2013

SE2734 : Leeds Industrial Museum, Machine Room

taken 11 years ago, near to Headingley, Leeds, England

Leeds Industrial Museum, Machine Room
Leeds Industrial Museum, Machine Room
In the 19th century Leeds tailors like Montague Burton radically changed their industry. By adopting new machinery and using innovative production techniques, they began to produce on a mass scale significantly reducing the cost of a suit, making it affordable to most men. By the 20th century, the Leeds tailoring industry employed the vast majority of the city’s population and Leeds tailors produced almost half of the suits worn by British men.

The machine room was the largest department in the tailoring factories. Sometimes more than 1000 machinists worked in a single room. Originally, the women worked side by side on long benches which allowed them to chat whilst the sewed but with the widespread introduction of electric powered machines in the 1900s, the bench system disappeared.

The noise of the sewing machines was loud and constant. The women worked flat out as they were paid “piece rate” which meant that they were paid by the number of items they produced, rather than the number of hours they worked.
Leeds Industrial Museum, Armley Mills

The Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills is a museum of industrial heritage which includes collections of textile machinery, railway equipment and heavy engineering amongst others. It is housed in a Grade II* listed building which was once the world's largest woollen mill.

There have been mills on the Armley Mills site since the 17th century. These mills were destroyed by a fire in 1805 but they were rapidly replaced with the buildings which can be seen today. From the early 19th century Armley Mills became one of the world's largest woollen mills, continuing the city's cloth-making tradition until it closed as a commercial mill in 1969. The site was taken over by Leeds City Council and reopened in 1982 as a museum illustrating the industrial heritage of the mill itself and the city as a whole.


Creative Commons Licence [Some Rights Reserved]   © Copyright David Dixon and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
This photo is linked from: Automatic Clusters: · Leeds Industrial Museum [97] ·
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SE2734, 834 images   (more nearby 🔍)
Photographer
David Dixon   (more nearby)
Date Taken
Saturday, 25 May, 2013   (more nearby)
Submitted
Thursday, 30 May, 2013
Subject Location
OSGB36: geotagged! SE 2756 3417 [10m precision]
WGS84: 53:48.1862N 1:34.9812W
Camera Location
OSGB36: geotagged! SE 2756 3415
View Direction
NORTH (about 0 degrees)
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Image classification(about): Supplemental image
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