PLAYWRIGHT Nick Verity has asked Burnley Garrick theatre group to read through his insight into one of Yorkshire's great philanthropists to get it performance ready.

The play tells the story of Titus Salt, a mayor of Bradford, who took over his father's business and within 20 years expanded it to be the largest employer in the city.

In 1850, he decided to build a mill large enough to consolidate his textile manufacturing business and bought land three miles from the town in Shipley next to the River Aire, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the Midland Railway.

He opened Saltaire Mills (now known as Salt's Mill) with a grand banquet on his 50th birthday, September 20, 1853, and set about building houses, bathhouses, an institute, hospital, alms-houses and churches, that make up the model village of Saltaire. He forbade 'beer shops' in Saltaire, but the common supposition that he was teetotal himself is untrue.

Says a Garrick spokesman: "This will be a wonderful opportunity to experience at first hand a playwright at work, and to be a part of the evolving process.We have not yet fixed a date for this but it will be sometime in August. Watch this space!"