Industrial revolution - Yorkshire
Yorkshire's industrial heritage is one of the more interesting aspects of its cultural and historical heritage, capturing centuries of working pride in textiles, quarrying, mining, fishing and steel. Hebden Bridge (www.hebdenbridge.com) and Heptonstall thrived during the Industrial Revolution when the mills and their familiar chimneys became the symbols of prosperity. Bradford is another of Yorkshire's factory towns that grew prosperous during the Industrial Revolution. Sheffield made it's fortune out of coal and steel and the Moorland and Dales were perfect for sheep and produced wool for the textile industry.
See how people lived and worked in Yorkshire's dynamic industrial museums, all harnessing the power of the past in a unique experience. Visit Bradford Industrial Museum, an original 19th Century spinning mill complex, complete with mill owner's house, back-to-back cottages and job masters' stables with working shire horses or the uniquely historical Elsecar Heritage Centre, Barnsley, which has been restored to create a novel heritage attraction. The only Newcomen type engine, worldwide, to remain in its original location, a unique scheduled ancient monument, a legacy to the Industrial age.
Sir Titus Salts built Salts Mill (www.saltsmill.org.uk/), a very grand textile mill, providing improved conditions for his mill workers. The Mill first opened in 1853, and changed to the current use in 1987 into a world of art, music, books, flowers and shops. View the working conditions for local coal miners at the National Coal Mining Museum (www.ncm.org.uk/) near Wakefield or visit the reconstructed local buildings at Ryedale Folk Museum (www.ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk/) in Hutton-le-Hole.
Standedge is Britain’s highest, longest and deepest canal tunnel in Britain, on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, which was part of a £30+million Heritage Lottery funded restoration dubbed the impossible restoration. The Visitor Centre (a former warehouse) on site is also free to visitors.