Daniel Meadows – Back to Bancroft

50 years on, the great documentary photographer Daniel Meadows returns to Bancroft Mill. This facsimile exhibition recreates an original touring show from the 1970s, when these extraordinary photographs were taken, many of them documenting life at Bancroft Shed in Barnoldswick. Shuttles, Steam and Soot will be on display at Bancroft Mill Engine Museum, the surviving part of the mill, from 5 September to 31 October 2026 before touring to other northern locations.

Stanley Graham, mill engineer, replaces gland packing on high pressure cylinder. James Nutter & Sons, Bancroft Shed, Barnoldswick, Lancashire, June 1976.

Daniel Meadows is now widely recognised as a pioneer of twentieth century documentary photography.  His archive is now held in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.  Back in 1975, the young Daniel Meadows began two years as photographer-in residence to Pendle Borough Council, with support from Mid Pennine Arts.  Here, he found himself drawn to Bancroft Shed, the last surviving steam powered cotton weaving mill in Pendle. Daniel began documenting the life of the mills and getting to know the people who worked in them. From weaver and radical organiser Bessie Dickinson, to Bancroft Shed engineer Stanley Graham, flue cleaner Charlie Sutton and steeplejack Peter Tatham, he created a uniquely vivid portrait of Lancashire’s workers and their disappearing trades.

Shuttles, Steam and Soot was first exhibited in 1978, as part of the Half Moon Photography Workshop’s radical programme of affordable, portable, touring shows. Touring widely from galleries to community centres, from the Shetland Islands to Germany, the exhibition reached a huge audience before it was eventually lost.

Fifty years on, Daniel worked with Four Corners in London’s East End to recreate faithfully the original touring exhibition. A rarely seen body of work by a towering figure in British photography, we are thrilled to bring it, and Daniel, back to Lancashire.  Shuttles, Steam and Soot will continue its journey by returning to the very locations where these unforgettable images were captured.

Further details of dates and times are on our Pendle Radicals website.