw principle and - for housewives and domestic servants, much more important - its Portable Gas Washing Copper.

These days washing clothes is something which fits fairly painlessly into the domestic routine.

It was not always like that. Up to about 40 years ago, washing day was, for most people, just that - a whole day. It was drudgery - thumping the clothes around the tub with a 'posser' and rinsing in the sink and cranking the whole lot through the mangle to get out the water. Then there was the weather - a rainy washday would blight the best-laid plans.

The Portable Gas Washing Copper didn't do away with the backache, but it took away a lot of the inconveniences. It was gas-fired 'whereby smoky chimneys, dirt, firing up, iron mould, and other inconveniences are entirely avoided and a washing for six or eight persons can be done at a cost of about two and a half pence a fraction over 1p'

Barry had started his ventilator business from a factory in Sackville Street, between Sunbridge Road and Westgate, and at the time there was a lot of land around there which had been the site of a quarry. The now comfortably-off Barry began to build in the area. When some of these new buildings formed a thoroughfare, they were called Barry Street. An inscription to that effect, complete with a shamrock motif, was set above the official nameplate.

At the top is 35 Westgate, also called Barrys Buildings, which is next to the Army Recruiting Office. Over the way is one of Barry's most picturesque creations, the Castle Hotel, with its mock battlements, built in 1898 and with the trademark inscription over the door 'MJB 1898' , and the shamrocks.

Barry called his buildings after locations in Ireland. Castle Blaney Buildings is just down Barry Street, and others were named after Wexford and Killarney.

One exception was the building opposite Castle Blaney, which was called Owens Buildings in honour of Mary Anne Owens, Barry's wife.

Michael John Barry rose to become a highly-respected figure in Bradford, becoming a magistrate in 1894, the year after he fought Bradford North for the Liberals, losing to the Tory G A Booth.

The death of his wife in 1906 affected him badly and he died two years later at the age of 62. When his death was announced the minute bell of the City Hall clocked tolled. His Requiem Mass at St Patrick's in Westgate was followed by a funeral procession to Bowling Cemetery, led by the Bradford City Police Band.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.