stopherjones
Worker's houses, Saltaire
Saltaire is a Victorian model (the ideal type, not the miniature type) village near Bradford , West Yorkshire. It sits on the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and is a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site.
Saltaire was founded in 1851 by Sir Titus Salt, a leading industrialist in the Yorkshire woollen industry. Salt moved his business (five separate mills) from Bradford to this site near Shipley to arrange his workers and to site his large textile mill by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the railway.
Salt opened the mill in 1853 - then the largest industrial building in the world by total floor area. This was followed by neat stone houses for his workers (much better than the slums of Bradford), wash-houses with tap water, bath-houses, a hospital and an institute for recreation and education, with a library, a reading room, a concert hall, billiard room, science laboratory and a gymnasium.
The village had a school for the children of the workers, almshouses, allotments, a park and a boathouse. Because of this combination of houses, employment and social services the original town is often seen as an important development in the history of 19th century urban planning.
Salt's motives in building Saltaire remain obscure. They seem to have been a mixture of sound economics, Christian duty, and a desire to have effective control over his workforce. There were economic reasons for moving out of Bradford, and the village did provide him with an amenable, handpicked workforce. Yet Salt was deeply religious and sincerely believed that, by creating an environment where people could lead healthy, virtuous, godly lives, he was doing God's work. Perhaps, also, diffident and inarticulate as he was, the village may have been a way of demonstrating the extent of his wealth and power. Lastly, he may also have seen it as a means of establishing an industrial dynasty to match the landed estates of his Bradford contemporaries. However, Saltaire provided no real solution to the relationship between employer and worker. Its small size, healthy site, and comparative isolation provided an escape rather than an answer to the problems of urban industrial society
The mill was operational until 1986, when it finally closed due to the pressures of cheap imports from overseas.
The following year, the mill was renovated and re-opened as a gallery and retail complex, concentrating on Yorkshire-artist David Hockney.
(Wikipedia)
Worker's houses, Saltaire
Saltaire is a Victorian model (the ideal type, not the miniature type) village near Bradford , West Yorkshire. It sits on the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and is a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site.
Saltaire was founded in 1851 by Sir Titus Salt, a leading industrialist in the Yorkshire woollen industry. Salt moved his business (five separate mills) from Bradford to this site near Shipley to arrange his workers and to site his large textile mill by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the railway.
Salt opened the mill in 1853 - then the largest industrial building in the world by total floor area. This was followed by neat stone houses for his workers (much better than the slums of Bradford), wash-houses with tap water, bath-houses, a hospital and an institute for recreation and education, with a library, a reading room, a concert hall, billiard room, science laboratory and a gymnasium.
The village had a school for the children of the workers, almshouses, allotments, a park and a boathouse. Because of this combination of houses, employment and social services the original town is often seen as an important development in the history of 19th century urban planning.
Salt's motives in building Saltaire remain obscure. They seem to have been a mixture of sound economics, Christian duty, and a desire to have effective control over his workforce. There were economic reasons for moving out of Bradford, and the village did provide him with an amenable, handpicked workforce. Yet Salt was deeply religious and sincerely believed that, by creating an environment where people could lead healthy, virtuous, godly lives, he was doing God's work. Perhaps, also, diffident and inarticulate as he was, the village may have been a way of demonstrating the extent of his wealth and power. Lastly, he may also have seen it as a means of establishing an industrial dynasty to match the landed estates of his Bradford contemporaries. However, Saltaire provided no real solution to the relationship between employer and worker. Its small size, healthy site, and comparative isolation provided an escape rather than an answer to the problems of urban industrial society
The mill was operational until 1986, when it finally closed due to the pressures of cheap imports from overseas.
The following year, the mill was renovated and re-opened as a gallery and retail complex, concentrating on Yorkshire-artist David Hockney.
(Wikipedia)