Nancy Pilkington
Wool is often imagined as a traditional product associated with rural landscapes. However, research into Bradford’s industrial history shows that wool was deeply embedded within colonial networks. During the nineteenth century, the city developed from a small market town into the ‘wool capital of the world’, or ‘Worstedopolis’, a term coined by William Cudworth in 1888 (Bradford Museums & Art Galleries, 2022). The expansion of the wool trade enabled the Piece Halls to open in 1773 and supported the growth of textile commerce as larger trading centres developed (Bradford Museums & Art Galleries, 2022). These commercial spaces became important sites of exchange between manufacturers and international buyers, indicating that Bradford’s economy was extending beyond local markets.
In this blog post, I examine the significance of wool within Britain’s industrial development and consider how it can be understood as a colonial commodity within a wider global context. I also explore Bradford’s connections with overseas markets and consider how these relationships emphasise the city’s global significance.
Bradford’s rise as an industrial centre was closely connected to its geographical position and infrastructure. Poor roads initially limited development, making canals essential for moving coal, raw wool and finished cloth. These transport networks connected inland Yorkshire to London and overseas markets, enabling the circulation of raw materials and textiles (Rees, 1948, p. 28).
Transport and technological change were central to Bradford’s industrialisation. The opening of the Moline Mill on Thornton Road in 1798, Bradford’s first steam-powered textile mill, marked a transition towards factory-based manufacturing (Bradford Museums & Art Galleries, 2022). By the 1850s, two-thirds of Britain’s wool industry was concentrated in the Bradford region, providing approximately 70,000 jobs and employing one in three local workers (Bradford Museums & Art Galleries, 2022).
Bradford’s wool industry was also shaped by migration and international commercial networks. The arrival of German merchants in the 1830s contributed to the development of Little Germany, an area of warehouses and trading houses that strengthened Bradford’s role within global markets (Bradford Museums & Art Galleries, 2022). By the mid-nineteenth century, colonial wool, particularly from Australia, formed an increasingly significant proportion of Britain’s raw material supply (Bradford Museums & Art Galleries, 2022; Birt 2025). In 1831, Australia supplied 8% of Britain’s wool, but only twenty years later that had increased to half of a vastly increased total (Belich, 2009, p. 278, cited in Birt 2025). Although wool was often represented as a British rural product, Bradford’s success depended heavily on colonial agriculture, including large-scale Merino sheep farming in Australia. This demonstrates how industrial growth in Britain relied on overseas raw materials and on the relationship between agriculture, technology and imperial trade.
The organisation of the wool industry further illustrates Bradford’s global significance. Weld explains that woollen and worsted manufacture developed into highly specialised industrial processes, with stages such as combing, spinning and weaving sometimes carried out in separate mills (Weld, 1912, pp. 68–70). Large-scale production was therefore made possible by the capacity of British manufacturers to process substantial quantities of imported colonial wool. The industry also linked sheep farming, global trade and consumer markets into a single economic system, contributing to urbanisation, migration and industrial labour in cities such as Bradford. However, by the twentieth century, Bradford’s wool industry began to decline rapidly due to overseas competition and the increasing popularity of alternative clothing and fabrics (Bradford Museums & Art Galleries, 2022).
Understanding wool as a colonial commodity is therefore important for interpreting Bradford’s industrial history and its relationship to wider imperial narratives, including exhibitions. In particular, the concentration of worsted production in regions such as the West Riding of Yorkshire reinforced Bradford’s position as an international centre of textile manufacture.
How, then, does this relate to the Somali Village? This blog post has shown that Bradford’s industrial success was rooted in colonial systems. As the city grew wealthier by processing wool sourced through the empire, exhibitions used displays of colonised people to celebrate imperial success and industrial achievement. This research can therefore help the public understand how local history connects to wider global and colonial histories.
References
Belich, J. 2009. Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, 1783‒1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bradford District Museums & Galleries. 2022. Built of Wool: Worsted Collection. Available from: https://bradfordmuseums.org/built-of-wool-worsted-collection/ [Accessed 30 July 2026].
Birt, Y. 2025. Bradford’s wool as a settler colonial commodity. Somali Village, 26 April. Available from: Somali Village [Accessed 30 July 2026].
Rees, H. 1948. Leeds and the Yorkshire woollen industry. Economic Geography, 24(1), pp. 28–34. [1]
Weld, L.D.H. 1912. Specialization in the woolen and worsted industry. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 27(1), pp. 67–94.
Nancy Pilkington produced this work as an output of her module FOAH2002 Student Research Partnerships, part of the BA in Liberal Arts at the University of Leeds, during a placement with the Somali Village in Colonial Bradford project in the academic year 2025–26.
Somali Village 