Fiona’s Guide to Saltaire and the Local Area

What to see and do; where to walk, shop, eat and drink!* 

*This guide is not commercially sponsored! 

Welcome to Saltaire and Baildon, neighbouring towns in the Bradford district. This is a beautiful area full of green spaces, lovely views and clean air (well, mostly), with a great deal for visitors to do. Bradford is 2025’s City of Culture, so there’s a lot going on just now, and it’s worth checking the City of Culture website for the latest on cultural events in the district.  

Apart from local sights and attractions such as the National Media Museum, or the Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth, we are 25 minutes by train from Skipton, ‘the gateway to the Dales’, and under 15 minutes by train to the cities of Bradford and Leeds. And, of course, the district is home to The Early Music Shop! 

If you don’t have time to explore while you’re here, please come back and visit us again! Don’t believe everything people say about Bradford…. 

What to see: 

Saltaire itself is a model village built by Sir Titus Salt to house his workers from Salts’ Mill. Walk the picturesque streets and admire the workers’ homes. Visit the beautiful United Reformed Church, where Sarah Jeffery will perform her recital and where Sir Titus is buried in the mausoleum at the back. Shop at Salts’ Mill, which also contains a large gallery of artworks by David Hockney. Walk in Roberts’ Park (opposite Titus Salt School, our venue), which once provided a recreational space for the mill workers; nowadays, you can generally see Saltaire’s heron fishing from the weir. Going up Victoria Road, the main street and a popular filming location, you will find Victoria Hall (once the institute for the mill workers); Shipley College (once the night school) and the old Sir Titus Salt Hospital and Almshouses. The stone lions on Victoria Road were bought cheap by Sir Titus after being rejected from Trafalgar Square – this is apparently true; however, it is an urban myth that the women commemorated in many Saltaire street names were either his cast-off mistresses or his illegitimate children. 

Shipley Glen Tramway is a 19th-century funicular railway just behind Titus Salt School. (Currently behind the funfair which has temporarily appeared there, and stays until 01 June). It is the pride of Shipley and will take you part-way up to Shipley Glen, a local beauty spot, at a speed that will allow the walkers on the footpath to overtake you. You will be partially deaf by the time you get off and will still have to walk the rest of the way. About £2 for a single ticket or for about £4 you can ride up and down all day if you like. One of life’s simple pleasures, and highly recommended.  

After the excitement of the tramway, you can cool down with an ice cream at the Old Glen House about a hundred yards up the street, just at the start of the moorland. 

Our venue, Titus Salt School, is technically in Lower Baildon. If you exit the school and walk right along Higher Coach Road, you will quickly leave the houses behind and reach the gates of Milner Field Estate within 10 minutes. Once the home of Titus Salt Junior, heir to Sir Titus Salt, it was a massive Victorian gothic-style mansion, with an orangery, lake, croquet lawn, gardens, and a large kitchen garden complex with a mini train track taking carts of produce to the kitchens. After Titus Junior’s early death of a heart-attack in the billiard room, which contributed to the eventual collapse of the Salt business empire, and subsequent deaths, the estate gained a reputation for unluckiness and the house was dynamited in the 1950s. If you are a teenager with a can of spray paint and a wish to spray occult symbols or rude cartoons on to walls, this is the place for you. Unfortunately, it is not very safe. You can view the remains of the main house, including the remnants of the garden, the orangery floor where the then Prince of Wales once walked (the future Edward VI), and the kitchen cellars, if you climb up the drive way almost to the lodge at the top, and then turn off left. By turning off right instead, you might (if lucky) find the former kitchen gardens and greenhouse complex – these were not dynamited and you can see the remnants of the furnace system for heating the greenhouses. In places, the cellar floors have fallen in, and it is possible to fall down an open cellar if you are not careful. Some of the walls are not very secure. If you want more exact directions, please speak to Fiona. (Caution: this is not set up as a visitor attraction and does involve some degree of risk. Not recommended for children, those with mobility difficulties or lone walkers, as you need somebody with you in case you fall down an open cellar and break your leg.) 

Baildon itself is a market town with views, a couple of cafes and a nice church. It is nestled on the side of a moor, up a very steep hill, and worth a visit for the views as you walk up the hill; but a peculiarity of Baildon is that you are always walking uphill regardless of which direction you are going in, and somehow you still seem to find yourself walking uphill in places when you turn round and walk back. From the school, turn left along Higher Coach Road then turn left at the children’s playpark. Keep along the road, gradually climbing, until you reach the town. If in doubt, turn left and keep heading upwards and you will get to the market place one way or another. On the way back, you can walk right through the town centre, out the other side and over the top of Baildon Moor and down via the tramway. Do not bother trying to take the train to Baildon – the station is at the foot of the hill, just round the other side, and will gain you nothing at all. See below to read about walks on Baildon Moor. 

Shipley is the next closest market town. Extensively and badly modernised in the middle of the last century, it’s a good place if you want to hit the charity shops, but doesn’t contain much else. The main sight is a large square clock tower in the market place. The clock has been broken for a long time. Of historical interest is the very atmospheric hidden graveyard overlooking the train station. There was once a nineteenth-century non-conformist chapel next to the station, and the graveyard, which you won’t find unless you know it’s there, is all that remains. Go out the station via the main entrance (where the cars exit) then as you leave, climb up the grassy mound to the left. You will find a path that takes you in through some trees. There are good views of the town and the station over the walls. 

Haworth (just past Keighley, the next big town) is famous as the home of the Bronte family, and very picturesque. The Bronte House Museum at Haworth Parsonage is well worth a visit, as is the church yard and St Michael and All Angels where Patrick Bronte was curate. The Black Bull where Branwell Bronte drank is down the road, and is still a hostelry. There are rare-breed hens living next door to the parsonage, and they can sometimes be seen in the church yard. You can take a walk on the moor just behind the Parsonage. Almost every second house on Main Street is now a cafe, so you can refresh yourself after your walk, and the others are gift and book shops of various types. The chocolate shop is good; visit Hawksby’s for gifts, pottery and art. Take the train from Saltaire and change at Keighley to the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. From Haworth Station, walk up the hill (it is quite steep) via the town park to reach the bottom of Main Street. 

The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway is a heritage railway which was used for the filming of the 1970 film of The Railway Children with Jenny Agutter.  Ride on the steam trains (or stand on the platform and watch them) and see the place where the landslide happened and the station of Oakworth, where Jenny Agutter once cried, ‘Daddy! Oh my Daddy!’ in the famous last scene of the film (you can see the station name in the background if you watch it). There are little museums at Oxenhope and Ingrow and a gift shop at Haworth. More recently, the railway has featured in ‘Peaky Blinders’.  

Keighley is a very industrial-looking town, home to popular local museum Cliffe Castle, which isn’t a castle but a big house with pretensions. The former home of a Victorian industrialist, it contains a large collection of William Morris stained glass. East Riddlesden Hall (a seventeenth-century house owned by the National Trust) is just outside Keighley in the village of Riddlesden, and is worth a visit. 

Nearby is the village of Thornton, where the birthplace of the Bronte sisters has just reopened as a museum. The cafe isn’t yet functional, but you can book a guided tour. No train station, but there is a bus route. There is an excellent cafe in Thornton, called ‘Plenty at the Square’, with good soup and cakes. There are a couple of picturesque walks round the area (Nos. 4 and 5 on this website: https://bradford-beck.org/walks/). 

In Bradford itself, wander in Little Germany, a conservation area dating from Bradford’s industrial heyday in the Nineteenth Century, when the wool trade was generating serious money. Look upwards as you walk the streets. Visit the National Film and Media museum, then walk through Centenary Square. On the outskirts of Bradford towards Shipley, the art gallery Cartwright Hall is worth a visit. Maybe best of all is the necropolis Undercliffe Cemetery, Bradford’s answer to Highgate Cemetery, for atmosphere and views across the city, as it is set on a hill. 

The town of Ilkley, nestled below Ilkley Moor, is famous as the most expensive place to live in the district. It’s full of independent shops, including the only Bradford branch of Betty’s, where there is practically always a queue; an independent book shop and many charity shops. For excellent cake, homemade to Italian recipes, and cheaper than Betty’s, go to Stef and Didi’s. The supermarket Booths is worth a visit – if you live down south and do not know Booths, it is like Waitrose, but better; and this is the only branch in the district. 

Walk up on Ilkley Moor for spectacular views, and this country’s most damaged prehistoric stone circle, The Twelve Apostles. Stop for refreshments at The Cow and Calf, named after the rock formation of the same name. 

Skipton is 25 minutes away by rail, and gives easy access to the Yorkshire Dales. Skipton itself is a lovely market town with a medieval castle – this one is the real deal – and lots of cafes and charity shops. Take a boat trip along the canal to see the town and castle from a different angle! 

Otley is a charming market town 20 minutes’ drive from Baildon, birthplace of Thomas Chippendale in 1718, now full of charity shops and cafes. Otley Chevin, a nature reserve with stunning views, deserves to be as famous as Ilkley Moor but isn’t. Between Otley and Harrogate (20 miles distant), you will find the estate of Harewood House, a huge stately home 15 miles away that was once home to Princess Mary. This is Yorkshire’s answer to Chatsworth or Blenheim Palace, and definitely worth a visit. 

This last is only a curiosity – but the village of Cottingley, only 2.4 miles from Saltaire and walkable, was the location of the Cottingley Fairies hoax of 1917, in which two young girls armed with a Box Brownie camera and some paper cut-outs on threads, fooled most of the country, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, into thinking they’d captured images of real fairies on camera. Cottingley itself is up a steep hill and has lovely views, but there is not much else there apart from a war memorial and a Chinese takeaway – the ‘not much’ isn’t worth the climb, so only visit if you care about the fairies. 

Walks 

For moorland and views: behind the school (go left along Higher Coach Road then turn after the car park) you can take a footpath that takes you up past Shipley Glen Tramway and then to Shipley Glen (not too far or too hard-going, and the ancient woodland in the glen is beautiful) and Baildon Moor – views aplenty in many directions, interesting rock formations and prehistoric cup-and-ring marks on the rocks, though I have never found any. You can walk up to the top of the moor to the trig point, and see as far as Leeds, Bradford, and Ilkley Moor in different directions. It takes about 30 minutes to get to the very top and is slightly rough going. Wildlife: parakeets, cuckoos, woodpeckers and owls can be seen in Shipley glen; all sorts of birds, rabbits and deer are up on the moor. 

For riverside and woodland: go out of Roberts’ Park (opposite the school) behind the cricket club, and keep following the river into the woods. After about ¾ of a mile, you can join the canal and circle back to Saltaire. If you’re lucky, you can see kingfishers and otters (though if the otter rides high on the water and then comes on to the bank to run around, it’s actually a mink). This walk is gentle, flat and picturesque; less than 1.5 miles round. 

For the canal and woodland: on the Saltaire side of Roberts’ Park, go on to the Leeds-Liverpool Canal towpath and turn right, towards Liverpool – this is the less industrial direction and will lead to you to the ancient Hirst Wood, with a beautiful beech grove (cross over the canal at the next bridge and follow the path back round past the sewage treatment plant and into the woods. The woods are worth the sewage plant). If you don’t cross over you can join the river walk (turn left down the footpath after the canal goes over the aquaduct) and circle back to Roberts’ Park. Or you can continue on the towpath as far as Bingley, where there is a late-18th-century Five Rise Lock. 

To see Shipley at its most industrial turn left along the canal towpath towards Leeds. After about a mile and a half you leave Shipley and end up eventually in Apperley Bridge. 

Shopping 

Go to Salts Mill for independent shops including a book shop, art shop, antiques centre, outdoor clothing, bikes, jewellery and, of course, The Early Music Shop, the location of which you should note for when you come back to visit us another time! On Victoria Road, Saltaire’s main street, there are other independent shops selling local gifts, such as Giddy Arts on the corner (also good coffee and cake) and Rad Studio next to it. 

For charity shops, including a book shop, visit Gordon Terrace, the high street at the top of Saltaire, or you can go into Shipley, where there are many off the market place – this is where you find the cheaper ones! 

Take the train to Bingley (or walk a few miles along the canal) to buy thermal undies in the Damart Factory Shop. Mill chimneys are useful navigation aids in this area, and the Damart chimney is no exception – it is painted black with ‘DAMART’ on it, so you cannot miss finding the shop. 

Take the train to Haworth for more quirky gift shops, book shops, art and cafes. 

For book-lovers and architecture-lovers, there’s a very beautiful branch of Waterstones in the centre of Bradford itself, in the former Wool Exchange. 

Restaurants and Cafes (all tested on your behalf by Fiona!) 

The closest is Salts Mill on Victoria Road, which has a diner, a cafe and an espresso bar, all popular locally. The diner is popular with families. 

Victoria Road also has Cultures, for craft beer, artisan cheese and small platters; and Digin’s Hut, like Subway but better quality. 

On Gordon Terrace (the high street at the top of Saltaire), you can get good-quality burgers at Rumpus; excellent pizza at Il Pirata Pizzata and good Turkish home-cooking at Bistro 56; nearby is Webster’s for good fish and chips. At a higher price-point, The Pepper Mill offers excellent fine dining. The Edward Street Bakery offers the best sandwiches in town. Tambourine is a coffee shop with good salad plates. Buonissimo is an Italian deli that offers good home-cooked pasta lunches. ‘Nduja is the place to go for brunch locally. 

Nearby on Kirkgate is La Cachette, a good French bistro opposite the Ring o’ Bells pub. 

For vegans, Dandelion Cafe is 10 minutes’ walk away, just off Saltaire Road and next to Wycliffe Primary. At the other end of Saltaire Road, the Village Store has the best cakes in town, and also good sandwiches. If you want curry, Aagrah is also on this street –  try the achar or hyderabadi, and vegetarians should try the Special Vegetable Thali – or try The Crafty Indian on the Bradford Road for Indian street food.   

Pubs and Bars 

Titus Salt didn’t approve of alcohol for the workers, and so Saltaire was originally a teatotal village. Hence the name of the bar on Victoria Road – ‘Don’t tell Titus’. Ten minutes’ walk, but outside the village boundary, is the pub known locally as ‘Fanny’s’, actually called ‘Fanny’s Alehouse’ and named after one of Sir Titus Salt’s daughters. Also try The Fox on Briggate. These last sell a good range of real ales. 

For a more old-fashioned atmosphere, try the Caroline Street Social Club on, er, Caroline Street – this is home to the well-known folk series The Live Room, where many famous names have performed. 

We hope you enjoy your stay. Please come back and visit us again!