Inside Saltaire's church (2)

This is a photo I've used before on my blog, but it nicely shows more of the inside of Saltaire's famous church.  Being a non-conformist church (originally a Congregational Church and now United Reformed) it doesn't have the separate chancel (the bit where the choir and clergy sit) that an Anglican church would have.  The organ and above that the pulpit, take centre stage, emphasising the importance of preaching and sung worship.  You can also see more clearly on this photo the scagliola columns I talked about yesterday - hollow columns, painted to look like marble.  The blue screening to the left of the picture hides the entrance to the Salt Family Mausoleum where Sir Titus Salt, Saltaire's founder and several members of his family are interred.

Inside Saltaire's church

The inside of Saltaire's famous Grade I listed United Reformed Church (formerly known as the Congregational Church) is as ornate as the outside - perhaps unusually so for a non-conformist church.  I am never sure whether I like or dislike the decorative cut-glass and ormolu chandeliers, originally lit by gas. They are so heavy that the roof had to be especially strengthened.  It is a nice light space inside though and the ceiling is most attractive.  The green columns, which you can see in the corners, are hollow and decorated with a paint effect called 'scagliola'.  A little balcony sits over the entrance door and looks up the aisle towards the front, where the organ and pulpit are.   I believe it was intended for the use of members of Sir Titus Salt's family, though as Sir Titus did not live in Saltaire himself, I'm not sure if he regularly worshipped in the church.

For more photos and information, please click the Saltaire URC label below.

Burmantofts pottery

Anybody know what this is? I haven't a clue, though it is another piece of Burmantofts pottery, with its colourful turquoise glaze and unusual pierced design. It looks lovely against the stone floor of the 1853 Gallery in Salts Mill - though I think many visitors pass it by without even noticing it.

The history of the Burmantofts pottery is interesting. It began as a small coal-mining and brick-making business in 1842 in the Burmantofts area of Leeds, run by two young men: William Wilcock and John Lassey. They discovered fireclay in their mine and began using it to make sanitary pipes and chimney pots. John Lassey died young and his share of the business was eventually sold to John Holroyd and then to his son Ernest. When William Wilcock also died, Ernest's brother James Holroyd became the general manager. He gradually developed the business, starting to produce decorative tiles and pottery including eventually high-temperature faience (glazed terracotta) architectural pottery and the 'Art Pottery' for which Burmantofts became nationally renowned. Trade prospered until 1904 when fashions suddenly changed and manufacture of terracotta pottery ceased. The business continued with other products until 1957.

Some of the Burmantofts ware is intricately decorated like the vase I showed yesterday. Other pieces are in a single bright (lead) colour and glaze, with intricate moulding and raised lines. Still others have stylised Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts designs: curvy stems and flowers, leaves, peacocks and fish. It's highly collectable these days, with even small pieces fetching hundreds of pounds at auction.

As I said yesterday, the Silver family have an enviable collection displayed in Salts Mill. The Leeds museums (including the Abbey House Museum at Kirkstall) also have collections, and some buildings in Leeds, such as the University, have Burmantofts ceramic decoration incorporated into their architecture.

Notebooks

Lovely brightly coloured notebooks and sketch pads for sale in the 1853 Gallery in Salts Mill, nicely complementing the turquoise Burmantofts pottery vase.  I'm sure it's not just me... I love empty notebooks!  There's a kind of sensuous pleasure in them.  You can perhaps see why I try to leave my purse at home when I go exploring in the Mill!

STOP PRESS: No-one was exploring very far in Saltaire on Thursday.  Part of the village was evacuated when thieves stole copper gas pipes and caused a massive gas leak.  (How stupid and thoughtless can you get?)  I missed all the excitement as I was at work and by the time I came home the drama was over, but the local paper, The Telegraph & Argus, reported it (see here).

Spinning shed

(Best viewed large)
Following on from yesterday's post about the roof space in Salts Mill, I thought I'd share this image. It shows the same space when it was a spinning shed. This photo dates back to 1947 and shows the room filled with 16,380 cap spindles. One of the guidebooks to Saltaire says the roof space is 630 feet (192 metres) long. To put that in context, an international standard football pitch is 105 metres. Lit by skylights and crisscrossed with slender metalwork, it's a surprisingly light space. The space as it is now (see yesterday's post) is still evocative of its past, with its stone flags, peeling paintwork and curious hoppers in the walls that were obviously storage spaces for something.

Roof space

(Best viewed large)
Normally the roof space of Salts (West) Mill is not open to the public. But it was used as gallery space for the Saltaire Festival. So I had two good reasons for exploring up there on the top floor - to experience the enormous space (over 190 meters long - that's nearly the length of two football pitches!) and to enjoy the exhibition and a talk by the photographer Asadour Guzelian.

'The Art of News' showed photographs from the archive of Asadour Guzelian, who runs the Guzelian Picture Agency from premises in Little Germany in Bradford. Prior to moving to Bradford, he had an office on Victoria Road in Saltaire for 15 years, so he counts as something of a 'local'. Some of the images in the exhibition are shown on the Guzelian website. His talk was a fascinating insight into photojournalism.

I was encouraged to hear that on a 'shoot' he might normally take between 70 to 90 photos, discard 90% of them, and only really be pleased with one or two. That about equates to my experience too! He also said that many of the pictures that appear spontaneous are not really 'candid' shots but that he does set them up to an extent - so that was encouraging too, as I'm never very pleased with the candid shots I take. There's always something that could have been improved if I'd dared to 'manage' the situation a bit more.

(Thank you all for your kind good wishes - I am pleased to report that my back is much better today. I discovered Voltarol gel - magic!)

Open house

Saltaire, the Victorian paternalist Sir Titus Salt's model village, built to house his mill workers in comfortable and healthy surroundings, is now a World Heritage Site. The houses, as well as the public buildings, are 'listed' and protected, though now in private ownership. One or two people have commented that they'd like to be able to see inside some of the houses. Well, generally speaking you can't. Saltaire is a regular community, not a museum, and the houses are still people's homes (so no, it's not a great idea to press your nose to the windows to peep in!).

The exception to this happens during the Saltaire Festival each year, when a number of private houses are opened up as gallery space for art works of various kinds. That gave me the opportunity to photograph this interior, one of the smaller 'workmens' cottages' in the western half of Saltaire, built in 1854. The photo is of the downstairs living room. To the left, out of shot, is a doorway to the kitchen (scullery) - about half the size of the main living area. There is also a staircase to the upper floor, which originally had two bedrooms but will now have a bathroom. (The houses were built with a 'privy' - a private outside lavatory - a vast improvement on the conditions the residents would have experienced in inner city Bradford).

The fireplace, though a Victorian design, is not original. There would have been a cooking range here. (See my post of 18 May 2010 for an idea of how the room might have looked in Victorian times.) You can see how light the room is - the village was designed with the optimum space between the rows of houses to maximise the light. They may be over 150 years old but they still make delightful homes. I wonder if the same will be said of the houses we are building today?
(Photograph used with the kind permission of the home owner - many thanks.)

Interior, 1875

There are no 'museums' in Saltaire and - apart from during the annual Saltaire Arts Trail - you can't visit inside any of the village houses, as they are all private dwellings.

On a recent visit to Bradford's Industrial Museum, I had a look into the row of Victorian back-to-back houses that were moved from their original position in Bradford and rebuilt on the Museum site. Back-to-back houses are literally that... two houses built back to back, each having one entrance, one downstairs room and two bedrooms upstairs. There are none like that in Saltaire - its houses are terraced and have a front and back entrance, so they are bigger than the ones at the Museum. Nevertheless, this picture will give you some idea of what the inside of a millworker's house looked like around 1875.

The houses were lit by gaslight, oil lamps and candles. You can see the black coal-fired range that was used for cooking - it has an integral tank for heating water to use for washing and bathing (in a tin bath). The scullery would have had running water from a cold tap. If you click the pic to enlarge it you can also see, resting by the fire, two 'flat irons' that were heated in the fire to iron clothes, a pottery hot-water bottle and the very necessary bellows used to get the fire roaring. Although spartan by modern standards, Saltaire's cottages would have been cosy and luxurious compared with the prevailing living conditions in the city at the time. Most of Saltaire's Victorian residents worked in the mill or had other jobs in the locality so most would have been able to afford reasonable food and furnishings.

Hello

One might have hoped we'd be saying 'hello' to a brand new era in Britain this weekend - but it seems not... just another load of political horse-trading and confusion!

My photograph is another of those apparently random exhibits in Salts Mill, Saltaire - this time a 1963 poster by the artist Roy Lichtenstein. It's titled "Cold Shoulder", and the original is in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art - but I imagine the print is hanging right here on the stairs at Salts Mill because it says 'hello' to welcome visitors. It makes a striking image against the painted wall. I have slightly cheated and swapped the actual cream wall for a white one, because I thought it had more impact.

'Salts Mill' in Salts Mill

The iconic painting by David Hockney, 'Salts Mill, Saltaire, Yorks', featured yesterday, can still be seen in the 1853 Gallery in Salts Mill, where it is hung on the end wall of the gallery. The stone nicely sets off its bright colours. I like to be able to get up close to a painting to see the brushstrokes and colours, but also stand well back and see the overall effect. You can do both in the 1853 Gallery and the painting does have quite an impact when viewed from some distance away.

I spent another pleasant hour or so mooching about in the Mill at the weekend - and yes, as always came home with a book (!) and some lovely cards. It really is a most delightful experience, listening to the gentle background music, smelling the fragrance of lilies, feasting on the paintings and wonderful books...plenty of eye-candy for the likes of me!

Brilliant banners

I've shown a series of pictures of St. Peter's Church, Shipley this week. It is one of two Church of England churches, each of which has half of Saltaire in its parish. A number of factors combine to make the interior of the church attractively warm and welcoming, including the large windows that lighten the space. I particularly love the colourful banners hanging from the walls - seven in all. Six were made especially for the church some years ago: designed by Ann Davies and sewn by Ann, Helen Lealman, Betty Crooke and Sue Stevens. A seventh was added last year, in the Centenary year. They feature a mix of painting, textile collage and embroidery. They are all beautiful, but these two are my particular favourites.

You can see two more on H's lovely blog: Little Sealed Packages.
Given that I have two left hands when it comes to sewing and embroidery (and am not much better at painting) then I am full of admiration for Ann and the others, who did a great job on these.

Interior, St. Peter's Church

I took this photo of the interior of St. Peter's Church, Shipley in June last year, when we held a flower festival as part of our Centenary celebrations. The church was consecrated in 1909. The view is looking up the aisle from the West entrance towards the beautiful East window.

The church originally had wooden pews and an ornate wooden rood screen that separated the chancel (choir area) from the main body of the church (nave). The screen was removed in 1991 to open up the front of the church. The church was fully carpeted and the pews were removed in 2005/6 to provide a more flexible area for worship and other activities such as charity concerts. (We now have nice comfy chairs...aah!)

The warm welcome now provided by the church interior is, we hope, mirrored by the warmth of the congregation. There are extensive church halls attached to the rear of the church, which provide a home for many community groups and activities. We employ a full-time youth worker, paid for by the congregation, and offer both Sunday groups and a range of mid-week activities for children and young people.

Dentist's chair

This dentist's chair is another quirky object to be found in the 1853 Gallery on the ground floor of Salts Mill, Saltaire. Unlike the dressing table I featured yesterday, this perhaps is original to the Mill (although not Victorian!). In the 20th century, particularly after WWII when there were many displaced Eastern Europeans coming here in search of work, Salts of Saltaire provided a good healthcare package to its workers, including access to medical facilities on site. This probably included dentistry - I can't otherwise see why a dentist's chair would be on display among the priceless Hockney artworks... Even so, I'm glad to live in more modern times. I hate going to the dentist, so the thought of this primitive drill is rather horrific. If you want a glimpse into Victorian dentistry, try this link or take a look at this photograph of a Victorian dentist's surgery reconstructed at the Beamish Museum near Durham.

Bookshelf

One of the lovely things about the public/retail spaces in Salts Mill, as I've said before, is the way old and interesting items are scattered through the retail spaces. It softens the brute commercialism and makes it a place to wander and explore as well as to shop...not a museum, not just a shop, not simply a gallery but a mix of all three. It means that every time you visit you can find something you've never noticed before. For example, this antique masquerading as a bookshelf.... it looks like an old dressing-table and, as such, is probably not original to the mill or connected with the Salts family (though who knows? Maybe Lady Caroline Salt brushed her hair in front of this mirror?) Nevertheless it's an interesting piece, a much nicer place to display cookery books than the average bookshop shelf.

Bookshop, Salts Mill

(Best viewed large)
Here's a picture of my second home - the bookshop in Salts Mill, Saltaire. As well as books, it sells a good selection of cards, posters and prints. As you can see, it's massive, occupying half of one of the huge galleries on the second floor of the West Mill. It retains clear traces of its industrial past - the stone floor, cast iron columns, metal pulley and huge windows. (The quality of light was important to the cloth-manufacturing processes in the mill.) And it's enhanced by all the artwork on the walls; many are Hockney prints but some are the work of other artists.

Because the shop is so spacious, it has the advantage of being able to display a lot of books on tables rather than shelves, so that you can see the covers. I think that's an important factor in attracting people to pick up a book. It also has a lovely atmosphere - it can be quite a busy place, especially at weekends, so it has a satisfying buzz about it, but it's also a space made for quiet browsing. When bookshops are closing down all over the place (Borders in Leeds being a recent casualty of the recession), I count it a privilege to live so close to such an attractive store.

Bright lights

There was a brief hint of sunshine yesterday, hooray! I ventured out with my camera, but I couldn't find much inspiration outside. As soon as I went out, the sun went in (as it does!) and the ensuing chilly greyness sent me scurrying into the warmth and brightness of Salts Mill. As always, I eventually found my way into the book shop. And, as always, I returned with a couple of new books. One of them is a newly published volume of writing by a woman called Ann Moss... I shall tell you more about her one day. I felt justified in buying it because the proceeds are going to the restoration fund for the church in Saltaire.

And to further justify my visit, I took a few photos inside. This row of lights in primary colours is a wonderful antidote to grey winter.

For those interested in Salts Mill, there is a wonderfully evocative piece of writing on this blog by a freelance travel writer, Abigail King. She gives a good summary of the Mill's history.

An architect's vision

In amongst the Victoria Road shops in Saltaire are the offices of Rance, Booth and Smith Architects. The partnership was formed in 1982 and undertakes a variety of work including projects for major public clients such as Bradford Council, the health service and Bradford University. I quite often stop by their window to look at the displays and read about their recent work. They seem to be doing some innovative work in terms of sustainable building and their website says they have now launched an environmental service: RBS Sustainable. One of the nice things is that, along with other local businesses, they involve themselves in community matters such as the Saltaire Festival. They also recently completed restoration and conservation work in Saltaire's church.

I am impressed - even excited - by what I have seen of their work. They produced plans for a rebuild of the small educational centre right opposite my house - and it was stunning. Sadly, the Council in the end went with a lower cost, less radical renovation but it's still a vast improvement on what was there. I also visited the school conversion (to homes) they designed in Haworth and it was amazing.

Their own offices in Saltaire are interesting. They have retained the external appearance of the building but inside they have cut away some of the floor to open up a light-well into the basement, and put in a glass wall. (See their website under 'Commercial' for a full description). As my photo shows, it looks especially attractive at night, when the lighting really brings out the colour of the exposed brickwork.