Catalogue description Leeds Industrial Museum

This record is held by Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills

Details of LIM
Reference: LIM
Title: Leeds Industrial Museum
Description:

Material relating to the Leeds-based locomotive builders Hunslet Engine Co, Hudswell-Clarke, Manning Wardle and Kitson; also Kerr-Stuart of Stoke on Trent and Avonside of Bristol, comprising drawings, photographs
Date: 19th century-20th century
Held by: Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills, not available at The National Archives
Language: English
Creator:

Hunslet Engine Co, locomotive builders of Leeds

Hudswell-Clarke, locomotive builders of Leeds

Manning Wardle and Kitson, locomotive builders of Leeds

Kerr-Stuart, locomotive builders of Stoke on Trent

Avonside, locomotive builders of Bristol
Access conditions:

View by appointment
Subjects:
  • Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire
  • Bristol
  • Stoke on Trent
Administrative / biographical background:

Armley Mills industrial museum was once the world's largest woollen mill. Exhibits dating from the 18th and 19th centuries show the history of textiles, clothing and engine and locomotive manufacture in the area. The museum also illustrates the history of cinema projections, including the first moving pictures taken in Leeds, as well as 1920s silent movies. During the regular' working weekends' several exhibits are operated including water wheels, a steam engine and the great spinning 'mules'.

 

There have been mills on this site since the 17th Century, the original buildings having been developed in the late 18th century when a woollen mill and a corn mill were built. A fire in 1805 destroyed these mills but they were rapidly replaced with the building which can be seen today. From the early 19th Century Armley Mills became one of the world's largest woollen mills, continuing the cloth-making tradition until Leeds City Council took over the Mills in 1969 in order to create a museum illustrating the mills' and the city's industrial past.
Link to NRA Record:

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