I’m Lillian Moorhouse and I was born in 1923. I was born here in Shipley and I’ve lived here the majority of my life.

Anna Watkins

Hi I’m Anna, I’m fifteen years old, I was born in 1984 and I’ve lived in Shipley all my life.

Lillian

When we were young we didn’t know the word teenager; I think this is a modern thing.

Anna

Being fifteen is fine. It’s an easy lifestyle, you’re kind of given a lot of things on a plate.

Lillian

I left school at fourteen and I started work in the mill. It was quite a shock really because I didn’t particularly want to go into the mill, it was just you more or less did as your parents told you. I earned the princely sum of twelve shillings a week. That’s sixty pence today.

Anna

I wouldn’t want a job now because it’s too much responsibility for what I’d want and you wouldn’t be able to have as much freedom if you had a job. School finishes early in the day, so there’s still a lot to do. But if you had a job you’d be more tied down and I wouldn’t want that at this age.

Lillian

The atmosphere in Shipley was very very different when I was young to what it is now. All the walls and buildings were black and grimy because you see every mill chimney belched coal smoke, or every house had a coal fire.

Anna

When I think of Shipley, I think of Asda, Shipley swimming baths and that’s about it. There’s a nice curry shop, curry restaurant that I like to go to - that’s my usual - but apart from that it’s not exactly the most intriguing place. It’s a bit boring.

Lillian

When I think of Shipley now I think of it as clean and green and a very welcoming place to come home to.

Anna

Has this area changed since you were younger?

Lillian

The whole village - no, the buildings - no. It’s as it was built by Titus Salt years ago. He built the mill and he needed houses for his workers and this is how the village came about. And there were hundreds and hundreds, in fact thousands of people employed in many mills. Every street corner had a mill on it, or an engineering works.

Anna

So they all got closed down. Why did they get closed down?

Lillian

Well after the war, we kept busy during the war because a lot of the women went to work in the war when the men got called up, and after the war we sold a lot of our technology and machinery. We sold it to Asia and what-have-you and now they’ve started to turn the tables over and they are now sending us all their cheap imports.

Anna

So it’s not a big demand any more as much?

Lillian

Well, men aren’t wearing all these lovely wool suitings that they used to do - three piece suits.

Anna

If you had the choice, would you turn the clock back and live how it was then, or do you think you would keep it how it is nowadays?

Lillian

I think I much prefer it as it is nowadays. It’s cleaner, healthier, well just look at it - beautiful.

Anna

So what did you do for entertainment? Because in Saltair there isn’t a lot for us now...

Lilian

We used to come from Shipley and Wind Hill to Victoria Hall in Saltair and we used to dance, and every year we used to have a wonderful ball called Conversazioni. There wasn’t a pub in the village. Sir Titus Salt didn’t believe in his workers drinking. And he also built a hospital and he built a church and of course the schools. These houses you know, they are not a bit like the little house I used to live in - two up and two down. There’s a little elderly lady lives there now called Kathleen, if you can call 91 elderly. She’s quite forgetful but she’s rather lovely. She does have a little dog. I hope she’s got it chained up ‘cause it yaps.

Anna

Would this house be different than any other houses nowadays or are they...?

Lillian

Well not now.

Kathleen

It’s as modern as any can be.

Lillian

But when I lived here it had no bathroom in. Kathleen had put the bathroom in and it had a big old-fashioned range and my mum put electricity in this house and it cost a pound a point. Pound for each point, yes.

Anna

Like a meter?

Lillian

Because we had the gas lamps. But our toilet was up the yard here.

Kathleen

Yes it was, yes.

Lillian

And our coal was up in some sort of coalhouse.

Kathleen

Mine was as well, at first when I came.

Anna

If you didn’t have electricity, how did you cook? What did you cook on?

Lillian

Well, we had a big range and we cooked on an open fire. Also we had a gas wash boiler that we used to heat the water in for washing clothes and bathing and things like that. My mother used to often boil a whole ham in the gas copper. Well, it was sort of hard because although we were organised and you had a place for everything...

Kathleen

Well, you had nothing else, you didn’t think anything about it. I was either that or you do without.

Lillian

Did you know that nearly every mill in this area had its own brass band? Yes it was well known. Do you like brass band music?

Anna

Yeah, I do. I play the saxophone.

Lillian

When I was fourteen I started to work in the mill. I didn’t particularly like it but my aunt and cousin they already worked there so they’d asked for me, could I be employed there, and they said yes. So along I went, seven o’clock in the morning and I was walking down from Shipley with my new mill pinny on. I walked into the mill, which was then all quiet because the machinery hadn’t been switched on and I’ll never forget - we walked up to this man - his name was Willie; anyway he said to my cousin, he just looked me up and down, he says, ‘Is this her then?’ and my cousin went (nods) so he says, ‘Right then. Take her with ‘ee, lass and show ‘er ropes.’ And that was my introduction to being a winder.

Anna

So what did a winder do?

Lillian

Well, a winder - they put the fine weft- the fine threads - on to the wooden bobbins on the machine, then it went to the weaving.

Anna

So this area’s obviously changed, but what did it used to be like out here outside?

Lillian

Well, of course you see now it’s all overgrown and what-have-you, but on our lunch hour we used to come out and stand under the bridge and it wasn’t as green as it is now because it was so well-used and barges use to come up and down the canal, because you see, all the coal and all the wool was delivered by - a lot of it, not all of it - by barge.

Anna

How many girls in the bit where you were?

Lillian

About eight.

Anna

So there were no lads in there?

Lillian

No, but lower down the room, yes. This was where we had to pass them you see, when we went down to the toilet - we couldn’t see them but we could hear the wolf-whistles and this is where I met my husband. We used to come out here on the lunchtime when we got to know one another and stand under the bridge. We just used to hold little finger like this.

Anna

Aahh.

Lillian

In our days there wasn’t any snogging one another, you know, you see them kissing one another on buses and that, but not in those days, no. The lady that lived on the bridge practically used to call out to me and say, ‘I’m telling your mother about you.’

Anna

So what could you buy with your wage?

Lillian

Well you didn’t have all your wage because you got 12 shillings in your pay packet and you took your pay packet home to your mother and she gave me three shillings back. We managed, you know. If we went dancing, if we went to the Victoria Hall in Saltair it was about two shillings - one and six or two shillings. That was a lump out of your money. It learnt you to manage your money, not think you...

Anna

It’s a problem nowadays. You just get it and spend it.

Lillian

How much do you get?

Anna

Well, my mum buys my school clothes but I get for me £65 to spend a month.

Lillian

That’s incredible. Is that roughly what all girls of your age get?

Anna

No. Most of my friends get about forty-ish and then they get a job .

Lillian

Yes.

Anna

I’m supposed to be getting a job but I haven’t got round to it yet.

Lillian

(laughs)

Anna

I will.

Lillian

What do you want to do?

Anna

I just want a part-time job to get some more money.

Lillian

Some pennies. You’re not bothered about the job, it’s to get your pennies. Well, this is how I went into the mill - it was a job, not what I wanted to do.

Can you imagine what it would be like with all those dozens, in fact hundreds, of work-people all coming through here, all streaming through carrying their sandwiches and you know, not looking forward to the day, can’t wait till those... And then the big iron gates closed on them, you know. This isn’t the exact mill that I worked in when I started work at fourteen, but it was exactly the same sort of set-up and can you imagine walking into here? It was quiet like this - fourteen years old, newly starting and then all of a sudden dozens and dozens of looms all started up. Oh, the noise was tremendous - in fact it was so noisy the weavers couldn’t actually shout to one another. It was no good, you wouldn’t hear one another. So what they used to do is…

Anna

Lip read.

Lillian

And this is why a lot of weavers nowadays are deaf because of the continuing noise and you know I really was petrified, I really was frightened.

It was my job to sort of put this fine thread on to bobbins on the machine and that is the weft for going across.

Anna

I don’t think I’d be any good at that cause my fingers are not very good with small little threading things. Did you have to learn?

Lillian

You’d have to learn very quickly. The shuttles fly from one end to the other. This is a picking stick and it pushes the thing across. Always make sure there’s nobody about, and here we go... Can you imagine talking above this? Can you imagine trying to talk above a room full of these going all at once?

Anna

Could it be very dangerous, being around?

Lillian

Oh yes, it could be very dangerous because sometimes the shuttle used to fly out and really it should have stopped up there.

Anna

I know you didn’t particularly like working in the mill, but if you hadn’t have done would you not have met your husband?

Lillian

No, no.

Anna

How did you actually meet him?

Lillian

All I ever saw of him was an oily, greasy dungareed man.

Anna

So he wasn’t very attractive to you at that point?

Lillian

Not at all. But someone that worked in the other department used to say to me, ‘You know he really fancies you.’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t be found dead with him.’ But we had a little Christmas party and he kissed me under the mistletoe and said, ‘If you don’t come out with me tonight, I’m going to come and knock on your door,’ and I knew my mother would have been absolutely appalled, so I turned up and met him and there he was so attractive in his lovely long navy blue overcoat, white silk scarf and kid gloves - all lovely and clean, shining, you know. I’d rather fancied him then.

END