TOWARDS the end of 2019, a small ruinous building off Staveley Road in Ingrow was demolished. It had fallen into disrepair and been vandalised after its last occupants had departed some ten years earlier. Although largely unknown, it was a building of major significance to Keighley. It was the first purpose-built mill of the town’s industrial era. Its origins had nothing to do with any of the traditional trades or crafts that had previously been practised in the area. It was a water-powered wire drawing mill built by Thomas Ramsden of Halifax, a manufacturer of carding combs for the cotton and woollen industry.
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March 5, 2021 The Queen s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, with Sir Thomas Lawrence s George IV, 1821. Credit: Malcolm Park/Alamy Live News. Credit: Alamy
Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830) graduated from being a child prodigy who sold his first sketch aged five to a great portraitist who met his match in royal women. This year he is celebrated in an exhibition at The Holbourne Museum; Matthew Dennison finds out more.
Thomas Lawrence was never paid for the portrait he painted, in 1789, of George III’s wife, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Instead, the precocious 20 year old submitted the picture to the Royal Academy (RA) in the spring of 1790, where it was judged among ‘the best Portraits in the Room’.
TODAY, road traffic offences and accidents are generally associated with the advent of the motor car. But dangerous driving, speeding and road accidents were also a serious problem in the age that preceded them. Nowadays the police have the benefit of car registration plates to identify offenders. Although these did not exist in the 19th century, the law did require all backboards and tail gates on waggons and carts to clearly display the name of the owner and their town or village. Heavy fines were imposed on those who failed to display their details clearly. Offences relating to speeding vehicles were introduced under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 – “Whosoever, having the charge of a carriage or vehicle, shall by wanton or furious driving or racing, or other wilful misconduct, or by wilful neglect …. be guilty of a misdemeanor.”
STANDING a forlorn and roofless shell on the edge of Gresley Road is Low Mill. Apart from the war memorial, it is Keighley’s only Grade II listed building. Throughout the country only six per cent of listed buildings are Grade II listed and those that fall into this category do so because they are “particularly important buildings of more than special interest” and as such warrant every effort to preserve them. Much abused and neglected over the past 30 years, Low Mill was the very first cotton mill to be built in Yorkshire at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.