Hundreds of workers stream out of the gates of Howarth’s Mill on Ordsall Lane in Salford in this incredible piece of video footage from 115 years ago.
It’s the first in a new series of archive videos launched by the British Film Institute for their ‘Britain on Film’ project.
The previously unseen one-minute clip dates from 1900, which makes it some of the oldest video footage of Salford available.
Richard Howarth’s cotton mill on Ordsall Lane opened in 1872 and at its peak employed nearly 2,000 people.
It was known locally as Dickie Howarth’s (an abbreviation of Richard) and employed generations of Salfordians over the years.
Many would work double shifts to cope with the booming demand for cotton goods, as workers from Salford and Manchester stoked the fires of the Industrial Revolution.
The first thing to strike the viewer in this video clip – apart from the smiles on the faces of the workers – is that some of those involved in the daily grind appear to be no more than young teenagers.
The first people out of the factory gates to make the walk home are young girls dressed in white smocks – garments typical of the age. They’re followed by women almost exclusively with shawls wrapped around their heads and the workforce of men and boys in brimmed hats.
The smiles on their faces presumably don’t come from the satisfaction of a hard day’s work well done, but rather from spotting a man on a street corner with a film camera, which would itself be incredibly rare.
It’s quite possible this was the first time many of them had ever had their picture captured by a camera.
Those who are too young to be factory workers – even in 1900 – wait outside the gates for family to emerge.
Sadly these young boys would be amongst the first to be called up to join the Army when war broke out in August 1914, as for the other young men employed there it would have been a case of: from the factory floor to the Western Front.
It is likely that this footage was taken by the team of early picture pioneers, Mitchell and Kenyon, who documented life throughout the country, setting up their cameras wherever there were crowds or socials event.
Life in the mills must have been back breaking for the worker on the shop floor, it has been said that the noise of the looms in the mill would drown out any conversation and the women would use sign language to communicate.
At their peak, the mills in Ordsall Lane were considered first class examples of how cotton mills should be operated with such distinguished visitors as Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Salisbury, the Shah of Persia and the Sultan of Zanzibar’s signatures appearing in the Visitors’ Book.
In 1953 the company was taken over by Vantona textiles and continued trading on Ordsall Lane until the early 1970s.
At this point the manufacturing of cheap cotton goods moved to the far east, causing the closure of a vast proportion of these types of mass-employment mills.
Ordsall Lane historically was a working district, later replaced by blocks of apartments as the work dried up and the mills and factories closed.
In 2011 it gained nationwide notoriety as the street where Indian student Anuj Bidve was murdered by Kieran Stapleton.
As of 2015 more developers are eyeing up land on Ordsall Lane as brownfield sites along the banks of the River Irwell are cheap prospects for more tower blocks full of flats.
