Titus Salt's Burlers and Menders, Hellifield
The Titus Salt Mill had a number of small factories around Yorkshire which repaired the material produced in the main factory at Saltaire. These were known a ‘Burlers and Menders’ and one such factory was in Hellifield.
A ‘burler’ or mender is a highly-skilled job. It is someone who ‘removes loose threads, knots, and other imperfections from cloth or someone who inspects cloth before the finishing process, mends dropped stitches on the back, and pulls matching yarn into spots where tufts are missing or shearing is uneven’.
A roll of worsted or wool material would come from Saltaire. The ‘burlers’ would feel the material for knots or ‘burles’, find out if a warp (lengthwise threads) or a weft (cross threads) was missing and mend it with a needle or a fine pair of tweezers. The roll might come with some extra threads to enable the workers to make the mend invisible, or threads had to be taken from the end of the roll to use in the repairs.
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