Twenty-five years ago this month, the gates clanged shut on Salts Mill as a textile factory after 133 years of manufacturing.

It was curtains for the 17-acre ‘Palace of Industry’, opened by Titus Salt on his 50th birthday in 1853 – that’s the way it seemed, at any rate.

Once state-of-the-art, the producer of Salt’s famous lustrous mixed fabrics – alpaca and cotton or silk warps – the majestic buildings designed by Bradford-based architects Lockwood and Mawson, fell silent.

Like a decommissioned liner, the great Yorkshire stone edifice lay anchored at the foot of Victoria Road in the village that Salt had spent £171,000 building between 1851 and 1871.

Illingworth Morris & Company acquired Salts (Saltaire) Ltd. in 1958 for £4.7m. In 1972, Woolcombers Ltd was added to the group, and all combing activity was transferred from Salts to Bradford.

Changes in the world wool trade and manufacturing led to the disappearance of traditional markets in Canada, Cyprus, the USSR and Iran. Dyeing was shut down at Salts and spinning was switched to Daniel Illingworth Ltd. The weaving sector had to bear the costs of the operation. Stroud Riley Drummond bought the mill and closed it down in February 1986.

Stanley King, former Bradford Lord Mayor and long-serving Conservative councillor at City Hall, was taken on at Salts in September, 1953. He was 21 and had just been demobbed from National Service in the RAF. He remained at the mill for 32 years, until September 1985.

He said: “When I started there, trade was phenomenal. The directors sat down on Friday afternoons and would buy several million pounds-worth of combed wool. There was no worry about the bank rate.

“We used to buy from South Africa, Australia, Montevideo in Uruguay. We had our own wool buyers out in Australia. It was very stimulating to see such big things going on; we had firms all over the place.

“In its hey day it was a marvellous place to work. That was the era when people made a point of buying wool clothes made in England.”

Stanley, who made his way from processing tops and yarn for weaving to cost control, stock valuation and profit-or-loss forecasting, says production ceased at Salts in September 1985. A skeleton staff remained to fulfil last orders and close the books.

Bradford Council commissioned a feasibility study by KMG Thomson McLintock. The people who wrote the report showed commendable insight and imagination.

They stated: “Above all, we recognise that Salts Mill and the adjoining greenfield site could provide a unique and exciting opportunity for Bradford to lead the way in Urban Regeneration by securing major reuse of this historically-important complex… “Salts Mill as a major tourist attraction, and with new commercial and cultural uses, will stimulate the economy of the area in terms of wealth creation and, most importantly, up to 1,200 new jobs.”

Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the resurrection of Salts Mill as an arts-business complex, by the late Bradford-born entrepreneur Jonathan Silver.

With characteristic panache, the 37-year-old bought the mill on June 10, 1987, on the eve of the General Election, and then sat outside it in his car for a month until July 10, when the deal went through.