Sir Titus Salt - Bradford, UK
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 53° 47.659 W 001° 45.124
30U E 582202 N 5961359
This stone bust of Sir Titus Salt is number two of a series of thirteen busts of historic figures that adorn the walls of the former Wool Exchange in Bradford City Centre.
Waymark Code: WMX76B
Location: Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 12/06/2017
Views: 0
Historically Bradford was a a large textile city with many mills and at one time was considered the wool capital of the world.
Trading in wool was carried out in the wool exchange that was built in 1867 by architects Lockwood and Mawson. The design is similar to the great Flemish Cloth Halls on mainland Europe but the style is Venetian Gothic, particularly in the polychromy and the serrated openwork of the parapet cresting.
The building was intended to reflect the importance of Bradford as an important textile city.
On the façades facing Market Street and Bank Street are thirteen roundels with larger than life size carved busts of notable people: Facing Market Street Bradford industralists (Cobden, Salt and Lister), inventors of important machines for the Industrial Revolution (Stephenson, Watt, and Arkwright), and politicians (Gladstone and Palmerston); and facing Bank Street five explorers: Raleigh, Drake, Columbus, Cook and Anson.
This bust is on the right hand side of the facade on Market Street and represents Sir Titus Salt.
Sir Titus Salt
Sir Titus Salt was a successful mill owner in Bradford. He pre-dated Lister, bust number six in the sequence, somewhat who was only 19 when Salt died.
Salt at one point had 5 mills and was the biggest employer in Bradford. However Living conditions in the city were very poor for the mill workers and after he became mayor he tried to campaign for better housing conditions.
When this failed, he decided to take action himself. He bought land within Bradford’s boundary, but in an unpolluted area of the borough. He then built a large mill designed to be well lit and ventilated, and included after burners on his boilers to reduce pollution.
He also built a model village for his workers, with good housing, public baths, a school, a church, a hospital and a public park.
The village was located on the banks of the River Aire and he named it Saltaire. He employed Lockwood and Mawson (the same architects who later designed this wool exchange) as his architects for all the buildings in the village. In 2001 UNESCO designated the village as a World Heritage Site, and it is the only one in the world where the whole site was designed by one firm of architects. Saltaire is also an Anchor Point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage in the categories of 'Textiles' and 'Production & Manufacturing'.
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