Esholt Sewage Works

The excitement is palpable on the faces of these textile workers from the 1930s as they gather for a works outing, hanging out from the coaches as they head off down cobbled streets.

This is a relatively rare film of a works outing from the 1930s, as the workers and their children, all in their finest outfits, arrive to board one of the long line of coaches parked in the centre of Wakefield. Away from the factory floor the camaraderie among the women, in their fashionable French style white caps, is very evident, as is the communal spirit of the whole group.

This trip out to Scarborough was in celebration of the 80th birthday of Sir Edmund Stonehouse (the film says ‘Stonehursts'), the owner of M P Stonehouse Ltd. Wakefield was a major centre of the textile industry with the Albion Mills, on Ings Road, established in 1853 by former sea captain Matthew Porritt Stonehouse. The company, employing some 250 workers manufacturing woollen worsted yarns for carpets, remained in family ownership until 1987, with the mill being demolished in 1998. It wasn’t until 1938 that workers become entitled to paid holiday leave, and so it wasn’t until the 1950s that works weeks really took off, seeing huge lines of coaches heading out from textile towns for coastal resorts.