Upcoming meetings and events

2 March 2023 - The Mechanic's Institute Movement and the Bradford Institute

Our speaker was Tricia Restorick, President of the Bradford Mechanics Institute, the first woman to become President in its 181-year history.

Mechanic's Institutes were everywhere in Victorian Britain – so where’s Saltaire’s? Well, Victoria Hall of course, formerly known as The Institute.

"There’s no of course about it!", says the Saltaire historian. "It was never a Mechanic's Institute".

Now there’s a challenging debate – which we asked Tricia to address whilst she’ll also be telling us about the role the mechanics institutes played.

The image is of the now demolished Bradford Mechanics Institute on Bridge Street, Bradford.

8 December 2022 - Voices from Saltaire's past

What better way to learn about Saltaire’s history than to listen to the people who were there?

So we invited several of them along to our December meeting where Henry Stolworthy was the  host.

Arriving in Bradford from Norfolk in 1839 at the age of 4, Henry and his family lived in this house next to Salt’s Hollings Mill in Goitside. Around 1854, the Stolworthys moved into one of the first of Saltaire’s houses. Henry spent decades working in Salts Mill and was superintendent of its fire brigade.

Henry has asked John Unwin to come along. John’s a private man but kept a diary of everyday life, so who better to tell us the price of bacon in 1894, or how much he gave the wife each payday?

Since they lived in Saltaire at much the same time, John might well have known the Kendall family. Maybe we’ll find out, because Harold Kendall will be with us. Harold became an overlooker at the mill – and to do that he had to study for several years at Saltaire’s Technical School. We’re expecting him to tell us what it was like.

Henry tells us there will be others… a woman from Italy who came to Salts soon after World War Two. And a chap who’s still alive!! He’s been invited because he saw and photographed one of Saltaire’s biggest milestones, the closure of Salts Mill.

15 September 2022 - The Saltaire Collection: past, present and future

To many Club old-timers, the Saltaire Collection is still the 'Saltaire Archive' – and the Learning Resource Centre (where we met on the 15th) is ‘the Library’.

But Lesson #1 is that history does not stand still!

What was a brave little archive will soon be a registered museum. Collection Trustee and Saltaire historian Maggie Smith told us how it all started and where her team is taking us.

And we did that literally next door to the maps, documents and images – a selection of which was a major feature of the evening.

6 July 2022 - Saltaire's allotments: a core feature of the model village

A small group of Club researchers has been working on the history of the village’s allotments – and their significance as part of a Victorian model village.

Club secretary Les Brook presented their findings which include:

• The discovery of allotments now lost
• A long-disappeared but substantial collection of piggeries
• The theft of pigeons!
• A Saltaire house you’ve never heard of
• Fowls of the Sultan and Golden Spangled Hamburghs.

And history continues to be made – by Veg on the Edge and our Shipley Town Council which is now responsible for the allotments – so the audience heard about those developments too.

A paper on the history of the village allotments can be viewed and downloaded from our Research publications page.

3 March 2022 - maps, maps, maps and more maps

Amongst the most valuable sources of historical information are maps.
 
And at the Club’s March meeting in March we were knee deep in them.
 
Three of the very best experts on local maps were with us – to let us into their cartographic historical discoveries and to show off a selection of their favourites. And the Saltaire Collection  added theirs too.

 

11 and 12 September 2021 - Celebrating Saltaire World Heritage Site’s 20th anniversary with a tour of the Dining Hall

During the 2021 Heritage Open days, the Club organised tours of the Dining Hall building in conjunction with the Saltaire Collection.

Today, the Dining Hall has become Shipley College’s ‘Mill Building’ but it retains many original features and has a terrific story to tell.

For many years before Saltaire’s other public buildings were built, the Dining Hall was also used as a school, a meeting place, library, reading room, a venue for religious services and numerous social events and political debates.

After changes to the building at the end of the 19th century, the Dining Hall’s new upper floor continued to provide social space for everything from boxing tournaments to flannel dances, and a buffet for the adjoining railway.

Paul Jennings is the author of "The Local: A History Of The English Pub" and "Bradford Pubs" so who better to speak to us about The Pub in Titus Salt's Bradford?

Image credit: Bradford Local Studies

And just in case anyone thinks this a trivial topic, please note these facts – that in nineteenth century Bradford, pubs were frequently used by coroners to conduct inquests; that a Bradford directory of 1822 listed the “Inns houses [sic]" of the “Manufacturers attending the Piece Hall”; that Bradford’s beer houses were so notorious by mid-century that a man called Salt decided he’d do without one when he built a village for his workforce.

The President of the Halifax Antiquarians David Glover introduced us to the Crossleys and their close links to the Salts.