Friday 5th – Wednesday 10th September 2025
Bradford, West Yorkshire
This year Conference returns to its traditional format of weekend talks and the AGM followed by 3 days of tours.
Read the itinerary below then Book online now
ITINERARY
Friday 5th September
19:00 Buffet Dinner at the hotel
Talk: West Yorkshire’s Industrial Heritage by Prof. David Perrett
Saturday 6th September
09:30 Welcome by Zoe Arthurs, AIA Chair
Yorkshire’s IA database by Dr. John Suter, Yorkshire Archaeological & Historical Society, Industrial History section
10:30 Coal mining in West Yorkshire by Dr. John Tanner, Head of Masterplan and Capital Projects at the National Coal Mining Museum for England
11:30 Tea / Coffee
12:00 John Smeaton – Yorkshire’s Greatest Engineer @300 by Dr Julia Elton
13:00 Buffet Lunch
14:00 Railways round Bradford by David Pearson
15:00 Tea / Coffee
15:30 Presentations to and by Award Winners
17:30 End of talks
18:15 Drinks reception
19:00 Annual Dinner
Sunday morning 7th September
09:45 AIA Field visits by Bill Barksfield
10:00 AIA Annual General Meeting
10:45 Tea / Coffee
11:15 AIA Prestige Lecture
The Archaeology of Early Locomotives by Dr Michael Bailey
12:30 Buffet Lunch
COSTS
AIA members enjoy 10% discount on all prices shown (except Zoom only attendance which is 50%)
Note: ‘AIA members’ includes members of our Affiliated Societies
Friday evening:
- Friday evening 3-course buffet dinner (drinks at own expense)
- Friday after dinner talk
£24 per person
Saturday and Sunday morning:
- Saturday AIA annual conference (as shown above)
- Drinks reception
- Annual dinner, 3 courses with wines
- Sunday morning (as shown above)
£185 per person
Saturday daytime and Sunday morning day rate:
- Attendance in person on the Saturday 09:30 – 17:30 and Sunday morning
£100 per person
Saturday daytime and Sunday morning online-only option:
- Attendance via Zoom on the Saturday 09:30 – 17:30 and Sunday morning
£30 per person
Sunday afternoon & evening, Monday – Wednesday tours & evenings:
Prices shown in the descriptions below
Free places
Thanks to the Patrick Nott bursary, there will be five free places for the entire event from Friday to Wednesday, including accommodation, and up to £100 for travel expenses. The places are intended for those who feel they would otherwise be unable to attend. Please send details to the Conference Secretary at conference@industrial-archaeology.org at least 30 days in advance.
If you wish to attend only the AGM (remotely or in person) please contact the Conference Administrator confadmin@industrial-archaeology.org
TOURS
Sunday afternoon
Choose either TOUR A1: Caphouse Colliery
Coach departing from the Midland Hotel at 13:30, returning c18:00
Caphouse Colliery, is the National Mining Museum for England, is located on the western edge of the Yorkshire coalfield, where mining has been carried out for centuries. A plan dated 1791 showing workings from 1789 to 1795, includes a shaft on the Caphouse site. It is probably the oldest coal-mine shaft still in everyday use in Britain today. By 1985 the mine at Caphouse was exhausted and its conversion to a museum began. The underground tour includes descent by the 1876 Davy Bros horizontal winding engine.
Tour A2 excludes the underground tour but gives longer to explore the above ground exhibits in the museum.
Price: £38
Or TOUR B: Middleton Railway in steam
Coach departing from the Midland Hotel 13:30, returning c18:00
The Middleton Railway in Leeds opened 1758 and is the world’s oldest continuously working railway. Initially a horse hauled railway in 1812 the railway started using locomotives built by Matthew Murray in Leeds that used the colliery owner, Blenkinsop’s, patented rack wheel. These were the world’s first commercially viable locomotives. The visit will include a trip behind one of the railway’s collection of industrial steam locos.
Price: £38
19:00 3-course, buffet dinner at the hotel
Talk: The Brickworks and Pottery Industry of Bradford by Derek Barker
Price: £24
Monday 8th September
Choose either TOUR C:
Coach departing from the Midland Hotel at 09:00, returning c18:00
- Halifax Market Hall, Grade 2* a magnificent cast iron building opened in 1896. Above the market building are two streets of houses for Market employees. B. Access to the roof is via many flights of steps.
- Calderdale Industrial Museum Volunteers will open it especially for us with its collection of machinery and steam engines. It is adjacent to the Piece Hall
- Piece Hall. A grade 1 monument dates from 1779. It is the sole remaining Georgian cloth hall in the world. In its 315 separate rooms pieces of cloth made in the surrounding homes were sold.
- ‘Pie & Peas’ lunch at Calderdale Industrial Museum
- Ackroydon and Colonel Akroyd’s Banksfield House designed by George Gilbert Scott in 1859 for the workers in Akroyd’s mills. (drive past).
- Shipley Glen cable hauled tramway. Opened 1895 with a 400 m track down a steep slope to Roberts Park.
- Salts Mill and Saltaire. Titus Salt opened is new mill complex in 1851 for processing alpaca. Being far from his Bradford mill he housed his workers in a model village completed c1871. Now a UNESCO world heritage site.
- Bingley Five Rise locks. A staircase of wide locks on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal opened 1774. Steepest flight of locks in the UK
Price: £55 including lunch
Or TOUR D:
Coach departing from the Midland Hotel 09:00, returning c18:00
- Flockton Wagonway This 20-arched viaduct built ca. 1790s. recently raised to 2* is the world’s oldest railway viaduct.
- Wakefield Arms. In 1825 Joseph Aspdin of Leeds patented Portland cement. This former pub in Wakefield is the world’s oldest building using his cement (photostop only)
- Leeds dark arches, railway heritage & Bank walk Exploring the history of railways in Leeds by looking at previous iterations of Leeds stations, the magnificent dark arches and canal workings. Includes a visit to the Monk Bridge Viaduct project, where a section of surviving viaduct has been made into a city park, as well as the preserved wagon lifting hoist that has been converted into a mini museum.
- Lunch
- St Aidan’s Dragline Excavator. A look around this Bucyrus Erie BE 1150 Walking Dragline Excavator, known as “Oddball” which is now preserved on the site of the former St Aidan’s surface (opencast) coal mine at Swillington, near Leeds, where it last worked.
- Leeds Industrial Museum A visit to the Leeds Industrial Museum, specially opened for us. Housed in Armley Mills, once the largest woollen mill in the world, featuring working machinery and an excellent collection of Yorkshire industrial heritage from textiles to steam engines. Also features an exhibition on the 300th anniversary of John Smeaton complimenting the Saturday presentation.
Price: £55 including lunch
19:00 3-course, buffet dinner at the hotel
Talk: Bradford & Iron “A History of the Low Moor Ironworks” by Mary & Geoff Twentyman, Low Moor Local History Group
Price: £24
Tuesday 9th September
Choose either TOUR E:
Coach departing from the Midland Hotel at 09:00, returning c18:00
- Walking visit from Saint George’s Square
- Railway Station. ‘A kind of stately home with trains inside’. Designed by Pritchett for LNWR and built 1846–50. The grandest building is Britannia Buildings (1859) a warehouse for woollen manufacturer George Crosland.
- Market Hall 1890 Superb cast iron general Market
- Canal sites
- Lunch
- Queens (Allinson’s) Mill, Castleford is the world’s largest stone grinding flour mill with 20 pairs of stones. Powered by 21ft external diameter wheel in the R. Aire. Currently being restored by Castleford Heritage Trust.
- Stanley Ferry The cast-iron bow-string aqueduct designed by George Leather in 1839 for the Aire & Calder Navigation to carry the canal over the River Calder. Parallel replace concrete trough opened in 1981
- Wakefield Arms – the oldest Portland cement building [as Tour D] (photostop only)
Price: £58 including lunch
Or TOUR F:
Coach departing from the Midland Hotel 09:00, returning c18:00
- Copley Industrial Model Village built in for workers at Ackroyd Mill in 1847 Mill demolished 1975
- Wainhouse Tower At 275 ft , it is the tallest structure in Calderdale and the tallest folly in the world. Erected 1871 – 1875 but 405 steps to top means no visit! (photostop)
- Walkley’s clog works Mytholmroyd This working factory made workers Yorkshire clogs but now makes a wider collection of styles and colours. Not normally open to visitors
- Colne Valley Museum, Golcar Run by local volunteers in four typical 19th-century weavers’ cottages. Hand looms etc will be demonstrated.
- Standedge Tunnel On the Huddersfield Narrow Canal (c1794) and at 3 mile is the longest canal tunnel in Britain. It opened in 1811. It is paralleled by 3 railway tunnels. We will take a boat trip into the tunnel (but not through to Lancashire!)
Price: £58 including lunch
19:00 Buffet Dinner at the hotel
Evening walk round Little Germany led by Pen Foreman
Price: £24
Wednesday 10th September
TOUR G:
Coach departing from the Midland Hotel at 09:00, returning c14:30
- Keighley & Worth Valley railway. Enjoy a steam hauled ride along the Worth Valley branch out of Keighley which climbs up the valley serving several small Pennine villages along the way. At Oakworth, the railway leaves the valley of the River Worth and enters the valley of Bridgehouse Beck, wherein lie Haworth and the line’s terminus at Oxenhope.
- Lothersdale Mill. The mill contains the largest surviving internally housed waterwheel in Britain. The wheel is about 44ft in diameter by 7ft wide. The drive was transmitted by rim-gearing of cast iron and the original buckets were also made from cast iron. James Ellison’s iron foundry at nearby Eastburn constructed the wheel around 1860 and it could produce almost 40 horsepower.
- Lunch
Price: £60 including return ticket on the railway and lunch
A full set of tour notes will be available at the registration desk at Conference.
Some visits are not yet confirmed so there may be changes to the itineraries and order of visits. We will keep those who make bookings informed of any changes.
ACCOMMODATION
The Conference hotel is:
The Midland Hotel, Forster Square, Bradford BD1 4HU
Tel: 01274 735735
Website: https://www.britanniahotels.com/hotels/midland-hotel-bradford
The hotel is immediately adjacent to Bradford – Forster Square station and about 0.3m, 7min walk from Bradford Interchange station.
Overnight accommodation is not included in any of the costs above, but rooms have been reserved at the Conference hotel on a first-come first-served basis at a discounted rate of:
£69.00 single occupancy, per night, bed & breakfast
£89.00 double occupancy, per night, bed & breakfast
Contact the hotel directly to make your reservations as follows:
Guests should ring the hotel 01274 735735
Use option 2 for Events or option 6 for Reception
( Do not select 1 for Reservations as it goes to Head office )
Quote the code: AIA050925
Card details will be taken to hold bookings and guests will pay on arrival at the hotel.
BOOKING
If you have access to an internet connected computer and use email please make your booking online
If you give an email address on your application then confirmation and all subsequent communications with you will be by email. In the event that you are unable to use a computer then please fill in the attached form and post it to us at the address shown.
Bookings for attendance in person and for the tours will be taken on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to space availability. Book as soon as possible and by 8th August 2025 to ensure a place but please feel free to enquire after that date if a place is still available.
Please reserve your accommodation, if required, at the Conference hotel by the same date to be eligible for the discounted Conference Rate.
For online-only attendance booking may be made up to 1st September 2025
Bookings can be made definite only when the booking information and payment are received and accepted in writing/email by the secretary. The AIA’s standard terms and conditions apply.
All monies will be held in a customer protection account until the conference is complete so that your money is safe no matter what happens.
METHODS OF PAYMENT
Details of how to pay will be shown on your invoice.
This year Conference has been organised by the sub-committee: Bill Barksfield (Conference secretary), Prof. David Perrett, Pen Foreman (AIA vice chair) and John Jones (AIA Treasurer).
Enquiries about Conference should be directed to the Conference Secretary: conference@industrial-archaeology.org
Book online now
Download a pdf of all the above with a paper form to print and post off
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Recordings of the 2024 Conference will be made available soon. Subscribe to the Association’s YouTube page to get notification of new additions: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCILr2TkRAOIfk_NKchshwZQ
The Tour Notes and Gazetteers for earlier Conferences are available to members through the Past Conferences page.