The Colne Valley Museum is located within the Colne Valley

Colne Valley

The Colne Valley is a steep sided valley on the east flank of the Pennine Hills in the English county of West Yorkshire. It takes its name from the River Colne which rises above the town of Marsden and flows eastward along the floor of the valley....

 at Golcar

Golcar

Golcar is a village located on a hillside crest above the Colne Valley in West Yorkshire, England, west of Huddersfield, and just north of the River Colne and the Huddersfield Narrow Canal...

, Huddersfield

Huddersfield

Huddersfield is a large market town within the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England, situated halfway between Leeds and Manchester. It lies north of London, and south of Bradford, the nearest city....

, West Yorkshire

West Yorkshire

West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....

, England. The museum consists of three converted 19th century weaver

Weaving

Weaving is a method of fabric production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. The other methods are knitting, lace making and felting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft or filling...

's cottage

Cottage

__toc__In modern usage, a cottage is usually a modest, often cozy dwelling, typically in a rural or semi-rural location. However there are cottage-style dwellings in cities, and in places such as Canada the term exists with no connotations of size at all...

s. The museum provides an insight into what life was like for a weaver in the early 1850s. The museum includes a clog

Clog

Clog may refer to:* clog , a shoe with a rigid, often wooden, sole* A blockage in plumbing* A British brand of rock-climbing equipment owned by Wild Country * Clogging, a traditional type of percussive folk dance...

 maker's workshop, a handloom

Loom

A loom is a device used to weave cloth. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads...

 chamber, a spinning room

Spinning jenny

The spinning jenny is a multi-spool spinning frame. It was invented c. 1764 by James Hargreaves in Stanhill, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in England. The device reduced the amount of work needed to produce yarn, with a worker able to work eight or more spools at once. This grew to 120 as technology...

, a cropping room, kitchen and living rooms. The museum is run entirely by voluntary members.

History

The original row of four cottages was built in the 1840s by James and Sally Pearson, who were independent cloth manufacturers. It was built into a steep hillside with a traditional entrance for the lower rooms and a separate entrance to the upper floor at the rear of the cottages. In 1970, three of the cottages were converted to house the museum. They named the cottages 'Spring Rock.'

The museum features several restored period rooms, which are also used for temporary exhibits. Permanent exhibits include a handloom and a spinning jenny, invented by James Hargreaves

James Hargreaves

James Hargreaves was a weaver, carpenter and an inventor in Lancashire, England. He is credited with inventing the spinning Jenny in 1764....

, a weaver's sitting room and 'gas-lit' clogger's shop.

The museum is open for school visits, for which the children are encouraged to dress in period clothing, from Monday to Friday. On some weekends, the museum opens for demonstrations and exhibitions by the volunteer helpers, who demonstrate the types of crafts that would have existed during the nineteenth century.