SALTAIRE, England"Paternalism" isnt a word used much anymore, at least not in a good sense. But 150 years ago things were different.
In the 1840s, the Industrial Revolution was gathering steam in England, making some rich but worsening the conditions of many more, who worked long hours for low wages and lived in squalor.
In Bradford, near Leeds in northern England, the wool trades growth had made the city one of Englands fastest-growing, but an 1845 report on the conditions its 10,000 wool combers endured found that a typical apartment was "a miserable cellar in which four persons work, and fivesleep; four feet below the surface. Walls black with damp stench intolerable." Moral decay drink, drugs vied with physical illness like cholera, and tuberculosis to see which could carry off workers quicker.
Paternalism was a response. In an effort to improve conditions, proprietors took their workers on days in the country where the air was fresh. Others provided allotment gardens, or schools, or better accommodation. The most idealistic built whole villages.
Titus Salt, a Bradford textile merchant whod done exceedingly well, was in the front rank of the paternalists. In 1851, he began building a town that would ultimately be home to 4,500. He called it Saltaire and named its streets after his 11 children. In 2001, little changed from its founders day, it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Visitors today can walk its neatly laid-out streets and admire the touches that made it special: its unique Italianate/Victorian architecture, its lead-glass windows, its outhouses in every backyard. They can marvel at the gigantic mill that once held 1,200 looms and turned out nearly 30 kilometres of cloth daily.
Saltaire was built of brick and made to last. Although the last loom stopped in 1986 and the workers are long gone, houses and mill have both found new purpose. The homes have become popular with young professionals, who use the Saltaire train station to commute to jobs in Bradford or Leeds (10-20 minutes away).
That has led to a blossoming of cafés and shops along Victoria Road, among them a store selling Chinese antique furniture and the Dont Tell Titus Bar & Restaurant. (Salt, a teetotaller, wouldnt allow liquor in Saltaire.)
The chief delight of the town, though, is Salt Mill. Like the rest of the World Heritage Site, its architecture has Italianate flourishes: square cupolas, rounded windows and a symmetrical façade six storeys high and 166 metres long.
The mill now showcases one of the worlds largest collections of works by David Hockney, a Bradford lad made good. More than 60 of his pieces are on display in the huge main-floor gallery/art shop. Upstairs are a spacious bookstore and two restaurants. More retailers a rug merchant, an interior-design store are scattered through the immense building.
The only drawback is that Saltaire is so successful as a going concern that none of the workers homes have been restored to its 1850s condition. That, and something to show how other millworkers lived, could suggest that paternalism this 19th-century version was no bad thing.
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For more information on Saltaire visit www.saltairevillage.info. For information on travel in Britain go to the Visit Britain website at www.visitbritain.com
For more travel stories, visit www.culturelocker.com.
