Research & Map

Photograph:

I grew up next to Marriner’s and I actually watched it burn down. It would have been in the ‘70s. I was in my grandma’s house when the fire started ‘cos she lived round the corner. And I watched it burn down stood next to Dr Who off the telly at the time. Which was Jon Pertwee. Because he’d been driving past, and he’d pulled in to see what all… things and he stood and watched it burn.

Andrew Walton

Serviceman, Hayfield Mill

Bradford’s Remaining Textile Landscape

Photograph: Bradford Mill Chimneys 1974 by Matthew Davison | Interviewee: Rebecca Ough

Rebecca Ough | Transcript

I’ve worked at a few different mills in Yorkshire, so I guess I have been part of like the textile landscape, I guess you could call it. Because it’s not… there’s still, there is still some some really high quality mills operating around here. I think maybe people assume that it’s in the past and it’s not really happening anymore. But you still have these really top quality, like world renowned mills. A.W. Hainsworth is a really good example. They weave all the Royal Guard fabric for the guards in London, transport fabrics for airplanes, protective fabrics for the fire brigade.

Local areas are constantly transforming and are influenced by different factors, including urban developments, geographical challenges, and political shifts. These changes shape the landscape and dynamics of our surroundings, impacting the way communities evolve and function. Urbanisation, infrastructure projects, natural disasters, and governmental decisions all play important roles in the transformation of our local environments. Learning about the history of our local areas, and memorable events that took place, helps in understanding why our surroundings look the way they do today.

Exploring our local area offers a fascinating glimpse into history through various elements like infrastructure and street names. By observing the architecture of buildings, bridges, and roads, we can uncover clues about the historical periods they belong to. Street names often reflect the heritage, culture, and significant events of the past, providing insights into the area’s history (for example, the road names in Saltaire referencing members of the Salt family). Analysing these physical aspects allows us to connect with the stories of the past and appreciate how our local environment has evolved over time.

Many Bradford mills were referenced within the Lost Mills interviews, so a visual representation of these points was created to share the geographical distribution of textile mills within the project’s time period of the 1960s-present day. The Lost Mills and Ghost Mansions Map is available below via Google Maps and illustrates not only the placement, but also current conditions of all mill and mansion buildings through colour coding and symbols. This map is not exhaustive to all textile mills and associated buildings, however shares mills with stories and photographs specifically shared by Lost Mills contributors, and shows the scale of Bradford’s textile empire.

Workforce’s Reaction to Drummond’s Mill Clo- sure in the 90s

Photograph: Drummonds Mill by C H Wood | Interviewee: Michael Stoney

Michael Stoney | Transcript

MS: Drummonds weren’t a good firm to work for. They were particularly ruthless with culling people, you know.

LMI: And this was in the ‘90s?

MS: Yeah, yeah. They were just run by accountants really. I mean when Drummonds came to the mill at Lindley… I mean that they had a guy in there for about six months, and they just took the, you know, everything was costed down to the last thread. They were just ruthless the way they treated people, I thought.

LMI: Did that make the workforce unhappy?

MS: Oh, yeah. Well, they knew the writing was on the wall. And there was a sense of unease because they knew people were in… and probably the history of Drummonds, you know, they’d closed down a lot of mills, and they knew it was coming, really.

In Yorkshire, the managers and supervisors treated Asian workers like third-class citizens, were incredibly rude to us and called us by shouting, ‘Oi!’. We were in need of work, so we put up with their abuse. In Lancashire the attitude towards Asian workers was better than in Yorkshire. In Yorkshire they held such hatred towards us and didn’t treat us as humans. The other thing about Yorkshire was that if you were under twenty-five, they made you do a full workload, but gave you half the salary. In Lancashire they didn’t, they gave you a full salary, so I moved to Lancashire.

Ashtiaq Ahmed

Spinner, Thornton Spinning

Thoughts on Dalton Mill Burning Down

Interviewee: Anne Marie Shackleton

Anne Marie Shackleton | Transcript

I was quite sad because it’s such a gothic building. And it’s so much of Keighley’s history. And it was so horrendous. Because there were so many…I reckon it’ll be haunted. I reckon there’ll be…there’ll be quite a few souls in there. Because it was horrendous. If you imagine them working there, the kiddies used to work there, and it were hard.

Illingworth’s – out of the three jobs [I had] that was the best one. It was the cleanest out of the three. Doing the same job yeah. I had the run of the mill. I could go anywhere in it! I could go right in the deepest basements, right to the top attics, you know. I used to love it! I used to go and hide upstairs. And there was an old guy in the yarn store, a really old white guy, really he said ‘Oh, you want a cup of tea, lad?’ He’d make me a cup of tea, and we’d sit there for ages just chin wagging, about nothing. And that was their work. I said, ‘I want your job, mate.’ He was just in charge of stores. He used to sit there drinking tea and coffee and I used to take carts to him, and he used to say, ‘Right, ok.’ And tick it off and put it in. That’s it.

Mohammed Umar

Commuting Home with Hearing Loss from Weaving Shed

Interviewee: Christopher Ackroyd

Christopher Ackroyd | Transcript

Spinning mills weren’t as noisy as weaving. I worked in a weaving shed once for two weeks, in Silsden, after I’d left, but before I went to college. And they gave me a job there for two or three weeks, at Easter, I think. Just to make a bit of pocket money. And I was a battery filler in the weaving shed and I used to walk home from Silsden to Riddlesden. And I’d get to Riddlesden before I could hear properly. An hour afterwards, every day. Now I was only doing that for two or three weeks. And again, it’s mainly women who worked in those places. They were doing it forever. Yeah. And it affected the way they speak to each other, sign language and all of that. The humour…

Photo: Gill Beck by Cath Muldowney

You would stop seeing a particular mill showing up in the book every morning and it’s like, ‘Oh no, they’re finished, they don’t work. They’re closed.’ As you drove around, you’d see more and more sites being demolished. At the time, and this is kind of the mid to late ‘90s, there wasn’t a lot of redevelopment. You could see stuff being pulled down, and the stone being carted away and possibly all the cast iron and so on. But I think they were not looking at it as a site to redevelop, they were just looking at it as salvage materials. Because these were all clad in stone with valley guttering with stonework on it as well. And so I think the fabric of the building itself was more valuable.

Dan Lee

Sampler, Wool Testing Services International

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Contributors

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Lost Mills & Ghost Mansions

Photograph: UNSPUN by Tim Smith How To Use LOREM Lost Mills and Ghost Mansions was made in partnership with Bradford Community Broadcasting and you can find the radio programmes that we made together here. The project was funded by Bradford Council, the National...

Ghost Mansions

I know that Robert Clough - he had a big mansion, and he donated a Christmas tree for the people of Keighley one year. Well, I won't be swayed on this at all. Particularly on a Friday night, when everybody else had gone home,...

Do It Yourself

Photograph: Alan Dix | Sangat Centre at Bradford Industrial Museum I think what people should do is show an interest in local history because one day (and I hope this never happens) there won’t be people like you, and there won’t be people like me, who...

Mediawall

Photo by unknown IPLost Mills & Ghost Mansions Media WallLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation...

Textiles Today

Photographs: Laxtons' state-of-the-art spinning machinery in Baildon by Tim Smith Two years ago [in 2022], I saw this job. And I rang them up and said ‘I’m looking for a job as a textile spinner.’ They interviewed me, and they told me, ‘Oh, this is the machine,...

Changing Ways

Photograph: Mark Stevenson | Dalton Mill and Clock Tower I could see at that time that the mills were starting to close around Keighley all over the town and I thought ‘I need to be moving on somewhere’ and that's when I left in 1975 and joined the fire service....

Time Off

Photograph: Jaz OldhamPhotograph: Harold Heppleston and Colleagues from Kellett Woodman, shared by daughter Patricia CrabtreePhotograph: In Saltaire there were lots and lots of foreign people. There were hundreds from Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, like me. Everyone...

Rights & Wrongs

Photographs: Bill Morris, former General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union (centre) and Muhammad Rasab (right), one of the leaders in the racial discrimination complaints against John Haggas Ltd, onstage at the Trade Union Congress Annual...

Diverse workforce

Photograph: Bradford Museums & GalleriesPhotograph: Bradford Museums & GalleriesPhotograph: Jazz Oldham The supervisors were white, whilst the machinists were Asians: Pakistani, Bengali and Indians. All very friendly. People looked out for each other and...

Working life

Photograph: Tim Smith | Lifting hanks of wool from a dyeing vat at Harrison Gardner and Company in Bradford. Established in 1901, the firm are dyers for the carpet, hand knitting and hosiery industries. If you've seen old mills, pictures of old mills and that, you'll...