Daniel Meadows exhibition at Bancroft Mill Engine Museum in Barnoldswick

Daniel Meadows will return to Bancroft Mill Engine Museum on Saturday, September 5th, to launch Shuttles, Steam and Soot, an exhibition recreating an original touring photography show first displayed in the late 1970s.

The exhibition features Meadows’ remarkable photographs documenting Lancashire’s textile industry, including many taken at Bancroft Shed in Barnoldswick during the 1970s.

It will open at the surviving part of the former mill on September 5 before touring to other locations across the North.

Meadows is now recognised as one of the pioneers of 20th-century documentary photography, with his archive held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

In 1975, as a young photographer, he began a two-year residency with Pendle Borough Council, supported by Mid Pennine Arts.

During his time in the area, Meadows was drawn to Pendle’s mills, including Queen Street Mill and particularly Bancroft Shed, then the last surviving steam-powered cotton weaving mill in Pendle.

He began documenting the mills and building relationships with the people who worked there, producing an intimate record of Lancashire’s industrial communities and the trades that were beginning to disappear.

Among those photographed were weaver and radical organiser Bessie Dickinson, Bancroft Shed engineer Stanley Graham, flue cleaner Charlie Sutton and steeplejack Peter Tatham.

The photographs provide a unique insight into the people behind Lancashire’s textile industry and the working lives that once shaped towns such as Barnoldswick.

Shuttles, Steam and Soot was first exhibited in 1978 as part of the Half Moon Photography Workshop’s programme of affordable, portable touring exhibitions.

The show travelled widely, appearing everywhere from galleries and community centres to venues in the Shetland Islands and Germany, reaching a large audience before eventually being lost.

Fifty years after Meadows first began photographing the mills, the exhibition has now been faithfully recreated in collaboration with Four Corners in London’s East End.

It is returning to Lancashire as part of a tour which will revisit some of the locations where the photographs were originally taken.

The exhibition at Bancroft Mill Engine Museum will run from September 5th until October 31st, and will be open Wednesday to Saturday from 11am to 4pm.

Admission to the exhibition is free, apart from the museum’s special Steaming Sundays, when the engines will be running.

Entry on Steaming Sundays costs £8, with concessions available.

The Steaming Sundays taking place during the exhibition are September 6th and 27th and October 18th.

Meadows will also make a special return visit to Bancroft Mill on the opening day for an ‘in conversation’ event with former Bancroft Mill engineer Stanley Graham, who features in many of his photographs.

The pair became close friends while Meadows was documenting life at the mill and have remained friends for the past 50 years.

Their conversation will begin at 2pm on Saturday, with visitors invited to listen in.

Organisers say they are unsure how long the conversation will last, making it a unique opportunity to hear Meadows and Graham reflect on the photographs and their memories of Bancroft Mill.

Shuttles, Steam and Soot in Lancashire is part of the Pendle Radicals tour, presented by Mid Pennine Arts and British Textile Biennial with support from the volunteers of Bancroft Mill Museum.