explore the now demolished finishing room in 360 degrees
This building was built by Edwin Woodhouse in the early 1900s to process the cloth after it had been woven. Dry Finishing: was the last process the cloth went through before it went into the warehouse. It would transform the look, handle and performance of the cloth after it had been woven. Each different cloth had a different finishing routine depending on the end customer. There were various machines, for example, to shear off the hairs on the surface of the cloth to make a smooth surface, or brush them up for a soft warm feel.
What can you find?
-
10 in total
-
We can see 5
-
Far-right corner
-
6 altogether
Fun Facts
- The breeze blocks in the wall were where the cloth used to feed in from the “wet finishing” (dyeing, washing & scouring)
- John spent a few hours every morning standing in front of the large picture window “Perching.” Perching was inspecting the cloth as came down from the wet finishing, mainly checking for colour variation in from the piece dyeing.
- The night before John and William sold the trading company in 2005, there was a fire in the Dry Finishing. The scrap men had been cutting out some old machinery, sparks found their way under the floor and lit the years of old wool fibres and dust. Although the room was empty, the smoke poured through the corridor into the warehouse (which is now the gallery) and contaminated over a million pounds worth of cloth which was to be sold the next day, with smokey smell. Luckily, as most of the cloth was bound in parcels, only the outer layers of were affected.