Buttershaw

Buttershaw is a residential area of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It mostly consists of 1940s council housing with the building starting in 1947 and continuing until the 1960s, and these parts of Buttershaw gained fame in 1986 when they featured as the setting for most of the scenes in the film "Rita, Sue and Bob Too".

The estate gained something of a cult status thanks to the film, although at first there was much discontent among local people who complained that it further tarnished the estate's already undesirable reputation.

Since the 1980s, many of the older homes around Buttershaw (including some of the blocks of flats that appeared in several of the film's scenes) have been demolished to be replaced by new homes.

The original settlement of Buttershaw was about a mile to the east (which is why the church of Buttershaw St Pauls is actually in Wibsey).

The settlement moved west in the 19th Century with the building of Bottomley's mill on Halifax Road and the construction of workers cottages (such as Bottomley St) adjacent to the existing settlement of Beck Hill).

The construction of the council estate finally moved the centre of the district northward on to what had been farm land.

In 1956 Butershaw Secondary School was opened on Reevy Road. The school was to accommodate the "baby boom" caused by the large number of children born after the end of The Second World War. The initial intake was 300 children and 12 staff. Mr H E Coke was the headmaster. On the schools first day on 3 September 1956 there was only a four storey teaching block as it was still only half built. Over the next seven years a house block, theatre and swimming pool was added with an official opening in 1964. It was then called Buttershaw Comprehensive School and over the years it has evolved as an Upper then High School. Now it is Buttershaw Business and Enterprise College. Work is presently underway to demolish the original teaching block to be replaced with new build facilities. On 23 September 2006 over 100 pupils from the first intake of 1956 met at the Cedar Court Hotel, Bradford to celebrate the schools Golden anniversary.In the 2007 Queens Birthday Honours list David Kershaw the schools first Head Boy (1956) was made a CBE for his services to Education.