Domestic bliss

Sewing machines and the first power loom ever produced are a legacy of the engineering firms, the textiles and tanneries which were once the lifeblood of Keighley’s economy. How things have changed.

Growing up in Keighley, Ian Dewhirst recalls the time when the town was cloaked in thick smog. The only fresh air they enjoyed was during feast weeks when the mills, employing thousands of people, would close, giving them valuable family time.

He said: “It was very different to what it is now. We still had industry, textiles and engineering were still very strong.

“Chimneys in the centre used to smoke before smoke control and you could only see if you went up on the hills above Keighley. You couldn’t see the town properly because a grey pall hung over it, but at Keighley Feast, the annual holiday, you could see the town because the chimneys weren’t smoking.

“When my mother used to put the washing out she’d look and see which way the wind was blowing before deciding whether to put it out or not.

“Textiles and engineering were the main industry. They made lathes and looms and machine tools. Firms like Dean Smith and Grace’s.”

The hamlet of Goose Eye was the one-time home of Keighley’s paper-making company. The paper produced here was, according to Ian, used to print bank notes, predominantly Australian and Indian money.

Industry exists, albeit on a smaller scale and, perhaps, with less global significance. Well, that was until a certain celebrity spoke of her love of Landlord. When Madonna told how she enjoyed the ale brewed by one of Keighley’s major exports – Timothy Taylor – the world sat up and took notice.

Once again this West Yorkshire town where some of the streets are named after celebrities from bygone times – Royalty, notable politicians such as Gladstone and the prominent landowner, the Duke of Devonshire – was catapulted back into worldwide recognition.

Timothy Taylor is one of the town’s greatest success stories.

Ian said: “They started in 1856 and it is still a family firm. Madonna drinking Landlord gave it a tremendous boost. It’s all over the place now and they recently extended the premises at Ingrow.”

Ian’s extensive knowledge about the town and what goes on within stems from his lifelong association with the place. He was born here and apart from the three years he spent studying for his English Literature degree at university and two years in the army it is all he has known.

Keighley is his home and a place he’s spent the best part of his life researching. And luckily for Ian he didn’t have to look too far for the material for his books about the town – more than three decades of his working life were spent in the reference section at Keighley Library where we met up on a cold winter’s day.

“I lived in Fell Lane when I was a boy. You could walk out from where I lived and it was fields and countryside. Now it’s housing estates,” says Ian.

The changes Keighley has witnessed are no different from any other area of the county. Through his books, newspaper articles and talks, Ian is preserving Keighley’s past.

“Keighley became a borough in 1882 and I would say the golden age was 1882 to 1914. The First World War changed a lot of things.

“All our prominent buildings and the general atmosphere of the town still date to the late Victorian and Edwardian era because that is when they got three public parks, they widened the streets and built these marvellous shops with ornamental stone carvings on them. Nearly all date to the First World War period,” explains Ian.

The Cavendish Arcade with its ornate canopy symbolises the desire of those looking after the interests of the town at that time to introduce a grandness.

Today Keighley’s main street is inhabited by a mix of shops, banks and offices. “When they built the Airedale Centre it moved the centre of gravity away into the shopping precinct,” says Ian.

The introduction of a modern way of shopping wasn’t the only thing to shape Keighley’s future. Local Government reorganisation in 1974 had a major impact on the town and it appears to be something Ian is still struggling to comes to terms with.

“It was a great blow for Keighley because we had managed our own affairs from the reign of Elizabeth I.”

Ian appreciates it has happened in other places too and he can empathise with those towns who are fighting to retain their identity and independence from the authorities governing them.

“Keighley has an identity but I don’t think it has as strong an identity. Keighley looms were going all over the world and you think of people we have had in Keighley, like Sir Swire Smith. He was a pioneer in technical education – he was a national figure. And Gordon Bottomley, the poet and playwright born in 1874. He moved away to Morecambe Bay at 18 but he was born and educated here.”

Ian himself is a minor celebrity. ‘Mr Keighley’ as he is known has a Keighley train on the Northern Rail line named after him, which leads us on to another of Keighley’s ‘great initiatives’.

When British Rail closed the town’s standard gauge branch line which had been built in 1867 by local mill owners, a dedicated group of volunteers took it over.

The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway reopened in 1968 transporting communters, tourists and day-trippers to destinations including historic Haworth – home to the famous Bronte siblings.

“It is a very lively line which appears on film and TV,” says Ian.

Sherlock Holmes, Last Of The Summer Wine, Sons and Lovers, Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em, Poirot, A Touch Of Frost, Where The Heart Is and The Royal are just some of the popular TV series the railway has appeared in. But its greatest claim to fame was providing the setting for the 1970 film version of Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children.

“It’s one of the success stories of Keighley,” says Ian.

This typically Northern town has a population of around 60,000. Mixed enterprise, retail outlets, boutiques and, refreshingly considering we are living in an era when most people entertain at home rather than going to the local, pubs occupy some of the beautiful old buildings on Keighley’s main street.

Interestingly though, part of Keighley’s past lies below. Some years ago the restoration of the town’s late Victorian Royal Arcade led to the discovery of a subterranean street.

A row of shops, some still with glass in their windows, and some stables lay undisturbed until workmen broke through, revealing their existence.

It was a surprise for the building’s owner, Frank Brook, “We shifted 60,000 tonnes of rubbish and there were all these shop fronts,” he recalls.

Frank, who bought the building a decade ago, wanted people to be able to see part of Keighley’s past. He installed a staircase during the renovations allowing people to go down and see Keighley’s ‘hidden street.’ Hundreds passed through and the proceeds Frank made from viewing what was fast becoming Keighley’s new tourist attraction, were sent to charity.

The highlight for him was conducting a private tour for the Duchess of Devonshire and her estate manager. Her interest stems from the building once having belonged to the ancestors of her husband, the Duke of Devonshire.

Frank has since restricted viewings due to health and safety but visitors can learn all about the renovation project and the discovery of the hidden street, which is now listed on display boards within the arcade.

Today a guitar shop, believed to be the largest in the North, mingles with a range of other retail outlets within the arcade.

Before transportation expanded our choice of leisure and entertainment, Keighley’s inhabitants were content to spend their time in its public parks.

Keighley had eight cinemas at one time, the most magnificent being the purpose-built Ritz.

Ian recalls in 1938 the Ritz was Keighley’s ‘Super Cinema’ in the days before multiplexes occupied swathes of land on city outskirts. “It had a restaurant, you could eat there any time of the day and it had a car park.”

The Ritz is still serving the purpose for which it was built, to provide entertainment, and is now a bingo hall.

Ian remembers as youngsters what they didn’t have they didn’t miss. They made their own entertainment. “When I was a young boy I wasn’t aware we were deprived – we were compared with children nowadays. It was a completely different way of life.

“Children now go to Disneyland, but we went to picnics at Newsholme Dean. We’d walk there and back and had a good half day out. Occasionally we got to Morecambe – that was the end of the earth. You couldn’t think of going any further than Morecambe!” smiles the 73-year-old.

A reminder of Ian’s childhood which is still going today is the Keighley Gala. Its original purpose, when it was set up in 1877 by the Keighley Friendly Societies, was to raise funds for the then Keighley Cottage Hospital. “Now the National Health Service has come along and the Friendly Societies are not what they used to be but we still have the gala every year,” says Ian.

Another important reminder of Keighley’s past, and Ian’s favourite place to visit, is Cliffe Castle museum.

It was once an elaborate mansion belonging to local Victorian millionaire and textile manufacturer, Henry Isaac Butterfield. Now museum manager, Daru Rooke, explains how they are in the process of restoring its rooms to their original glamour. The first to be completed is the grand drawing room.

“Cliffe Castle was remodelled in the 1880s for the local industrialist Henry Isaac Butterfield. He rebuilt it to be one of the grandest houses in the district. It had all the mod cons, a marble entertainment bar to the latest steam powered central heating!” says Daru.

“But the jewel in the crown was the grand drawing room, or great drawing room as it was called. He had French interior decorators design it and French decorators painted the ceiling feature of cavorting cherubs. He also had this costly woven silk brought in. He’d seen it in Paris and got it cheaper in London and it was gold silk damask woven with peacocks and pheasants.”

Sadly, in the 1950s, when Cliffe Castle became a museum much of the Victorian splendour, including the damask, was ripped out and replaced with white gloss.

Thankfully attitudes have changed and we are more likely to cling on to the old and get rid of the new. Six years ago the project to restore the grand drawing room to its former glory began. Funding came from various organisations including Renaissance Yorkshire and, with the talents of specialist professionals living within Keighley and Bradford, it can now be unveiled.

The elaborate curtains have been created by Gill Lightfoot at Material Worth, the gilding has been done by Pam Keeton and the reproduction period lights have been provided by Home & Garden near Bradford. “All the experts are within a ten-mile radius of Keighley and within Keighley itself,” explains Daru.

He says the people of the area ‘deserve to see the house in its original glory.’ Keighley needs people like Daru and Ian who care about it and who want to preserve its past as well as look after its future.

Ian loves the familiarity of the place and the people. “If I moved away I would miss the people I know in Keighley and I’m doing things all the time. I’d also be anonymous if I moved anywhere else so it partly is the fact of being a minor local celebrity! It’s a nice feeling,” he smiles.

At 98, Albert Joyner’s claim to fame is he is the oldest surviving member of the Royal Marines who lives in Keighley.

A southerner, Albert came to the town 26 years ago with his late wife to be near their only daughter.

Albert, who travelled the world during his service from 1930 to 1956, settled swiftly into Keighley life where he is involved with the ex-service community through his local Royal British Legion branch. He is also a member of the Royal Marines Association. One of his proudest moments was receiving a personal message from the Duke of Edinburgh two years ago acknowledging his 96th birthday which fell in the same month as the anniversary of the formation of the Royal Marines Corps in 1664. Albert also attended the Queen’s Garden Party in July with his daughter.

His fondest memory following his arrival in Keighley sums up the friendliness of this town. “I’d not been up here long and I went to the Post Office. It was raining and when I came out a little old lady went by and said ‘quack quack!’ I’ve never forgotten it. I thought this is Yorkshire cheerfulness.”

Industry which once drove this town may have gone but the good humour hasn’t. Keighley has weathered the changes well and that is mainly down to its people.