During Britain’s Industrial Revolution, Bradford became known as the wool capital of the world thanks to its vast concentration of textile mills and factories. Today many of its 19th-century honey-coloured buildings are reminders of that illustrious heyday, including what is now the Bradford Industrial Museum. The museum features in episode 1 of the new adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small.
Set in an old spinning mill, it allows visitors to explore the industrial and social heritage of West Yorkshire at a time that immediately preceded the 1930s era in which James Herriot set his classic books. You’ll see working machinery, back-to-back mill workers’ houses and get a feel for the sights, sounds and smells of a 19th-century woollen mill. Of course, James Herriot’s rural world of farming and sheep rearing would have been a prime source for the wool used in Bradford’s thriving textile industry in the early 1900s.
