The City of Bradford Metropolitan District is one of the five Districts of West Yorkshire. Although famous as a textile centre in the nineteenth century, geological resources, and technological developments, favoured the development of iron smelting here at an even earlier date. The Lower Coal Measures underlying the city contained seams of commercially valuable coal, ironstone, fireclay, and sandstone for building. Bradford was also important in social history; the Independent Labour Party was formed here in 1893. Today the city is home to communities whose heritage was originally in Ireland, Italy, the Ukraine and eastern Europe, Pakistan, and many other parts of the world. The district is known for its university, the Media Museum, St George’s Concert Hall, Haworth & the Brontes, and for being at the heart of the finest curry cuisine in England.