It’s the smell that hits you first. One hundred and seventy years of slide grease and valve oil hang pungent in the air. Outside, it’s just another old West Yorkshire building, the sandstone blasted dark by wind, rain and industry. Inside, the walls are lined with certificates and plaques.
I’m in what was once the summer house of textile manufacturer John Foster, in Queensbury, outside Bradford. Foster’s monumental Black Dyke Mills complex is around the corner. Its heavy machinery is long gone, replaced by gyms, kitchen-and-bathroom businesses and a “giant charity warehouse”. But the brass band Foster established here in 1855 is still going strong.
