Bradford Industrial Museum

About this place

Inside a worsted spinning mill built around 1875 on the hill at Eccleshill, spinning frames and looms still run for visitors, much as they did when Bradford called itself the wool capital of the world. That is the whole point of this place: not silent glass cases but big machinery that is switched on, rattles and smells of oil. The council bought the mill in 1970 and opened it as a museum on 14 December 1974, salvaging an industry that was vanishing around it. The floors follow a sensible order: the power hall with its steam engines and waterwheels, then spinning and weaving, then a print shop where volunteers set hot-metal type on a Linotype machine and pull proofs in front of you. The transport hall holds Jowett cars that were built in Bradford, Scott motorcycles, a small saddle-tank locomotive called Nellie from 1922, city tram number 237 built in 1904 and a trolleybus: Bradford was the last British city to run them, until 1972. Outside, the mill owner's house is furnished as it stood in the nineteenth century, and Gaythorne Row, a terrace of back-to-back workers' cottages, shows one home in the 1870s, one in the 1940s and one in the 1970s. That time-lapse is the bit children remember. Entry is completely free, as is parking, which changes the arithmetic for a large family spending weeks in the north of England. Timing matters, though: the live demonstrations are spread across the week. The blacksmith works Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, the printers Tuesday and Wednesday, the weavers Wednesday and the spinners Thursday, and a costumed Mr Moore, the mill manager, receives visitors in the mill owner's house Wednesday to Friday. Wednesday is the richest day; a Friday can mean stiller machines and half-empty halls. The museum closes at 16:00 all year and every Monday, and on a short, wet winter day it is a good refuge because most of it is under one roof. It sits about 4 km from the centre, a ten-minute drive from central Bradford, or bus 660 from Drake Street in the city centre, next to Bradford Interchange, to the stop on Moorside Road itself; the 645 from Hall Ings leaves a ten-minute walk. The main building is fine for pushchairs at ground level, but the upper floors and the cottages involve stairs and steps, and the official site itself describes disabled access as limited. There is a small café and no prayer room is advertised, so allow two to two and a half hours and treat it as half a day, paired with Cartwright Hall or nearby Saltaire.