Great Britain -- Description and travel; Railroad travel -- Great Britain; Railroads -- Great Britain
The Yorkshire woollen manufacture is distributed over an area of nearly forty
miles by twenty, occupied by clothing towns and villages. Leeds, Bradford,
Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, and Wakefield, are the great manufacturing
centres. Mixed or coloured cloths are made principally in villages west of
Leeds and Wakefield; white or undyed cloths are made chiefly in the villages
occupying a belt of country extending from near Wakefield to Shipley. These
two districts are tolerably distinct, but at the margins of the two both
kinds of cloth are manufactured. Flannels and baizes are the principal
woollen articles made in and near Halifax, together with cloth for the use of
the army. Blankets are made in the line between Leeds and Huddersfield.
Bradford provides very largely the spun worsted required for the various
manufactures. Stuffs are made at Bradford, Halifax, and Leeds, and narrow
cloths at Huddersfield. Saddleworth furnishes broadcloth and kerseymeres. As
a specimen of the variety of articles produced in one factory, take the
following list, exhibited in the Crystal Palace by a Huddersfield
manufacturer:--"Summer shawls; summer coatings; winter woollen shawls;
vestings; cloakings; table covers; patent woollen cloth for gloves; do.
alpaca do.; do. rabbits' down do.; trowserings; stockingnett do."
We may observe, that there is no more pleasant mode of investigating the
processes of the woollen manufacture, for those resident in the south of
England, than a visit to the beautiful valley of the Stroud, in
Gloucestershire, where the finest cloths, and certain shawls and fancy goods,
are manufactured in perfection in the midst of the loveliest scenery. White-
walled factories, with their resounding water-wheels, stand not unpicturesque
among green-wooded gorges, by the side of flowing streams, affording
comfortable well-paid employment to some thousand working hands of men and
women, boys and girls.
THROUGH LINCOLNSHIRE TO SHEFFIELD.
On leaving Leeds there is ample choice of routes. It is equally easy to make
for the lake districts of Cumberland and Westmoreland, or to proceed to York,
and on by Newcastle to Scotland, or to take the road to the east coast, and
compare Hull with Liverpool--a comparison which will not be attended with any
advantage to the municipal authorities of Hull.
The aldermen of Hull are of the ancient kind--"slow," in the most emphatic
sense of the term. For proof,--we have only need to examine their docks,
piers, and landing-places; the last of which are being improved, very much
against the will of the authorities, by a Lincolnshire railway company.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account