Makers - Cashmere mill, West Yorkshire
It’s the distinctive whizz and thump of a dozen or more looms that one first notices on stepping onto the floor of the Yorkshire cashmere mill.
Their percussion seems at first to set the rhythm of the place. Not so. It is instead set by the steady method by which the workers go about their business: passing luxuriant fabrics along the line, from hand to hand to machine and back again.
The mill sits in the area still known as the Heavy Woollen District. Heavy not, presumably, in the yoof sense, but the literal one, though either would be apt. Now well into its third century, nowhere in the country does machine-finished wool and cashmere better. The cloths off its line really are of the top-most quality — cloth that used well can lift a good garment up a notch. Rolls of the stuff festoon the place: some heaved to and fro, from stage to stage; others — including decades-worths of archival rolls — stacked on shelves as far as the eye can see, among them an arsenal of anti-moth provisions.
