It was originally an area of farmland, but the soil was so poor that arable crop farming was nearly impossible, making manufacturing and trade the keystone of the economy.

The area known as Horton has been populated in the distant past by the Angles, Norse, Danish and Norman French, as well as possibly before this by people of Celtic origin.

Robert de Stapleton took the name Horton, when King Henry II granted him the land as a reward for services to the Crown.

Some of these, for example the Serbs, came as refugees and asylum seekers, others came solely to achieve economic advancement by working in the mills and related industries.

The house and barn, with the date stone 1755, were used for the manufacture and sale of cotton by a Mr Kay in the late 18th and very early 19th centuries.

All Saints’ Church was built in 1864, by the local landowner and MP Sir Francis Sharp-Powell, who once lived in Horton Hall.

Prior to the 19th century, Little Horton was still a very rural area, and a place where wealthy merchants and entrepreneurs chose to live to escape the increasing industrialisation of the city centre.

Young children in particular had a terrible time, few survived infancy and those in the poorer families who did, were sent to work long shifts in the mills as soon as they were able to do so, which was usually around four years of age.

The mill owner John Wood was exceptional among employers in the district, in that he provided health care, basic schooling and limited the hours a child could work in his factories.

Richard Oastler stayed at Horton Hall with John Wood in September 1830 and Wood made Oastler (who was also instrumental in the fight to abolish slavery) swear on a Bible, that he would campaign for better conditions for children and other employees in the mills and factories of industrial Britain.

Mary Skelton of Little Horton left her share in a plantation, Yorkshire Hall, in Demerara, along with all its negroes and slaves, to her three sons.

The Teacher Training College, situated in Little Horton on Trinity Road, was named in memory of this pioneer of education and is known as the Margaret McMillan Building.

Distinct, close-knit communities of Poles, Ukrainians, Hungarians and Lithuanians settled in Little Horton during and after the Second World War.

A group of Pakistani men who had been merchant seamen were amongst the first in 1944, and they initially lodged with Eastern European migrants in Howard Street.

The initial migrants tended to settle in areas in close proximity to one another, living with people who shared a common culture, heritage, language and often religion.

Food shops and restaurants in Little Horton reflect the diverse nature of the people presently resident in the area.