SOMEBODY inadvertently left a print of this photograph on the public photocopier in Keighley Local Studies Library.

The staff have asked me to include it here as a possible reminder – giving us all a chance to see this evocative view of a well-lit burling and mending department.

In 1946 my class at Holycroft School spent an afternoon touring Grove Mills at Ingrow, run by Robert Clough Ltd, one of “a few firms carrying the wool from the raw state to the finished product”, as I wrote in the Story of Wool exercise-book we then spent weeks compiling.

Boldly across one page I inscribed what must have been a local slogan at the time: “Australian Raw Wool to Keighley Woollen Cloth”. I included a drawing of a scene like this, captioned “After weaving, small knots and broken threads are carefully mended.”

Such a working environment encouraged camaraderie.

In 1912, a young Silsden woman called Ada, who should have been “mending Walton’s pieces”, wrote a surreptitious postcard to an absent workmate called Myra.

“The burlers are just singing Somewhere the Sun Is Shining”, she told her.