Today we visited the village of Saltaire, founded in 1853. Sir Titus Salt, a leading industrialist in the Yorkshire wool industry, made textiles from worsted alpaca in his model village. Salt moved his entire business (five separate mills) from Bradford to provide better arrangements for his workers and to site his large textile mill by a canal and a railway.
Salt built an impressive village for his workers. There were neat stone houses, wash-houses with running water, bath-houses, a hospital, as well as a school, with a library, a reading room, a concert hall, billiard room, science laboratory and gymnasium.
A Congregationalist, Salt also built a large church in the town for his workers. Salt attended the church himself and is said to sit in the third row every Sunday. Today, the church is listed as Grade I by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and the surrounding village as Grade II.
Sir Titus died in 1876 and was interred in the mausoleum adjacent to the church, today a member of the United Reformed Church. At the time of his death, he was worth approximately £2 million (£480 million in 2009 pounds).
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