The Mill Manager's house

The site of Bradford's Industrial Museum holds not only the mill building (Moorside Mill, a worsted spinning mill) but the house where, between 1873 and 1970, the mill managers lived with their families. The house is decorated and furnished as it would have been around 1910 when Thomas Greenwood was the manager. He and his family lived a comfortable, middle-class life, not rich but not as poor as his workforce, who lived in rows of back-to-back cottages around the mill. It must have been a noisy and dirty experience living there, very close to the mill and with only a very tiny garden to buffer it. 

The family furniture would likely have been passed down from previous family members, so is rather more Victorian in style. They probably had one servant: a live-in housemaid, who would have done everything from laying the fires to laundry and cleaning, and some cooking too, though the lady of the house and her daughters would also have prepared food. 

I'm old enough (!) that some of the items around look rather familiar, not so much because we had them in our home when I was a child, but more from my memories of visiting older relatives. We used to go to see an old lady who lived a few doors down from my grandparents. Her parlour was furnished very much in this Victorian style, stuffed to the gills with furniture and knick-knacks and complete with paintings of Highland cows and deer (fashionable because of Queen Victoria's affinity to Scotland). 'Auntie Mary' (she wasn't actually my aunt) always wanted me to kiss her... which I hated as she had whiskers on her chin!