Historian’s visit to region’s World Heritage village

A TV historian visited a Yorkshire World Heritage site, after accepting an invitation from a volunteer group on social media.

Dan Snow, who presents history programmes and has a slot on the BBC’s The One Show, met with the Saltaire Collection – the village’s community archives.

He was shown around the Victorian model village and its historic sites, including the famous Salts Mill.

The West Yorkshire village, featuring textile mills, public buildings and workers’ housing near Shipley, was built in 1851 by Sir Titus Salt.

“Dan showed interest in all we had to show him and spoke to volunteers about their role in preserving the history of this world ranking industrial village and documenting the lives of the people who lived and worked here,” a spokeswoman for Saltaire Collection said.

“At the end of his visit he told us: ‘What strikes me about Saltaire is that it is unique both in the ambition of its founder for a work and welfare community and also in the fact that there is just as much ambition in the present in maintaining this community.’”

His visit on Monday came after the organisation reached out to Mr Snow, inset, via the social media website Twitter, asking if he would like to “view the historical treasures of Saltaire”.

During his visit, Mr Snow met Zoe Silver, from Salts Mill in the Unesco World Heritage village, and with Sheena Campbell, Saltaire’s World Heritage Officer.

He also explored the People and Process exhibition, where he was introduced to staff and volunteers from the Saltaire Collection and shown the archives items on display there. These include some of the Salt family china, various 1887 Royal Jubilee Exhibition souvenirs and textile sample pattern books.

Ian Watson, who volunteers at the Saltaire Collection and was born in the village, said: “It was a great pleasure to meet Dan and to show him some of the highlights of our collection.

“We are very proud of what we have achieved and hope to welcome many more visitors from around the world, both in person and through our website, and share our history with them”.

The Saltaire Collection, based at Shipley College, is the archive of the village’s history, managed by the Saltaire World Heritage Education Association charity.

It plans to launch a new website on April 9 featuring records and images from the collection.