Discover some of the history of Saltaire by listening to our sample of audio stories.
Find out what Sir Titus Salt did before he built Saltaire, why he chose to build a new mill and model village, and how Sir James Roberts built on those foundations.
On a more personal note, hear about the life and campaigns of Titus’s granddaughter Isabel, and also about the childhood of a more modest Saltaire resident at the turn of the twentieth century.
Many people know that Titus Salt built Saltaire – and that 150 years afterwards, it became a World Heritage Site. But few know that Titus was 50 years old when his mill was completed.
What happened in the previous half century to prepare Salt for such an outstanding achievement?
Titus was born in 1903 in Morley near Leeds, and he grew up there and in Wakefield to which his family moved to take over a farm. This did not deliver the income Daniel, his father, wanted. Daniel’s eye was drawn to job opportunities in the boom city of Bradford where textile factories were springing into existence at a phenomenal rate.
The family moved just as teenage Titus had left school and taken on his first job, in Wakefield, as an apprentice wool merchant. Though Daniel was not to regret the move, he surely could not have predicted that it would be his 17 year old boy who would make the headlines and leave a world-renowned legacy.
Titus’s first years in Bradford were spent profitably. He was apprenticed to the well-regarded Rouse family who owned a textile mill and were soon to own two others. They gave Titus an excellent grounding in mechanised textile manufacture.
This was followed by a period working with his father, buying and selling wool. Amongst the young man’s tasks was travelling to buy from sheep farmers – and on one of these trips he discovered Caroline, a Lincolnshire farmer’s daughter, whom he would marry in 1829. They would move into a house in Bradford’s North Parade, close to his family home.
Not long after, Daniel Salt and Son experienced a swift expansion. It appears to have been the result of successful innovation. The company was a large dealer in Donskoi wool which was exclusively used in woollen manufacture. The Salts were confident it could be used in worsteds, but their clients were not convinced. Daniel and Titus decided to take on the challenge themselves by becoming spinners and manufacturers. They did so at Thompson’s Mill in Bradford’s Goitside, and it was a commercial success.
Daniel retired in 1843 and Titus started up on his own account at Hollings Mill, also in Goitside.
It was a second innovation which sealed Titus Salt’s position as one of the leading employers in Bradford’s textile trade. Whilst visiting an importer of fibres in Liverpool, he came across bales of alpaca wool and, from mid-1836, he embarked on a lengthy programme of research into its possible use. He was successful. The product proved to be exceptionally popular, and he extended his empire into two other mills, notably a large one in Union Street which became his HQ.
The alpaca breakthrough led to great wealth, sufficient to fund the biggest and best textile factory of all, just 4 miles away in what became Saltaire.
Our story so far has concentrated on Salt, the business man. But Salt before Saltaire was not one-dimensional.
He was a family man. Caroline and Titus had six sons and five daughters. Two died in infancy and a third, at the age of 20. No doubt because of this sizeable family, but also because of Titus’s growing wealth, they moved to larger premises at Little Horton Lane in Bradford (close to his Union Street HQ) in 1836, and 7 years later, to a palatial residence, Crow Nest in Lightcliffe.
Salt was a committed Christian and worshipped first at Horton Lane Congregational Chapel and later at the newly built Salem Chapel at the junction of Manor Row and Salem Street. These were both very close to the centre of Bradford – but also central to political power.
Like many of the wealthy, non-conformist employers in the city, Salt was a Liberal and very active. The focal point for this group was Horton Lane Chapel. The group dominated Bradford in the middle of the nineteenth century. Congregationalist Robert Milligan was the first Mayor in 1847 and the MP from 1851–57. Titus Salt was the second Mayor in 1848 and MP from 1859-1861.
As Mayor, Salt was active in tackling the city’s pollution and social problems and this exposure, together with his Christianity and his politics, were surely factors in the creation of Saltaire.
The village he built was set in the countryside. It benefitted from fresh air; the housing was much better than was typical for working people; and it had an effective drainage system. Famously, it had no pubs. Less famously, it delivered educational facilities, a hospital, a wonderful park – and longer lives for its inhabitants.
Welcome to this short talk on how Saltaire came to be created.
The Saltaire story does not start in Saltaire. It starts in Bradford – and our start date is 1800.
The Bradford economy in 1800 was a mixture of farming and manufacturing. The same as it had been for centuries.
Making cloth was the principal source of family income. Almost half the population earned their living from it – but production was almost entirely home-based.
Factories characterised the new world that was to be built.
And they used steam – not water – to power machinery.
In 1800, there was only one such ‘mill’ in Bradford. That was Holme Mill at the bottom of Thornton Road, only a 10 minute walk from where Bradford City Hall now stands.
This factory revolution took off… but slowly. By 1820, Bradford had 13 mills. Then things speeded up. By 1841, there were 67.
That almost doubled by 1851 when the figure jumped to 129. By 1874 there were 1,045 mills!
Over 1,000 mills needed a huge increase in factory workers, and in 1800, Bradford was tiny!
There were fewer than 14,000 people. So, Bradford had to grow, FAST, and it did. By 1850, it was 8 times bigger than in 1800. People migrated from Norfolk, Suffolk and Ireland to get paid work
But it doesn’t take a genius to realise that a place that grows this quickly will have problems. For a start, where were all these new workers going to live? Little wonder that, by the 1840s, the town was a really unpleasant and unhealthy place.
The air was grossly polluted.
Open water courses were polluted.
The average life expectancy was 18 years – many children died.
Housing conditions were appalling. One government report describes the accommodation of a woolcomber’s family:
They work in their one-room home – which is a cellar’. They had , a charcoal fire which is constantly burning by day – and frequently left smouldering at night. Eight people live and work in a space only 5m by 2m and only 2m high. In rainy weather, it is frequently flooded. Five people sleep in one bed – a man, his wife and his mother sleep in another.
Society in the town was on the brink of breakdown: at one point, Bradford was under military occupation!
In 1848, Salt was the mayor and used his position to tackle many of the town’s ills – but this was not a context in which his company could develop and prosper.
Nor was it ‘moral’, and Salt was a Congregationalist Christian who was hugely concerned about ‘morality’.
He believed that bad social conditions led to ‘immorality’. So, he decided to leave and stop running his business in Bradford.
Salt chose a rural area in the Aire valley, only 4 miles from Bradford. It would become Saltaire.
In Bradford, his business had been operating from at least 6 locations. By concentrating his works in one locality, in a single factory undertaking all aspects of textile production, he could take advantage of the large number of mechanical advances in textile production which had been brought about in recent decades.
So, between 1851 and 1853, Salt built the biggest and most advanced factory in the world! It would employ 3,000 to 4,000 people and produce 27kms of cloth every day.
But this was not enough. The move into the country required a small town! At the dinner to celebrate the opening of the mill, a meal which fed his Bradford workforce, he said that
He hoped to draw around him a population that would enjoy the beauties of the neighbourhood, and who would be a well fed, contented, and happy body of operatives. He had given instructions to his architects that nothing should be spared to render the dwellings of the operatives a pattern to the country.
Because Titus Salt believed that bad social conditions led to ‘immorality’, it follows that he would believe that good social conditions promote good behaviour.
So, over the next 20 years, he built around 850 houses, AND shops, AND a school, AND two churches, AND a recreational and cultural hall, AND a hospital, AND alms-houses, AND allotments, AND a washhouse and baths, AND a park.
In Saltaire, we can see the work of a religious man who was also a capitalist. Like other Bradford masters, he employed children as young as 8 and took strong action during strikes by his workers. But unlike others, he believed that ‘doing the right thing’ was his religious duty and good business. He also wanted to leave work for his 5 sons.
Little wonder that Salt was widely regarded as the best master around. This was made clear when, after his death in 1876, his body was carried from his home in Brighouse to the family mausoleum in Saltaire.
It is said that 100,000 local people lined the route.
Sixteen years after the death of Sir Titus Salt in 1876, his business – Sir Titus Salt (Bart) Sons and Company – was forced to acknowledge that it had serious financial problems. There was no hope: the board of directors and the shareholders decided that the company had to be wound up.
The consequences of this decision did not just impact the company, its owners and its workers. It impacted Saltaire and the ambitious project so eloquently summarised by Salt at the opening of the mill in 1853:
he hoped to draw around him a population that would enjoy the beauties of the neighbourhood, and who would be a well fed, contented, and happy body of operatives.
The future of this project was in the balance as the company was sold to a consortium of four local businessmen: John Maddocks, John Rhodes, Isaac Smith and James Roberts. There is no doubt that their combined business experience was impressive, but they were now the owners not only of a mill but also a small town, with facilities such as a park and a hospital.
By 1898, the four had reduced to two, Rhodes and Roberts, but Roberts’ son Bertram was playing a senior role by then. In effect, James Roberts was now in charge – and from this point on, the company’s bank balances showed a significant improvement.
In 1900, a lengthy article in the Shipley Times showed the radical transformation of the mill being effected by James Roberts, and it does so even though it does not list every important development, for example, the introduction of electric power to New Mill. Moreover,
it is no little thing that the community of Saltaire should be contented and prosperous, and that the name and fame of its production should be upheld… And it is worth noting that the present control of Saltaire is directed to maintaining and, where possible, enhancing, the reputation of the products of the Saltaire spindles and looms.
Perhaps it was something to do with this: “[Roberts] carries on the business under the style of the old firm” observes the author.
Among the developments ushered in by the new regime were major changes to the power-generating apparatus. But, whilst a considerable amount of money was expended, significant economies were effected. In one case
the consumption of coal has been reduced to less than one-half of what it used to be, while at the same time the wage bill for firing and coal handling has been materially lowered.
Changes in the location of similar processes also resulted in significant savings:
All the combing is now done in the combing shed… This of course, means a good deal of compression, but it has been affected without any loss of efficiency, and with great gain in economy.
But the most effective cost-saving measures were in transport:
Now all raw materials whatever, whether it to be mohair from Turkey or the Cape, alpaca from South America, or silk from China of Japan, whether it be discharged at Southampton, in the Mersey, or in the Thames, it all comes, some two thousand tons a year, from Goole or Liverpool by canal… The railway sidings are now only used for coal and building materials.
These changes involved considerable change for the labour force – but
somewhere about 3,000 workpeople now find steady employment in the mills, and that is a larger number than were ever on the payroll before.
And that was just at the start of Roberts’ management. By 1918 when he left, the workforce was 4,000 and the factory’s floor area had increased by 50%.
Outside his role as boss of the mill, Robert’s style echoed that of Titus Salt. He was active in political and public affairs, and he engaged with his workers’ life outside the mill.
In 1903, he commissioned a statue of Titus to stand in Saltaire’s park. When he was made a baronet in 1909, he gave his workers a week off, with full pay. Five years later, he paid for a new pavilion for the cricket club.
Later still, he would give the whole of Saltaire Park to the people of Bradford, naming it Roberts Park after his son, Bertram, who died young after being an effective manager and director at Salts Mill.
He echoed the Salts in another sphere. He moved into the Knoll in Baildon, the house built for Salt’s CEO Charles Stead, and later, into Milner Field, Titus Junior’s mansion.
The second decade of the twentieth century was torrid for James Roberts, as a father and as a businessman. He lost Bertram and then saw another son called up to fight in WW1, receive life-changing injuries.
The war had a huge and adverse impact on the business and his personal fortune: the German and Russian markets collapsed and in 1917, the Russian Revolution stripped Roberts of his investments in that country.
Yet when Roberts decided to sell his company, in 1918, he was able to pass on to the new owners a highly successful enterprise. No mean feat, and he did it without losing the legacy that was Saltaire.
Much of Victorian and Edwardian History is about the lives and achievements of men, whether in politics, commerce or innovations (apart from Queen Victoria).
This is true for much of the early history of Saltaire, with the exceptions of Catherine (Crossley) Salt, her daughter Isabel Mary Salt and one or two exceptional early oral histories written by women and held in the Saltaire Collection.
This story focuses on Isabel Salt for two reasons.
Firstly, she was of the third generation of Sir Titus Salts’ immediate family and therefore crossed a number of eras of political and social change in history.
Secondly, she was born into privilege and social prestige but was to become a worker for welfare reform, the rights of women and the cause of peace between nations.
Isabel was born in 1876 – the year her grandfather Sir Titus Salt died. Her father was his youngest son, Titus Salt Junior and her mother was a daughter of the wealthy Crossley family of Halifax – of Dean Clough Mill fame.
Titus Salt Junior died in 1887 at the age of 44 years – worn out by trying , and failing, to keep the family business at Saltaire Mills and the estate of Saltaire financially viable.
Isabel was 11 years old when her father died but due to her mother’s annuity from the Salt family business, for a time, and quite probably financial support from the Crossley family did not experience poverty herself.
Until she was aged 26 , she continued to live with her mother and siblings at Milner Field in a mansion commissioned by her father that became a house thought to be cursed to the early deaths of successive occupants.
Here, Isabel enjoyed a good social life and began to travel abroad, though after her father’s death there is much evidence of a thrifty approach to her travels in Germany.
She would have been expected to make a good marriage with someone of a similar social background but showed no inclination to do so. Like most of her family her politics were Liberal for a large part of her youth and early adulthood.
Her first ventures into ‘welfare work’ were within the Loyal Elizabeth Lodge, a ‘friendly society’ established to help women in times of hardship. At an anniversary occasion of the lodge, she made a speech stating
Women are daily becoming more independent in thought, action and social position.
This insight into her own growing independence was followed a little later by her account of spending a year with the Women’s University Settlement at Southwark and her reflections on the aims of the settlement that she noted as being
to promote the welfare of the poorer districts of London, more especially of the women and children, by devising and advancing schemes which tend to elevate them, and by giving them additional opportunities in education and recreation.
This account was given to the Women’s Liberal Association in Otley.
Isabel had moved with her mother to Denton Hall, Ilkley at this point and became very active in the Liberal party for a number of years. She also became a member of the Wharfedale Board of Guardians, often voting for more lenient policies in approaches to supporting poor communities.
She supported the Liberal government’s Licensing bill, which placed taxes on alcohol, and the budget of 1909, proposing, among other measures, an old age pension for those over seventy.
In addition to her commitment to improving welfare services, Isabel became heavily involved in the cause of women’s suffrage. Her involvement was as a Suffragist, not a Suffragette as she disliked the more violent aspects of the Suffragette movement, believing that the Liberal Government of Asquith would ensure women were given the vote- though this was not achieved.
Suffrage activities were largely suspended during World War One but throughout the war Isabel spoke publicly and frequently about the important role played by women during the conflict and the dreadful inequality of their pay compared to men. Stating on many occasions “private interests must be sunk for the public good”.
And arguing that
There must be a change in attitude to employment of women as drivers, interpreters, doctors, who did not get equal pay
and noting
Chauffeurs belonging to the Red Cross Society are receiving better salaries than highly skilled and highly trained nurses”. There must be “Equal pay with men for equal work
World War One also consolidated Isabel’s own pacifist views. In one of her recorded speeches in 1915 she describes war as “a cause of hatred, envy, fear, selfishness and greed.”
Isabel had become a member of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, by 1918 and declared herself “Pacifist and proud of it”. She also declared that “She had always been a Liberal, but she was now on the Labour side because she had found no outlet for her principles in the Liberal party”. She continued campaigning for improved welfare, women’s suffrage, equal pay and peace before retiring from active life in the mid-1920s.
The history of Saltaire is often told as the story of its founder, Sir Titus Salt, and other, later men who owned the Mill business and the village.
It is rare to hear history through the voices of women and girls who lived in the village and worked in the mill.
Ethel’s is the story of a young girl who came to live in Saltaire, in 1894, when she was 6 years of age. This short extract gives a good insight into life between the 1890s and the early 1900s.
At this time, the Salt family no longer owned Salts Mill or Saltaire, but a sense of life being good shines through Ethel’s story
In 1894, at the time of their move to a house in Saltaire, Ethel’s family consisted of her father, George, mother Mary, four girls and a boy.
George was the weft foreman at the Mill, and although not a robust man, he took an active part in village affairs and was secretary of the local Conservative Party and also the corresponding secretary of the Saltaire Cricket Club.
Her mother, Mary was lively with a great sense of humour. She took a very active part in Saltaire Methodists’ Mothers’ Meeting. The eldest daughter, aged ten, was already working half time at the Mill in the Spinning Department. Her brother, Joseph aged 8, a sturdy, well-built boy, was very fond of sport.
Ethel was six years old and should have been placed in the Infant’s School at Albert Road (now Saltaire Primary School) but was able to pass the test for the seven-year olds in Standard 1 in the Senior School, and from that date forward remained in a class where all the pupils were older than her.
Ethel recalls that most families enjoyed roughly the same standard of living and were able to afford the necessities of life. She remembers the wholesome meals her family had, home baked bread of course, and always the delicious flat cake, eaten warm with lashings of good butter. Her mother baked two and later three stones of bread every Thursday, the loaves being stored in an earthenware bread pot until required. The loaves were baked in a coal oven, hot work in the summer, but the smell of freshly baked bread was a delight.
The family had a cooked dinner every day. On Sundays , they had a “joint”, always a good-sized piece of meat. Ethel’s favourite being beef because of the tasty dripping it produced. On Mondays (washing day), the family had cold meat and vegetables and usually, fruit pie for the sweet.
Ethel and other children often saw 3000 workers all leaving the Mill at the same time and all in a hurry, filling the entire width of Victoria Road. In order to ensure that workers got up in the morning in time for work, some families employed a ‘knocker up’. This was a man who for a few pence per week, would knock on the bedroom window with a long pole at a time usually between 5am and 5.30am. The ‘knocker up’ would not cease tapping at the window till some member of the family appeared.
Ethel’s school, Albert Road Elementary, was lit by gas, a chandelier being in each classroom with five or six naked lights. Gas mantles were invented later. It was the only school in the country entirely run by women, the only man on the premises being the caretaker, Mr. Cordingley, who lived in Albert Road.
The girls wore cloth dresses and always a nice clean pinafore and from eight or nine years of age wore buttoned boots instead of clogs. Woe betide anyone who lost the buttonhook as some boots had eight or ten buttons and came well up the leg, they all wore black woollen stockings mostly knitted by their mothers. The girls also wore two or three petticoats, one made of flannel.
The main subjects at school were reading, writing, arithmetic, history and geography, and the boys had one drawing lesson a week when the girls learnt sewing. The only garments they ever made were women’s white and red flannel petticoats, they had to feather-stitch all the seams, as they were all handmade and their mothers bought them at the year end.
Ethel and her friends played outdoor games such as hopscotch, skipping, marbles and a game called ‘buttoney ball’ for which they raided their mother’s sewing boxes for buttons, which were placed in a chalked circle on the pavement near a wall. Then they took turns at bouncing the ball in to the circle and against the wall, catching it on return. If anyone knocked a button out of the circle, the button was theirs to keep.
Ethel remembers long summer days with fine weather, which seemed to last for weeks. She never remembered wearing a coat in summer and raincoats did not form a part of the wardrobe – not in Ethel’s family anyway. Every week the children had a penny spending money. For a ha’penny children could get a long stick of liquorice root at Mrs. Hargreaves’s greengrocers shop at the end of Shirley Street, and for the second ha’penny children would go to Helliwell’s grocers and sweet shop in Katherine Street for 2 oz. of the numerous varieties of boiled sweets they always kept in stock.
Ethel’s story continues through her teenage years, working in Salts Mill and gives a wonderful picture of work and social life during her lifetime in Saltaire.
Learn about the history of Saltaire from its foundation to its recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage site
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