Visit Saltaire & The Hockney Gallery
Reach Sir Titus Salt’s fascinating model town at Saltaire by canal boat
On a short break canal boat holiday from our Silsden base, you can visit Saltaire and The Hockney Gallery at Salts Mill to see David Hockney’s and new ’20 Flowers for 2025′ exhibition.
The exhibition will run throughout 2025, celebrating Bradford’s year as UK City of Culture.
Beautiful Italianate buildings
Saltaire, on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal near Bradford, was founded by Sir Titus Salt in 1851. In 2001, Saltaire became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Sir Titus Salt was a leading industrialist in the woollen industry. He wanted his workforce to be healthier, happier and more productive. So he moved his five mills to a new green site away from the overcrowded town centre of Bradford. Saltaire Mill operated from 1853 to 1986 and gave employment to thousands of workers.
The mills were housed in beautiful Italianate buildings. And Salt built neat stone houses for his workers with community facilities including wash-houses, a hospital, library, reading room, concert hall, billiard room, science laboratory and gymnasium. He also built a village school for the children of the workers, almshouses, allotments, a park and a boathouse.
Today, the extraordinary town of Saltaire is a popular tourist destination with guided walks, events, shops, restaurants, cafes and galleries.
Hockney’s new ’25 Flowers for 2025′ exhibition is on at Salts Mill
Salts Mill displays work by David Hockney, including his ‘The Arrival of Spring’ series and 90-metre long ‘A Year in Normandie’ frieze.
In 2025, Hockney’s special ’20 Flowers for 2025′ exhibition is running. The exhibition features 20 stunning iPad paintings of flowers, large-scale landscape and abstract works and a unique 6-screen video installation showing Hockney’s brushstrokes in action. It’s the first time this collection has been shown outside London and the first time the video installation has been exhibited in Europe.
People and Process
Also on display at Salts Mill is a fascinating exhibition ‘People and Process’ about the history of the mill and the people who worked there, told through objects and film. It includes ‘Reel Lives: Saltaire women who worked the mills’, biographies researched by Colin Coates.
The journey from Silsden
From Silsden, it takes around seven hours to reach Saltaire, passing through 11 locks. The locks include the Bingley Five Rise locks, one of the Seven Wonders of the Waterways.
For more information about our canal boat holidays in the North East of England, go to https://www.drifters.co.uk/canals-of-north-east-england/
