Akroydon
The Akroydon model housing scheme is a Victorian-era model village at Boothtown, Halifax, West Yorkshire, England. It was designed in the Gothic style by George Gilbert Scott in 1859 for the workers at the mills of Colonel Edward Akroyd, who had bought, in 1855, the of land on which the houses were to be built.

As Scott's original plan to have dormer windows in the cottages was unacceptable to members of the Akroyd Town Building Association, Akroyd employed a local architect – W. H. Crossland – under the supervision of Scott, to come up with an acceptable design. The plan was for a quadrangular arrangement of 350 houses, but only 90 were actually built.
In the middle of the quadrangle, known as The Square, Akroyd had a monument called the Victoria Cross built in 1875 and dedicated to Queen Victoria. Its inscription includes a long quotation from William Wordsworth's poem "The Excursion". The monument, similar in style to an Eleanor Cross, has been described as "a monument to the British constitution".

According to Walter L Creese, this "suburb on the moors" was Akroyd's attempt "to justify contemporary upheaval, to rationalize for himself and others the improvement and purpose of the factory system as it was replacing the cottage industries".

It was to be a model village not only in the architectural sense but also in a social sense, as the houses were built in various sizes for people from all economic classes, who were offered low cost mortgages to buy them. The village was to be managed by a committee of residents. There was a working men’s college for self-improvement.
Q182688
Victorian-era
TIME
Q6888356
model village
Concept
Q4943959
Boothtown
LOC
Q826561
Halifax
LOC
Q23083
West Yorkshire
LOC
Q186363
Gothic
Concept
Q681007
George Gilbert Scott
PER
Q5341520
Edward Akroyd
Concept
Q8011952
W. H. Crossland
PER
None
Victoria Cross
UNK
Q9439
Queen Victoria
PER
Q45546
William Wordsworth
PER
Q2917190
Eleanor Cross
Concept
Q4701721
Akroydon
LOC
1859-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1859
DATE
1855-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1855
DATE
1875-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1875
DATE
+90^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
90
NUMBER
movement