ALL creatures great and small have made a historic building in Saltaire their new home after a college that specialises in animal care moved into the village.

Around 130 pupils from Askham Bryan College made the move to Shipley College’s Mill Building last week, as did animals including reptiles, meerkats, hissing cockroaches and an albino skunk named Eddy.

The animal management and equine course students swapped their campus in Great Horton for the building in the centre of the World Heritage Site.

Askham Bryan College’s main campus is in York, but it has 3,900 students at 11 sites across the North of England where it runs a variety of further and higher education courses.

As part of the move, many of the building’s rooms have been converted to accommodate pens and tanks for the variety of mammals, fish and reptiles in the college.

Some of the creatures that have made the move include snakes, hedgehog like tenrecs, a bearded dragon and turtles.

And the building’s read yard area, just a few feet from one of the platforms at Saltaire Railway Station, is now filled with hutches for rabbits, ferrets, including a trio called Rita, Sue and Bob, and chickens.

The mill building was originally the dining hall for the thousands of workers at Salts Mill, on the other side of Victoria Road. It is now one of the many buildings in Saltaire run by Shipley College, and the building has been used in recent years for a number of college courses.

However, when many of these courses moved to the college’s new £2 million Jonathan Silver building which opened last year, it freed up the space that is now being used by Askham Bryan pupils.

As well as the 130 students, 15 staff have also made the move from Great Horton.

The Mill Building will be home to level 2-3 Animal Management students and level 2-3 Equine Horse Care students.

The college has praised Shipley College for the fast turnaround in preparing the building for its move.

Kelly Harris, who is on an animal management course, said: “It is so much better being here in Saltaire. It is great in this building.

“The animals have coped really well in the move.”

Luke Thompson, another of the animal management students who has just moved to the Saltaire building, said: “There are some great resources here, it is nice to have these outdoor enclosures. The animals’ facilities have really improved.”

Both students hope to go on to work as zoo keepers.

They said the location of the building, so close to Robert’s Park and the countryside around Baildon and Saltaire, was a major improvement over the Great Horton campus.

Pupils from across West Yorkshire, including Leeds, Dewsbury and Halifax, attend the college, and so its new location, right next to the rail station and on the Leeds and Bradford lines, makes it easier for most of the students to get to.

Pupils on the courses visit sites such as Yorkshire Wildlife Park, Flamingo Land, Chester Zoo and Ponderosa Rare Breeds Farm as part of their studies. It is hoped that the new location will lead to links between the college and farms within the Shipley area.

Campus principal Wes Johnson said: “We have long standing links with West Yorkshire and this will be a wonderful base for our students, providing a positive and enriching learning and teaching environment.”

A large percentage of students obtain places at university studying courses such as Conservation Wildlife, Veterinary Nursing, Animal Management and Agriculture.

Last year Shipley College was awarded a £119,000 grant from the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership to refurbish the building.