Arches

Ironwork arches and wooden panelling at the entrance to Keighley railway station (painted, I think, in the livery colours of the Midland Railway - dark red and cream.)

Wheel

Isn't there something really satisfying and beautiful about this?  It is, of course, a wheel on one of the steam locomotives on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.

Playground mosaics

You may remember that last year I showed how the children's playground in Saltaire had been revamped.  It was a beneficiary of money that was earmarked for community projects, from the sale of Leeds-Bradford Airport to a private operator.  The new playground seems to have been welcomed by the local kids.  It is especially popular with mums of very young children, as there is a part specially for the little ones, and the mums can sit on the seats and chat while the kids play.  There is a winding path through the centre from one side to the other and at intervals there are squares of colourful ceramic mosiacs, which on close inspection are rather attractive.  Oldies like me are not supposed to enter the playgound (unless accompanied by a child under 14) and, since I don't yet have a tame grandchild, I had to sneak in when no-one (appeared to be) looking, to get these photos.  The top one is a mosaic of several of the designs and the lower picture is a close up of just one of them.

Study them closely...the more you look, the more you'll see.... animals and plants, Salts Mill, the New Mill (or maybe it's the Victoria Hall tower?), the Church, houses.....  They'd make a good project for a 'brass rubbing' technique, I would think.

Homage to a rusty fence

I was only away from Saltaire just over a week but I keep noticing things that have changed in my absence - both in the natural world (the trees have burst forth leaves and blossom in glorious adandon) and in the man-made environment. Saltaire's church is suddenly shrouded in scaffolding and screening (not a good look!).

But more shocking to me has been the removal of The Fence. This was an old corrugated iron structure that separated one of the local cricket fields from the canal towpath - perhaps for safety reasons? (to stop people rolling down the hill?) or possibly - rumour has it - that at one time the cricket club used to charge spectators to watch their matches, so it stopped non-paying voyeurs. Whatever the reason, it was an ugly old fence, but I was incredibly inspired by the colours - rust and lichen - and regularly used to stop to take photos of it in different lights. People must have thought me mad! And now it's gone! I must admit the view has improved, as its removal has really opened up the area - but where will I get inspiration now?

Anyway, I felt I should post a photo, as a mark of respect for my old friend, gone to the final scrapyard. If I was a talented poet like Martin H at Square Sunshine, I'd write an Ode to it! If you'd like to see it in its former glory, it snakes its orange way through the middle of this photo (view it large).

Monochrome Weekend - Cogs and wheels

These are the huge cogs and wheels on one end of a spinning machine. You can see from this how big an issue health and safety would have been in a Victorian mill. There don't appear to be any guards on the machinery. Workers, especially women and children, were frequently injured or killed by the machinery - hair, clothes and scarves got caught, fingers trapped and limbs crushed, and there were reports that some children - who worked long hours until factory reforms were eventually brought in - were scalped when they crawled under the machines or killed when they went to sleep and fell into the machinery.

Thankfully, Titus Salt was not at all uncaring about his workers. In 1868, he built Salts Hospital - originally as a two-storey building with a six-bed casualty ward for accidents at the mill. In time, this grew into a cottage hospital for the whole community. (I haven't yet shown you a good picture of the hospital. I hope to remedy that before too long.)

It's interesting to see that the manufacturer of the spinning machine in the photo was a company in Keighley (pronounced Keethley!), a few miles up the Aire Valley from Saltaire. When textile production in this area died out, it affected many more than those who actually worked in the textile mills themselves.

Visit The Monochrome Weekend site for more B&W photos.

Sett pattern

There are just a few areas in Saltaire that have been left with the authentic stone cobbles (properly known as setts... I think because they are flat brick shapes rather than rounded stones). You can see them on my photo of Albert Terrace and in a small section at the bottom of Victoria Road. Salts Mill yard is also paved with setts. I had assumed these to be original and unchanged since Victorian times. But I have recently read a wonderful book called "Salt and Silver" by Jim Greenhalf, which is the story of Salts Mill and the two visionary men - Sir Titus Salt and Jonathan Silver - with whom its history is entwined. There is a photograph in the book, taken in 1988, of Jonathan Silver looking at the setts being relaid in front of the mill. So it seems that, after he bought the near-derelict Mill, he arranged for the tarmac to be ripped up and the setts restored. I like him even more now!

There is an amusing tale in the book that Jonathan, always an enthusiast and very 'hands on' throughout the restoration of the Mill, was one day attacking the tarmac with gusto with a pneumatic drill, to the evident surprise of the branch director of Barclays Bank (who loaned money to finance the project) who chose that moment to arrive with an entourage of officials!