Film showing of Once Upon a Sheep, a film about the woolen industry in Bradford. The film was made in 1946 by Frank Hill, who worked for The Wool (and Allied) Textile Employer’s Council and follows the process that takes wool from the farmyard to the catwalk. A silent copy of the film was found in the archives of Bradford Movie Makers and has recently been digitised.

The aim of the screening is to have interesting discussions with those who have experience of working in the industry.

Content Notes

Sensory

• Could hear & smell mills from outside
• The rhythm of the loom had a physical presence – you could feel it

Processes, skills & knowledge

• Finishing & dying done together as both are wet processes
• Washing & dying were specialised skills
• ‘slither’ or ‘slyther’ both valid pronunciation
• Wool sorters had top wages? But later weaving?
• Separating and sorting was very skilled labour – feel, look, smell
• Hard to recruit wool sorters
• Skill of wool sorting and grading is still required today, it is still done by humans, not machines
• Tex and Decitex short-lived measurements
• ‘new metric’ also a recent measure of fineness
• Milange fleece = a mixture
• Vertical mill = one that does the whole process
• 2 current companies in Bradford that specialise in scouring
• ‘Spinning Jenny’ comes from ‘spinning Jinny’