Saltaire - World Heritage Site
David Hockney's Art in Titus Salt's Model Victorian village
May 8, 2007
Early nineteenth century Bradford was a cocktail of filth, disease and poverty. The stench of industrial effluent and waste materials was constantly hanging over the town. The Industrial Revolution gathered pace, creating jobs in the local woollen mills. Overcrowding and child labour levels were high - and life expectancy was low.
In 1834, Titus Salt saw some bales of Alpaca wool at a Liverpool warehouse and discovered it was perfect for making high quality clothes. The rich and famous were soon demanding clothes made from Alpaca and Russian Donskoi wool ; enabling Salt to create a large business and amass immense wealth. He served Bradford as both Mayor and Member of Parliament. Salt was born in 1803 at Morley, eight miles from Bradford, to a devout religious family, whose non-conformist beliefs influenced his life.
By 1850, Salt owned five mills spread around the town. He decided to move all his businesses to one site. Four miles west of Bradford, he found a place on the banks of the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. A good water supply for the mill and rail links to the West Riding, and beyond, made this an ideal choice. Architects and engineers soon began work making Salt's vision a reality.
Plans for a community where workers could live and work free from squalor took twenty years to complete. Salt's workers rented over eight hundred neat, honey coloured stone terraced cottages. The smaller had two bedrooms and the larger ones three bedrooms and a garden - very different from parts of Bradford, which the Bradford Observer described in 1845 as "wretched hovels, unfurnished and unventilated, damp, filthy in the extreme and surrounded by stagnant pools of human excrement". Community facilities developed, including an imposing Congregational Church, school, library and park. Titus's strong religious beliefs ensured there was no alcohol. Salt's achievements were widely respected, when he died in 1876, over one hundred thousand people lined the streets for his funeral
Over a century later Saltaire was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the trappings of tourism have helped preserve Salt's legacy in to the twenty first century
Regular, modern trains call at the village station, carrying commuters and visitors to and from Leeds, Bradford, Keighley and Skipton.
Shops, restaurants and one of Bradford born David Hockney's largest art collections fill the Italianate style mill, built with warm yellow sandstone. The houses, highly sought and privately owned, still stand on streets named in honour of Salt's wife and eleven children. Families stroll by the river and through the park; where local opposition has defeated plans to build a relief road.
Now alcohol is available at many cafes and restaurants and Saltaire Brewery produces beer. As you pass the Congregrational Church stop and listen. You may hear an old man turning in his grave.
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