Christmas was a bleak affair for workers at this Yeadon mill, devastated by fire in 1906.

Photographs of the blaze at the Old Dog Mill on December 5 are in the archives of Aireborough Historical Society.

The society is about 25 per cent of the way through digitally archiving the images held on glass slides and 75 per cent of the way towards digitally archiving its photographic collection.

Archivist Carlo Harrison said: “Mill fires unfortunately occurred from time to time. This one is thought to have been the worst in Yeadon.

“The large amounts of combustible material in the mills posed a risk, plus primitive fire-fighting equipment meant that fires could cause maximum damage before they were extinguished.”

The devastation this conflagration caused can be seen in the images, a tangled pulley system lying among the wreckage.

“It was a major blow to the workforce to be out of work so close to Christmas.

“Local mill owner Jonathan Peate was not involved with this mill but sent a voucher to each person to enable them to purchase a few seasonal treats.

“The mill was owned by Sir John Brown and his son Bright Brown.”

Thousands of old photographs of Aireborough are being shared with people around the globe thanks to the society’s scheme to archive them online.

Images on glass slides dating back to 1900 and earlier are also being put online – each one photographed then transferred to disc ready to archive.

The society’s website - aireboroughhistorical society.co.uk - showed more than 343,400 page visits from October 2012 to October 2013.

The facebook page AHS  facebook.com continues to attract 2,000 to 2,500 people a week and can spike as high as 5,000 when a photo and article are shared around the world by ex-pats from Aireborough.

Carlo said: “We continue to receive comments and praise from all over the world and have attracted followers who are not connected to Aireborough but just love the website for its historical content.”