Clive Woods Collection

Clive collected items covering wide aspects of the textile industry and the history of Salts Mill.

Titus Salt's fortune was built on the use of alpaca wool, and the collection contains a reprint of a famous article by Charles Dickens of how Titus allegedly found the original samples of wool. Also from early days, there are items on William Fairbairn a leading British engineer who designed important parts of Salts Mill; and research notes on the 1871 census providing information on occupations in Saltaire and the Mill.

There are newspaper cuttings and notes on members of the business consortium, which included James Roberts, that bought Saltaire and the textile business from the Salt family in 1893. The new owners kept the business name so the collection includes bills from 1900 headed Sir Titus Salt Bart. Sons and Company Ltd.

Another consortium bought the business in 1918 and in 1923 the company was renamed Salts (Saltaire) Ltd and floated on the stock market. We have a smart brochure for the new company produced shortly afterwards, a not-so-smart copy of the company superannuation scheme handbook, and labels and other items bearing the new name.

There are also a few items related to the Mill from more recent, post-industrial times, including the script of a play written by poet Tony Harrison and produced in the Mill in 1993.

View items related to textiles and Salts Mill in the Clive Woods Collection

Clive's collection contains items related to several royal visits to Saltaire.

Queen Victoria's youngest daughter Princess Beatrice visited in 1887 to open the new School of Art and Science and the  Royal Yorkshire Jubilee Exhibition organised by Titus Salt Junior. Over 800,000 people visited the exhibition and could take away branded mementos.

There are photographs and booklets recording the visit of King George VI to Salts Mill and Saltaire in 1937. Princess Anne visited Saltaire in 1996 for the reopening of the refurbished Exhibition Building, now part of Shipley College, but the very same buiding her great-great aunt Beatrice had opened in 1887.

View items related to Royal visits in the Clive Woods Collection

Clive's love of Saltaire is reflected in the many photographs in his collection, showing the village from over 100 years ago up to the turn of the twenty first century.

He also had an interest in the history of the construction and buildings of Saltaire, from items on Lockwood and Mawson, the main architects of the village, and their chief contractor William Moulson, through plans of the Bath and Wash House - one of the few original buildings in Saltaire that have been demolished - up to more recent concerns with the state of the village and its preservation.

Clive was very active in the promotion and preservation of Saltaire's heritage. There are items from the activities of the Saltaire Village Society, in which he played a prominent role, documents about the proposed major road development that threatened to destroy Saltaire in the 1980s, and leaflets, letters and other documents related to the (successful) campaign for Saltaire to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There are photographs of Clive leading visitors on a heritage tour as part of the campaign.

View items related to the Saltaire and its heritage in the Clive Woods Collection