Neil Horsley introduces a project documenting the repurposing of derelict textile mills across the North of England.

Over the past three years I have visited, photographed and interviewed mill renovators at thirty-three mill conversions across the North of England for a project titled Mills Transformed. The focus of the project was initially on the physical aspects of building regeneration schemes but what became apparent to me through the research was the importance of mills in relation to their wider impacts on society.

Importance of mills

Textile mills were the foundation of the industrial revolution. Mills were the catalyst for technical innovations, rampant entrepreneurialism, integrated industrial manufacturing processes, the labour movement, hard won employment rights, international trade links and rail and canal networks across Britain. Mills were responsible for place-making and the establishment of multi-racial communities in northern towns. In short they were the backbone of wealth creation in Britain in the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries. I would argue that mills are as important a part of our national heritage as churches, cathedrals and country houses.

The scale, grandeur and ambition of mills is unmatched anywhere else in the world. Visit and be in awe at Salts Mill, Saltaire which, on completion, was the largest building in the world containing the largest room space and which manufactured 18 miles of cloth each day. Similarly, Dean Clough, a vast complex of mills in Halifax, stretches for over half a mile and spans twenty-two acres.

Mills dominate skylines and like church spires act as local landmarks. Public opinion is strongly in favour of mill renovations, and local people often have an emotional bond to mills as nostalgic connections to the workplaces of previous family generations or as monuments to long gone industries and trades.

Unfortunately, many textile mills lie vacant, are semi-derelict or remain under threat of demolition. Greater Manchester has lost more than a thousand historic mills (48% of the total) since the 1980s. According to Historic England, in 2021 there were 688 vacant or underutilised mills in Yorkshire and Lancashire which if redeveloped could create 42,000 homes and 84,000 jobs. Mills therefore have a vital role to play in the re-use of brownfield sites, thereby reducing pressure for further greenbelt developments.

However, for many in the property sector the view prevails that textile mills are historic relics from a bygone era which are too expensive and difficult to convert to other uses.

Mills Transformed

For Mills Transformed I visited and photographed thirty-three mills across Yorkshire and Lancashire which have been regenerated and repurposed often by inspiring individuals or community organisations. There are numerous success stories of how large-scale mills have, against all odds, been renovated to accommodate a wide range of uses such as housing, business workspace, artist studios, galleries, colleges, café restaurants, retail outlets, music venues and so on. Mills are malleable and can adapt to changing times and economic requirements. They change function over time and can be re-born to accommodate unforeseen uses.

Initially the project had a strong building focus and was primarily concerned with the physical aspects of mill regeneration. However, it soon became clear that mills are about people as well as property. The mill renovator-owners I interviewed were often as keen to share details of the social history of their mills as they were to discuss building renovations. There are numerous themes which emerge which it is difficult to do justice to in a short article. But here are three examples of the social impacts of mills.

Children in the labour market

It is easy to forget the role that child labour played in the early part of the Industrial revolution and the resistance of mill owners towards limitations on the employment of children. In 1833, the small West Yorkshire Bents Mill in Cullingworth, employed 61 people, 42 of whom were under 14 years of age, and fourteen of whom were under the age of ten. All workers worked a 69 hours per week – five twelve-hour days with nine hours on a Saturday.

It is fascinating to reflect on the mill owners’ attitude to child labour viewed through the lens of modern values and sensibilities. This is what Richard Nichols and Co, owners of the neighbouring Hewenden mill, had to say in response to the Factory Commission’s question about the hours of labour worked by children: –

‘We disapprove entirely of legislative interference in commerce… we oppose a restriction to any time less than 10 hours (per day) of labour of children…that unless some absolute and positive provision be made for the instruction of children, their morals would not by any means be improved by a decrease in hours of labour, since their opportunity of associating with bad company would be increased; neither would their health be promoted, as especially in winter, they would expose themselves to the inclemency of the weather in insufficient clothing….’

Reducing the dependency of mills on child labour proved to be a long and difficult struggle.

Birth of the labour movement

Textile mill workers were pivotal in the creation of the labour movement and the fight for employment rights. The scale of employment in the textile industries is not often acknowledged. In 1970 approximately 1,142,000 people were employed in the textile and clothing industries in the UK. By 1991 the figure was 347,000. In Yorkshire alone more than 300 mills closed between 1950 and 1967.

To consider the impact on just one city, in Bradford in 1950 there were still 1,123 wool and worsted mills operating in the city. By 2008 the figure was only four. Between 1979-81, 16,000 textile and engineering workers in Bradford lost their jobs.

Against this historical backdrop textile mills were the catalyst for the development of trade unionism and the labour movement.

Originally built in 1838, the Manningham Mills complex in Bradford contained the world’s largest silk mill, with twenty-seven acres of manufacturing floorspace and employed nearly 11,000 people at its peak. The whole site covers eighteen acres while ‘the Heaton Road frontage, one of the finest examples of Victorian masonry in England, is a quarter of a mile long’. The 1890 Manningham Mill strike lasted for nearly four months. At the end of the strike 10,000 textile workers joined trade unions. This was a catalyst for the founding of the Bradford Labour Union, and three years later the formation of the national Independent Labour Party in Bradford.

Community diversity

Wide-scale immigration, generated in part by the availability of mill employment, has had a profound impact on the ethnic composition and diversity of communities across northern towns and cities

During the 1950s and 1960s the textile industry, in the face of increasing foreign competition, began to invest in new machinery and moved to three-shift 24 hour working patterns. Women were prevented by UK law from working night shifts and in a buoyant labour market it proved difficult to find local men prepared to work night shifts so employers actively recruited first from East Europe, West Indies and after 1955 from Pakistan and India.

Asian men were employed to fill gaps in the shift pattern and were encouraged by mill owners to recruit others from their extended family networks. Word of mouth about the availability of jobs led to increasing numbers of immigrants arriving into Bradford and other parts of West Yorkshire. In the case of Bradford, Hindus and Sikhs came first to the city from the Punjab and Gujarat with small numbers arriving in the late 1950s. Muslims from Pakistan arrived in greater numbers and by 1964 Bradford had a population of 12,000 Pakistanis. Many recruits were paid wages half that of the average indigenous worker.

The Asian migrants were young men, usually in their twenties, who came to earn money to support their families back home. Initially the men lived in cheap-rent multi-occupancy housing in inner city areas and viewed their stay in the UK as temporary.

In 1962 the announcement of the Commonwealth Immigration Act, restricting migration from the Commonwealth to Britain, encouraged migrant workers to settle in Bradford and send for their families before the law came into effect. Self-contained communities began to emerge which newcomers could join to be among others with a shared identity, language and religion and in close proximity to places of worship, food shops, employment and community meeting places.

Mills Transformed book and exhibition

The importance of mills in terms of both their industrial and social heritage and the need to preserve them provide the themes of Mills Transformed. Above all we need to preserve and give new life to many mills that are empty and often derelict in order to provide homes, jobs and cultural spaces and to preserve our industrial and social heritage.

Following the success of a photography exhibition held last year in Saltairem, a Mills Transformed book is now planned. Mills Transformed will be a large format hardback, of around 250 pages with at least 100 atmospheric photographs, produced to fine art standards and published by John Hudson Publishing. The intention is to discuss the mill regeneration process and reach conclusions, drawing on the visited mill case studies, as to how further mills can be renovated and repurposed. Historic England have agreed to contribute a foreword to the book.

To coincide with the publication of the book a further Mills Transformed photographic exhibition which will take place at Bradford Industrial Museum from November 2024 to the end of January 2025. We are currently looking for supporters for the book and exhibition. If you are interested in supporting the project please use the recently launched GoFundme page or make contact through the project website.

Neil Horsley initially trained as a town planner before pursuing a 40-year career in urban regeneration and sustainability.