Saltaire Collection goes worldwide The Saltaire Collection is Saltaire’s volunteer run archive. They play an important part in preserving and disseminating the history of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Saltaire. The collection includes documents and objects recording the history of this important industrial village and the lives of the people who lived and worked there. Now they are about to make our collections accessible worldwide. For the first time both documents and images will be available to anyone, anywhere, through an online catalogue available through our new website. Until now students, researchers and family historians would have had to visit the archive, which is housed in Shipley College. They are still very welcome to visit but will now have the option of searching from their own computers and phones and can browse through images of Saltaire, maps and portraits as well as locating documents relating to the history of Salts Mill, the village, its owners and inhabitants. The collection contains about 5,000 items including original documents, photographs, maps and plans, newspaper cuttings, artworks, books and objects. After many years of hard work by many trustees and volunteers, as well as professional staff, a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund has allowed us to commission the new website. As well as the new online catalogue, this will contain news, reports on events and links to our social media accounts. Staff employed over the past two years under the same source of funding have supported a team of committed and knowledgeable volunteers in organising the collection on a more professional basis and expanding its work making available learning resources on Saltaire for schools, local residents and visitors. John Briggs, Chair of the Saltaire World Heritage Education Association, which manages the collection, has said, “Documenting as it does, the history of one of the world’s foremost industrial villages, the Saltaire Collection has always been of worldwide interest. We are delighted that 8
now both text and images will be accessible worldwide for students, researchers and anyone with an interest in Saltaire to view”. The Saltaire Collection recently had the pleasure of a visit from the well known TV historian Dan Snow who was coming to Yorkshire, to do a show in Ilkley and dropped in to see the team the day before. Dan was a courteous and enthusiastic guest, who had many questions about the village and its history, took many photographs and posted extensively on social media afterwards, commenting on Twitter, “One of Britain’s greatest historic sites: Saltaire. The utopian Victorian factory and village which provided workers with houses, jobs, healthcare, education and pensions. Revolutionary” Dan met with Zoe Silver from Salts Mill in the UNESCO World Heritage village and with Sheena Campbell, Saltaire’s World Heritage Officer. He then visited the People and Process exhibition where he was introduced to staff and volunteers from the Saltaire Collection and shown the archives items on display there. These include some of the Salt family china, various 1887 Royal Jubilee Exhibition souvenirs and textile sample pattern books. Many more documents and objects can be found in the archive Feeling blessed that the weather, although cold, was no longer wet, volunteers then took him on a flying tour of the famous industrial village, built by Sir Titus Salt in the mid nineteenth century. There was time for a brief visit to the archive,