Candles were lit at 5am this morning in commemoration of 17 girls who tragically died in a Colnebridge cotton mill.

A group of people gathered to mark the 200th anniversary of the disaster – exactly 200 years to the moment after the tragic fire broke out.

The names of those who died – all aged between nine and 18 – were read out by Ian Jones as candles were lit in their memory.

Historian, Richard Heath at the site of Atkinson's cotton Mill at Colne Bridge where 17 young girls perished in a fire in 1818.

Historian Richard Heath was one of those at the site of Atkinson’s cotton mill and he said the tragic blaze started when 10-year-old Jim Thornton was ordered to go downstairs to the card room to fetch some rovings.

Instead of being given a glass lamp, he was given a candle and the flame brushed some of the loose cotton.

Mr Heath said it would have gone up “like an explosion” and that young Jim was given an “impossible task.”

The memorial to the 17 victims of the Colne Bridge cotton mill fire in Kirkheaton church yard.

Mr Heath told those who gathered how young Jim Thornton ran to alert others to the blaze, he was also the last person to get out of the mill alive, having curled himself into a ball and rolled down a burning staircase.

A candle was also lit in dedication to the nine people who survived the blaze.

A special memorial service took place at Kirkheaton Parish Church on Saturday to remember the victims of the horrific fire.