The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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New Plant
A bright future seems to be looming as the mule spun woollen yarns are warped and wefted on the shuttle, while the women mill workers scuttle between machines with baskets of cones.
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Overview
From a shunter using his shunting pole to couple up wagons, to a state of the art loom being installed in a wool mill in Elland, this is a fascinating film from 1950. The looms are shown in action, wafting and warping, with women workers weaving in between busily replacing the cones and pirns. One of many West Riding woollen mills with high hopes in the immediate post war period which were soon to fall by the wayside with the arrival of synthetic fibres.
This is one of many fine films made by Ted Warburton, an early member of the Halifax Cine Club, mainly of family, from the end of the war through to the 1970s. It isn’t known what relation Warburton might have had with James Crowther Ltd. of Elland, nor indeed is anything known of the company, which was one of many textile companies in West Yorkshire which have disappeared in the mists of time. In 1949 the Yorkshire Textile Industry Directory still listed more than 600 woollen and worsted cloth manufacturers. The Broad Cloth Loom seen being delivered and assembled would have been a 948 Box Loader loom for heavy fabrics, with six colour automatic looms, first produced in 1948 by the Swiss company of Saurer.
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