The Mill yard

Salts Mill looks huge from the outside but it's only when you start to explore within that its massive size and numerous wings and sheds really become evident. The photo above is the entrance from Victoria Road and the centre of Saltaire - the 'back entrance', one might say, although many visitors come in this way. (The front entrance on the south side is accessed from the Mill's car park and nowadays has a modern glass and steel canopy.) Hundreds of the mill's workers must have come through this gate, in through the door on the right (where the blue and white sign now is) and up the stone stairs inside, to get to their work every day. There's an archive photo HERE taken in 1946 and reputed to be Salts Mill, though it looks somewhat different.

The building still houses several businesses and high tech industries (mostly in the parts to the left and beyond), with the retail/visitor areas of shops, cafés and galleries mainly in the south wing on the right. But during the working day when everybody is inside, it's quiet - especially in winter when there are fewer tourists. Then you can walk up the yard and under the archway, feeling the stone setts under your boots and imagining, perhaps, that you're a mill girl on an errand.