On September 23, 1916, the 6th Battalion of the West Riding Volunteers organised a fundraising Keighley flag day and procession of war tableaux. A captured German gun was exhibited, while the Skipton Volunteer Prize Band and the Keighley Borough Band provided music.

Here is the “attractive tableau” arranged by workers at the Keighley National Shell Factory, “showing smartly dressed girls in khaki overalls at work at the lathe”. They have decked out their float with slogans like ‘Keighley Made Shells Made on Keighley Made Machines by Keighley Girls!’ and ‘Britain’s Equivalent to the Famous French 75mm Shell, the 18-Pounder Shell’, and more frivolously: ‘We are hoping one of these Presents from Keighley will hit the Kaiser in the Tummy’.

Joking apart, by the Armistice a workforce largely of girls and women under male foremen would have manufactured 714,000 high-explosive shells.

As Sir Harry Smith, chairman of a Keighley and District War Munitions Committee, put it: “The Keighley shell factory turned out more shells than would have won the battle of Waterloo.”

The photograph has been supplied by Mr Kevin Seaton, of Shann Lane, Keighley.