Bradford Industrial Museum, established 1974 and located in Moorside Mills, Eccleshill, Bradford, United Kingdom, specializes in relics of local industry, especially printing and textile machinery, kept in working condition for regular demonstrations to the public. It is owned and operated by Bradford Council.
History of the site
Moorside Mills was a textile factory built by John Moore in 1875 for worsted spinning, which grew into a medium-sized factory employing around 100 people. The mill, which was originally steam powered, was converted to electricity in the early 20th century. It was bought by Clifford and Arnold Wilson in 1908 who installed a mill engine built by Cole, Marchent and Morley in 1910. The high demand for worsted used for military uniforms during the World War I saw numerous expansions to the factory, including the addition of two extra floors. A clock tower was erected as a war memorial in 1919.
In 1929, the mill was sold to W & J Whitehead, who ran the ring spinning machine which is still in the spinning gallery.
Bradford Council bought the mill in 1970, and it opened as a museum on 14 December 1974.Information from the Museums's free Visitor Guide leaflet.
Ground floor galleries
Motive power This gallery displays machinery from the 19th century Industrial Revolution, including waterwheels, steam engines, oil engines and gas engines; plus an engineer's workshop display. The millstone is from Castlefields corn mill near Bingley; it is a bedstone carved from local millstone grit. A spindle passes through this and a similar upper runner stone; the grain enters via the spindle hole and is ground by the scissor-action of the grooves when the runner stone rotates against the bedstone. The grain is forced out at the outer edges as flour and then flows into a sack.Information from museum exhibit label The prime exhibit, a uniflow steam engine rescued from Linton mill and known as the Linton engine, was one of the last Bradford-made steam engines. There is a display explaining the history of steam power.
Transport
Most of the space in this gallery is taken up with several examples of cars and light commercial vans built by the Jowett company of Bradford, Scott motorbikes and Baines bicycles. There is a Wallis & Steevens Advance type Steam Roller no. 7986 that was built in 1928 and owned by Bradford City Council roads department and carries the council crest on the water tanks.Listed in 'The Traction Engine Register' page 83
The biggest exhibit is a locomotive named Nellie, after Nellie Crane the vicar's wife. Nellie is an 0-4-0 saddle tank industrial locomotive 1435, one of two built by Hudswell Clarke in Leeds in 1922 for the Esholt sewage works. When the works were being built, she carried excavated material, and thereafter coal and construction material, then coal and other materials until 1970 when she was loaned to the Yorkshire Dales Railway Society at Skipton. Her size is 23 × 8 × 11 ft, and she weighs 28 tons. The boiler works at 160psi, and she carries 700 gallons in the saddle water tank. The cylinders are 40-inch diameter 20-inch stroke operated by Stephenson's open link valve gear. A British Railways Crane Wagon is on display outside near the museum gates.
In the tram shed is the only tramcar left in Bradford, and a Bradford trolleybus. The first horse-drawn trams were introduced in 1882, followed by steam trams in 1883 and electric trams in 1898. Trolleybuses ran in Bradford from 1911 to 1972. There are various models of trams, including no. 237, built in Shipley in 1904, but shown as it was in 1912 with top deck extended and covered to accommodate 38 passengers. From 1904 to 1908 this tram travelled between Baildon bridge and Greengates. After that, it was transferred to the Great Horton system, then went between Saltaire and Undercliffe. However, its routes were limited as it was too tall to pass under the railway bridge at Eccleshill station.
Here are different types of old machines in working condition; plus printing equipment.
This gallery holds machinery from the last of the hot metal typesetting printshops as used in the newspaper industry. The monotype keyboard produces punched 31-level tape for casting on the monotype caster. The keyboard comprises seven QWERTY arrangements (Roman upper and lower case, bold upper and lower case, italic upper and lower case and ). It is operated by compressed air and produces a wide paper tape that contains perforations that when transferred to the caster give full instructions for each character to be cast. The monotype system was widely used in the commercial printing sector. There is a "forme" (text lines produced on a Linotype typesetting machine) made up into the front page of the last edition of the Yorkshire Sports, 2 May 1981. The assembled forme is ready to be moulded and cast into a curved printing plate.
There is a display of lead glyphs for typesetting. These would be set into a forme so that the text read backwards and upside down, then inked and pressed against paper using a platen in a printing press. The display includes various kinds of printing presses, including a Wharfedale stop cylinder press.
First floor textile galleries In the 19th century, Bradford was famous for its worsted cloth, although life was hard for the workers. The displays show how a fleece was transformed through various stages into a suit.
Spinning gallery Preparing Preparing is the process used in place of carding for long wools and hairs which would break on the card and therefore greatly reduce the quality of the worsted yarn produced. The museum displays machinery used for this process. The maker-up or double-screw sheeting preparer is the first machine. This passes the fibre to and from delivery sheets via rollers and ends with a lap of wool from six to eight feet long. The single screw can preparer is the most important machine of these, as it is here that the laps of wool or hair taken from the preceding boxes are prepared into a continuous sliver. This process prepares the material for the combing machine.
Combing
Combing straightens the fibres, isolates the long ones (tops) for spinning and discards the short ones (noil). There are various types of combing machines here, including the French comb, the Lister comb and the Holden comb. The Noble comb was the most popular as it would comb long, medium and fairly short staple wool, but the slivers needed special preparation in a punching machine beforehand.
In the French comb, the slivers of wool are fed forward by ratchet-operated rollers and a pinned feed grid, the leading end of the fibres being pushed beyond the nipper jaws which open and shut to receive and hold them, leaving a fringe of fibres protruding through which the pins of the revolving cylinder comb pass, removing the short fibres or noil and any impurities. The drawing-off rollers, mounted on a carriage, grip the fringe of fibres projecting it from the nipper jaws. The intersector comb then descends, piercing the fringe of fibres, the nipper jaws open and the fibres are given their second combing by the rotation and recession of the drawing-off rollers. The combed fibres are then conveyed into a can that is placed directly underneath.
The Lister comb is used when the best results were wanted from long fibred wools and hairs such as mohair, alpaca, long English, and crossbred wools. The slivers of wool or hair are fed into the machine, through rollers, and onto the pins of the fallers which disentangle and transport the fibres to the nip jaw. The nip jaw, with its swinging motion, pulls the fringe of fibres out from the faller pins which are partially combed as they are conveyed to the pins of the large combing circle. As the large circle rotates, the unique feature of the machine, the side circle comb gives the fibres a secondary combing to remove excessively long fibres. The large comb circle carries the remaining fibres to the drawing-off rollers which give the fibres their final combing by removing the long fibres from the circle pins, with the short ones being left behind. The long fibres or top pass through a revolving funnel to the crimping box and into a can directly underneath. The short fibres or noils are removed from the pins of the large comb circle by lifting knives, and deposited into a can ready for removal.
The Holden comb was suited for the combing of short staple wools. The slivers of wool are fed into the machine through the feed guides to the filing head rollers and transferred to the pins of the comb circle by the lashing action of the filling heads. As the comb circle rotates, the fallers of the square motion rise, giving the fibres their initial combing and removing any short fibres or noil and some long fibres termed robbings. The comb circle carries the remaining fibres to the drawing-off head where the fringe is penetrated by the pins of the intersecting or combs. Here the drawing-off rollers giving the fibres their final combing, removing the long fibres and leaving the short ones behind. The long fibres or top pass through a revolving funnel to the coiler mechanism and into a can directly underneath. The short fibres or noils remaining in the combs are transferred to the comb circle by a small comb and removed with the noil in the comb circle pins by brushes and lifting knives.
Drawing and finishing
The machines, known as boxes, in the drawing section, reduce the combed tops from thick slivers to thinner roving ready for spinning. This is done by drafting them between slow back rollers to faster front rollers, and controlling the fibres between these rollers. The first boxes where the ends are thickest are the double-head can gill box (where the wool ends up in a can) and the 2-spindle gill box (where the wool ends up twisted and on spindles). On these machines, the rollers are heavily fluted to control the sliver, and the front rollers are padded with leather to cushion the wool. Between the front and back rollers are fallers or bars that control the roving by holding it with fine pins. The roving is now called slubbing which needs twist for strength, and is dealt with by a second set of boxes: a 2-spindle draw-box, 4-spindle weigh box, 8-spindle finisher/reducer and 8-spindle rover. In these boxes, the principle of two sets of rollers with controlled fibre in between is the same, but the yarn is now twisted onto a bobbin via a flyer.
The combed slivers produced on any type of combing machine are passed through a process known as finishing. This process takes place in a series of gill boxes in which the fibres are redistributed, the slivers made uniform in thickness, and moisture added in order to give the wool its natural suppleness and condition. Blending is done where necessary to keep the top up to a given standard of quality and, if dyed, consistency of colour. The top ball produced is suitable for packing for transport and unwinding. The top represents the wool comber's finished product, and it is in this form that the wool is bought and sold as the spinner's raw material.
Spinning
Spinning is the final stage in converting wool to worsted yarns, the roving being drawn out to its final thickness and twist added for strength. There are three types of spinning machines or frames in common use in the United Kingdom, namely flyer, cap and ring. Another machine used for spinning worsted yarns is the worsted mule. All three types of machine or frame are similar in their method of drawing out or drafting the roving to make the required count or thickness but differ in the way in which twist is imparted and the yarn wound onto the bobbin. Drafting takes place between the back and front rollers. The front rollers revolve faster than the back ones, drawing out the roving to the fineness of yarn required. Between the rollers are carriers that support and help to control the fibres as they are being drafted.