Yorkshire Woollen Industry: A continuing study.

Over the past 5 years I have dedicated a lot of time to the research and investigation of the remnants of the once might Yorkshire Wool trade. Mainly concentrating on the remaining buildings associated with the industry: Mills. This post comprises a number of photographs taken in one of many mills visited. 

This mill’s primary use was for the knitting / weaving of fabric and cloth using circular knitting machines, of which there were many still left in situ. Many of the earlier machines were made by Mellor Bromley of Leicester, probably dating from the 1960’s with later models having the addition of ‘Wildt’ Some later 80’s and 90’s machines by Camber, also of Leicester were near the back of the knitting room. 

Threads of differing gauges were fed through the top of the machines through spools held on racks nearby, patterns are then dictated by metal pattern discs. These machines produce a ‘sock’ of cloth that are either plain or patterned and then rolled and packed.

We couldn’t put a definitive use on much of the cloth that remained as it just looked like generic material, a lot of which was half finished, with ‘socks’ still on the machines. 

The equipment was cleared very shortly after we went in by Leicester Machine Movers and conversion is about to start as of October 2015. 

You can’t get more Yorkshire than a boat that says ‘Eyup’ on the side.

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Healey Mills Depot and Marshalling Yard, Ossett.

At a loose end and in the area I found myself with a spare hour and had a blustery walk around.

Healey Mills opened in 1963 in attempt to modernise wagon-load traffic. It replaced a dozen smaller yards in the area and its purpose was to improve the efficiency of sorting and marshalling wagons into trains before sending them off to their destination. The yards featured hump-shunting, in which wagons were pushed over a ‘hump’, freewheeled into the required siding, and braked using special retarders next to the rails - all controlled from a centralised operations tower.

A purpose-built diesel depot opened alongside the yards at the end of 1966 and the two facilities saw round the clock activity with a claimed capacity of 4,000 wagons per day. Situated to the west of Wakefield, Healey Mills was ideally located for sending and receiving trains to all parts of the country, as well as handling the large number of local coal trains at the time.

But wagon-load railfreight came under increasing threat in the 1970s and 1980s due to competition from road transport. Then a double blow came with the decline of the Yorkshire coal industry and resultant reduction in coal trains, which had once formed up to 50 percent of traffic at Healey Mills.

As a result, the depot lost its own allocation of locomotives in 1984 and the marshalling yards closed in 1987 - although both were still used for stabling locomotives and trains until the early 2000s.

The redundant sidings were then used to store long lines of withdrawn Class 37, 47, 56 and 58 locomotives until 2010, after which the only operations at Healey Mills were for crew changes of passing freight trains. Of course all of these engines have now been scrapped and only a number of old bits of rolling stock are sided up. 

The site is fairly sparse yet photogenic and there's also an old maintenance building that was accessible yet stripped. Photos: 

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