Sir Ernest Hall, who has died aged 94, led a remarkable renaissance in a struggling northern town, transforming the world’s largest carpet factory into a beacon of art and enterprise working together, with striking benefits to both. He gradually converted half a mile of derelict Victorian buildings in central Halifax into what he called a practical utopia, where makers of polythene bags rubbed shoulders with staff from the Henry Moore Foundation.
Dean Clough Mills was vast enough, but the “Hall effect” rippled out to other once glorious behemoths including Salts Mill in Saltaire near Bradford, where his former business partner, Jonathan Silver, worked similar magic. Each example showed the mix of commercial nous and artistic sensitivity that marked Hall’s own personality; he played as a concert pianist while pulling off lucrative textile and property deals.
