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Saltaire writer Nigel is a man of many talents. For 12 years he was Head of Music at Pennine Radio where he also created the radio soap Mulberry Terrace. These days he's a Senior Lecturer at Leeds College of Technology but he still finds the time to produce box sets for famous folkies like Richard Thompson.

He says writing about the wool trade has always been an ambition: "My father worked in the wool trade and it had always interested me. It's a story that's never been told. Ewan McColl's wonderful Radio Ballads, and John Tamm's recent extension of them, tell the story of Britain's key industries but the wool trade has always been overlooked. We've had mining and shipbuilding."

The man himself, Titus Salt

Nigel believes his new production Follow the Fleece owes something to this radio format: "It's a very similar approach to the Radio Ballads in that, instead of getting field recordings, I've gone back to texts and used the words of people who were there to create the links. It traces the story from the Domesday Book to the present when the mills are now serving a very different purpose but, thank goodness, a lot of the fine buildings still exist. The spirit of the wool trade is there in a different way and I wanted to celebrate and commemorate that. It's always been an idea but I never knew what format it was going to take, whether it be a book, an epic poem or a few brief notes."

He happened to mention his idea to songwriter David Williams who not only encouraged him to start writing songs but was very keen to collaborate. Helen Hockenhull from celebrated Oakworth folk trio Grace Notes took on the role of musical director and fellow Grace Notes Maggie Boyle and Lynda Hardcastle are in the cast along with many other well-known voices on the local folk scene. Nigel says, as far as performers are concerned, he's definitely ended up with his dream "wish list". However, he's still not sure how to describe the production: "Radio Ballads is the best way to think of it because that's what happens on stage. Obviously there's some movement and performance, and there's a narrator which guides you through it."

And, for Nigel, putting the show together has been something of a voyage. He discovered that at the time of the Domesday Book there was one Bradfordian who stood out from all the rest, not that Bradford was very much more than marshland in those days: "There was this character called Gamel, a Saxon whose family forÌý300 years had owned the ford [across the marsh], the place that gave Bradford its name. The family had invested in sheep because that was the oil of its day, I suppose. He owned a large flock which he kept between the ford and the ridge, Baildon, in a place called the sheep shelter or, in Anglo-Saxon, the 'Sheep-ley'[Shipley]. I thought this is just too good so I took Gamel as the root character and he lives though 1000 years and sees all the changes. He sees all the revolutions – Cromwell, Wat Tyler, James Watt. He sees a lot of industrial espionage because, although not a lot of people know it, Galileo Galilei's brother fled from Italy bringing with him the secrets of dyeing wool which the church in Florence and Venice had always held. He brought the secret with him and became a very popular man in Europe because suddenly the end of the process was there. From that point the wool trade suddenly took off. One of the singers is actually married to one of Galileo's descendents whose name is Galilei. Her husband was most amused to see one of his ancestors being portrayed."

Bradford: Wool-opolis or cesspit?

But there's more to all of this than wool. According to Nigel the real Gamel played a very significant part in England's history: "He was the person who informed King Harold about the invasion in the north which brought him up here in 1066. This meant that when Harold went to play the away match down south he lost so Gamel is actually a key figure in history."Ìý

And, needless to say, time-traveller Gamel witnesses many key events right here in West Yorkshire: "In the Civil War Bradford was fiercely Parliamentarian and was besieged by the Royalists. They protected the city by putting wool bales all around the Cathedral, a famous story. Then we go into the Industrial Revolution and the building of the canals about which there is a very amusing story. Bradford kind of got it wrong and had a water system which went backwards so when they opened the canal the water flowed out rather than in."

Bradford had grown from not much more than a safe place to cross the marsh into a big industrial city: "Eventually Gamel found himself in the cesspit that was Bradford. These are Frederick Engels' words not mine - the place was deemed to be the vilest, stinkiest and most unpleasant city in the whole of England, and perhaps in the whole of Europe."

But it's with the building of the big mills that we come right here to Saltaire and Gamel meeting Sir Titus Salt, played by none other than Nigel: "There is a point where Gamel and Sir Titus bump into each other on a Sunday in the park, and it's a very emotional moment. The chap who plays Gamel has still got to learn to do it without crying. He's so into the part."

Fighting pollution Victorian-style at Salts Mill!

While almost all the songs were written by Nigel and David Williams who also plays Gamel, even the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen get into the act: "It's Springsteen's Factory, Factory which we've rewritten to make it about Yorkshire but we've done it with Bruce's permission. I got in touch and said we wanted to do this and I gather he likes the change to the words."

Sat here in the middle of Titus Salt's very own village on a street dominated by his great mill, I ask Nigel what he makes of the man he's portraying in the show: "He was an absolutely vital figure. At present there's a tendency to downgrade Titus Salt. There's been a lot of debate about him speaking out against the Child Employment Act. This worried me when I was writing it because I thought I've got to reflect current opinion no matter what I think of him but, it turns out that, although he spoke out against the Act, what he was saying was, 'I've got a model where children in my village go to school but then can work' because he knew the families needed income, but there were a lot of other things. In the first 10 to 12 years he ran the factory all the married women got Mondays off with pay to do the washing. In the mid 19th century that was radical. Every building in Saltaire, every chimney, didn't put out pollution – sadly that's not the case today. There was a patent system which trapped the soot and smoke. This is why the village remained so clean - the chimney pots and the stacks on the mill chimney were washed by rain so the soot collected in them and were washed down gullies into the Aire.

"Saltaire was the model village because it was the model for all the others – Queensbury locally, Bournville, Cowley, Port Sunlight. More surprisingly, Saltaire was also the model for American cities because Titus's straight line grid system was adopted…Quite a lot of American singers come to stay here and it's always a delight to discover they know of Saltaire because they studied it at school. When they walk in they feel at home because of the straight lines and clear angles, just like walking thorough the streets of New York or Chicago. Titus Salt was a big influence in lots and lots of ways."

Where there's sheep there's wool...

In researching Following the Fleece Nigel came across a speech Titus Salt made towards the end of his life which came as something of a revelation: "He coined a phrase 'quality of life'. Now that's such an important quality today. I think the man who came up with the idea needs to be celebrated. Although the production isn't about Titus Salt he is the climax of it."

Jane Austen and William Shakespeare also make brief appearances but this is not their story: "It's the boatmen on the canal, it's the ladies who worked in the mill, it's the shepherds up on the moor, it's the monks and abbots in the monasteries, it's the traders in wool in the 17th century. Wherever possible I found the records they kept and, while it's been adapted to fit into a drama, I've stuck to the spirit of the actual text and in many cases I've preserved the old language. Gamel begins by speaking pretty good Anglo-Saxon. I've just softened it so he can be understood…and his language develops through the various stages of English."

And Nigel believes we haven't yet got to the end of the story: "There have been various attempts to revive the woollen industry and there are still factories working around here, even though a lot have gone overseas. As we start to go back to natural resources and look at how much man-made fibre we use, who knows? You've only got to drive up into the Dales two miles from here and you encounter the sheep. There are millions of them in Britain. And they aren't all there for mutton; they are there because their fleeces are still used." He points out that knitting is now very much back in fashion and this means more wool will have to be processed.

And perhaps one day Follow the Fleece itself will find new platforms. After all, the story of the woollen industry is still the 'radio ballad' they didn't do!

Saltaire's pioneering grid system...

[The world premiere of Follow the Fleece is at the Victoria Hall, Saltaire on Tuesday 16th and Thursday 18th September 2008 as part of this year's Saltaire Festival]