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Almshouses, late 19th Century
© Courtesy of West Yorkshire Archives
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Saltaire: A successful industrial township |
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The issue facing Salt and his young firm of architects was how to design and build a practical and successful model industrial town for several thousand workers and their families. This was to be an exercise in social engineering that was at the time unprecedented in its scale.
Saltaire Club and Institute, opened 1871
© City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council |
Saltaire was not the first model industrial community. A full 51 years before Salt had acquired the land for his venture, Robert Owen had taken over the New Lanark mill of his father-in-law David Dale. Here, on the banks of the River Clyde 23 miles south east of Glasgow, Owen had started his revolutionary social developments in the early decades of the 19th Century. In those early decades, many thousands of visitors made the journey to New Lanark to learn of Owen’s successes. Among those visitors were contemporaries of Salt from the West Riding, and there can be little doubt that the planning of Saltaire was informed by the results of Owen’s radical projects.
The layout that architects Lockwood and Mawson settled on for Saltaire was a rigid grid of streets and housing, aligned with the pre-existing lane leading to the mill. By 1871, by which time the housing development had been completed, the census records a housing stock of 824, occupied by 4,300 people being served by 40 shops.
Words: Dave Shaw
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