AN historic building in Saltaire has featured on a national TV show.

Salts Mill was showcased as part of Channel 5's new Our Great Yorkshire Life series.

Presenter Christa Ackroyd interviewed staff at Salts Mill and also Bradford-born photographer Ian Beesley, who has captured images at the mil over the last decade.

His association with the mill began in the early 1980s, when he was commissioned by the then named National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford to document the demise of the textile trade.

 

He took a number of pictures in the weaving mill at Salts Mill for 18 months from February 1985. But only four of them were ever displayed until he held an exhibition at the Saltaire site in 2017.

Speaking on the programme, broadcast last night, Mr Beesley said: "It was at one time, the longest room in Europe.

"It's unique, not just the building itself, but the fact that it's with the village and where it is.

"A lot of the work that I have done has been about industrial demise.

"You've got this absence of presence. You can tell that the people worked there, but there is nobody there.

"That's quite tragic in some respects."