Built on Cloth: Sunny Bank Mills Heritage Festival

Tucked away in the heart of Pudsey, Leeds, Sunny Bank Mills has witnessed nearly two centuries of Yorkshire’s textile story. Founded in 1829 as The Farsley Club Mill, this was no ordinary enterprise. It began as a collaborative gamble by local clothiers, who pooled their resources to build a scribbling and fulling mill. Over time, the mill grew into a powerhouse of worsted spinning and weaving under the formidable Edwin Woodhouse, later becoming synonymous with fine cloth under the stewardship of the Ives family and the Gaunts.

Sunny Bank Mills fabric sample books, as viewed in the heritage archive.

Like many northern mills, Sunny Bank’s fortunes ebbed and flowed with global markets: the Great Depression, the boom years of the ’50s and ’60s, and the sharp decline following the Gulf War. By 2008, production had ceased, and it seemed like another thread in the story of Britain’s industrial decline. But mills, like textiles, are resilient. In 2010, John and William Gaunt set out on a bold regeneration project. They transformed the site into a creative hub, now home to 75 businesses, a gallery, studios, and a much-loved archive preserving over 180 years of cloth production...

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Image Credits:

All images courtesy of Sunny Bank Mills.