Shuttles, Steam and Soot – Daniel Meadows
Join up with fellow OPS members at Oxford Westgate Library for this special event.
Daniel Meadows, photographer and digital storyteller, is a twentieth century pioneer of British documentary practice. His photographs and audio recordings capture uniquely the felt life of the everyday in England. His work has been widely published, exhibited and collected. In 2019, his archive was acquired by the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.
Photo Oxford Festival partners with Bluecoat Press to bring you a talk by Daniel Meadows. Daniel will tell the tale of his long-lost work: ‘Shuttles, Steam and Soot’ which he has reconstructed into a touring exhibition accompanied by three new publications.
In 1975, while working as photographer-in-residence to the Borough of Pendle in Lancashire, Daniel was drawn to Bancroft Shed, the last remaining steam-powered cotton-weaving mill in the district.
“In the time of Johnny Rotten,” he says, “Bancroft was like something out of Dickens. A place of unholy clatter with a language all its own. Busy women in dusty alleys heard you with their eyes and talked back with their hands. How could I not respond?”
Against a backdrop of industrial decline, Daniel documented the life of the mill, creating a remarkable portrait of the people who worked there and their disappearing trades. The resulting exhibition — one of the Half Moon Photography Workshop’s legendary radical programme of affordable, portable, touring shows — was first exhibited in 1978. It toured to community centres across the UK and to Germany before it was worn-out and destroyed.
Fifty years on, Daniel has worked with Four Corners in London to recreate the show and Bluecoat Press has published a series of limited-edition newspapers — ‘Shuttles’, ‘Steam’ and ‘Soot’ — to accompany its tour.
Join Daniel as he shares images and audio recordings from this rarely seen body of work. Followed by questions from the floor and a signing.
The exhibition runs from 25 October – 25 November 2025 at the Westgate Library Oxford.
MAIN IMAGE: Peter Tatham, steeplejack, poses for
his portrait, 150 feet up, atop the disused city,
incinerator chimney, shortly after commencing
the demolition process. Salford, September 1976.
Boiler fluing: Jack, the ‘inside man’ in
“from the Weldone gang, taking off his
rags (‘fent’). Barnoldswick, Lancashire.
Easter holiday, April 1976.
