Some forty years ago during construction of the Bradford Corporation Reservoir at Angram on the lonely moors of Yorkshire, a temporary church was erected on the site to supply the spiritual needs of the great number of people engaged to the work.
This humble building, a structure of wood and corrugated-iron, stood there for fourteen years until, in 1922, it was removed to Scar House nearby, where a second great reservoir was under construction. For a further ten years the little church offered opportunities of worship and communion with God to whole 'colony' of workers far distant from any established place of worship.
On the completion of Scar House Reservoir, those who had worshiped in the 'tin' church assumed that it would be dismantled, along with the other temporary buildings, and wondered, perhaps, what would become of it. There was, at that time, the need for a mission-church on the fringe of the huge parish of Heaton, Bradford where a large housing estate was being built. So in 1932, the little church was again removed, this time to Haworth Road, Bradford, where the clergy of the Parish Church of Heaton knew it as " Heaton Mission Church" dedicated to St Martin, and served by the clergy of the Parish Church of Heaton.( St Barnabas).
The years that followed brought many and extensive changes.The completion of the housing estate brought the population of the district served by St Martin's to more than 7,000. The district was no longer a mere outpost of the Parish of Heaton but a Parish in its self. I was Therefore decided that the Church and District of St Martin should be given independent status and that as soon as possible a permanent consecrated church should be built and a new Parish formed The people of St Martin's applied themselves to the task of raising the necessary funds,although much hard work was done,progress in a working class district with few facilities for 'effort' was necessarily slow. The Second World War and the difficulties of the post war years caused the vision of the new St Martin's to fade; the possibility of building their church and establishing their parish seemed dismally remote.

From a brochure published in about 1949