Colne Valley Museum

This weekend I decided to visit the Colne Valley Museum in Cliff ash, Golcar, Huddersfield. The Colne valley museum is based in a row of ex-weavers cottages, which were built by a family of independent cloth manufacturers, the Pearson's, whose relatives still live in the village today. The row of 3 cottages are now all  owned by the Colne valley museum, and they hope to develop the newly acquired space into model bedrooms, of how the weavers would have lived there.

What I  particularly liked about these cottages was their traditionalism; they represented the very old craft which is weaving and how the family of cloth manufacturers would have lived within the cottages and where the various stages of weaving would have taken place. The weavers cottages are split up into stages, the lower level (below image) would have been where the family lived at all times. They would have bathed here, cooked and spent the majority of their free time all in this one room together which is incredibly hard to imagine in today's society. 

I found it to be an incredibly informative visit as I was also able to go up stairs and learn how wool would have been spun both on spinning wheels and also on the 'Spinning Jenny'. Seeing the spinning jenny in action was very inspiring and amazing to see as obviously as fibres are now mechanically spun into yarn through computerised machinery. Below are the images of the spinning wheels and the spinning jenny. 

 
The staff at the museum were very chatty and dressed traditionally which I think only added to the idea of being transported back into the time during the 1800's when weaving families lived here. The entire museum is a homage to the craft that is weaving as well as offering  displays of a cobblers, where sometimes there is actually a cobbler making shoes however he was not the upon my visit. The looms there are also still being used, and on the smaller loom in the spinning room they allow visiting schools to spin thread themselves and also to have a go at weaving on the old wooden looms. Below are images of the looms and the warping frame.

 

The visit to this museum really opened my eyes more to the traditional ways of weaving and also an insight into the heritage of weaving in Huddersfield.