Helmshore Mills Textile Museum facts for kids
Helmshore Mills Textile Museum
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 Location in the Borough of Rossendale
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| Alternative names | Higher Mill, Whitakerś Mill |
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| Architectural style | Stone built 3 storey |
| Structural system | Stone |
| Location | Helmshore, Rossendale, Lancashire, England |
| Owner | William Turner |
| Further ownership |
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| Current owners | Lancashire Museums |
| Coordinates | 53°41′20″N 2°20′10″W / 53.6890°N 2.3362°W |
| Construction | |
| Built | 1789 |
| Floor count | 3 |
| Water Power | |
| Wheels | 2 Pitch back |
| Equipment | |
| Cotton count | 20 |
| Mule Frames | 4 per floor, Taylor Lang, Stalybridge |
| Doublers | 1 |
The Helmshore Mills are two old factories, called mills, built next to the River Ogden in Helmshore, Lancashire, England. These mills are special because they show how textiles (like cloth and yarn) were made a long time ago.
One mill, called Higher Mill, was built in 1796. The other, Whitaker's Mill, was built in the 1820s. Both were built by the Turner family. At first, they switched between making products from wool and cotton. Later, by the 1920s, they started using recycled fabric, called shoddy, to make new yarn.
The mills stopped working in 1967. After that, a group called the Higher Mills Trust took them over. They turned the mills into a museum to show people how textiles were made. Today, these mills are known as some of the best-preserved examples of old cotton spinning and woollen fulling (a process to make wool thicker) factories that are still working.
The museum closed for a while in 2016 because of money problems. However, it reopened in April 2018 for visitors on certain days. Since November 2022, the museum also has a community café open on Thursdays during winter.
Contents
Where to Find Helmshore Mills
Helmshore Mills are located in the village of Helmshore. This village is in the Rossendale Valley in Lancashire. It's about 2 miles (3 km) south of Haslingden. The village is also about 16 miles (26 km) north of Manchester.
The River Ogden flows through Helmshore. This river is a small branch of the River Irwell. Helmshore grew up around seven different mills that made cotton and wool products.
The History of Helmshore Mills
The Turner family was already involved in making textiles before these mills were built. In 1789, they bought land to build a mill. They built Higher Mill to process wool. It was used for fulling, a process that makes wool fabric thicker and stronger.
Later, in the 1820s, William Turner built a bigger mill. This mill was for carding (preparing fibers) and spinning wool. The wool then went to another mill for weaving. After weaving, it came back to Higher Mill for finishing.
In 1857, Higher Mill was destroyed by a fire. But it was rebuilt in 1860 by Edward Turner. After the American Civil War, when cotton became available again, the rebuilt mill started spinning cotton. It had machines for processing raw cotton into fine yarn and even power looms for weaving.
In the 1920s, a company called L. Whitaker & Sons bought the mill. They installed special equipment to process recycled cotton. This business continued until 1978. Higher Mill was run by Lawrence Whittaker's family from 1875 until 1967. They continued to use the old machinery for fulling wool.
How the Mills Became a Museum
When Rossall Whittaker passed away in 1971, there was no one to take over Higher Mill. Local people who knew how important the mill was decided to save it. They had it protected as an Ancient monument. Then, they bought it through a special trust.
A company called Platt International, which also had a site in Helmshore, owned many old textile machines. They agreed to move their collection to Higher Mill. Running a museum and keeping the buildings in good shape was a big job for the trust. So, in 1975, Lancashire County Council stepped in to help. They took over the running of the museum.
In 1978, Whitaker's Mill also became empty. The County Council bought it too. This allowed them to buy the Platt collection of machines in 1985. Having both mills together created a complete museum about the textile industry in Lancashire. The museum's staff are experts. They even help other museums, like Quarry Bank Mill and the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester.
What You Can See at the Museum
The museum shows three main parts of textile making: the wool story, the cotton story, and the spinning floor.
The wool story shows how wool was processed. You can see the water wheel that powered the mill. There are also fulling stocks, which were machines that pounded wool fabric to make it thicker. People even used clay pots to collect urine from homes. This was because the ammonia in urine helped with the fulling process! Later, a different system was used. You can also see a tenter frame with tenterhooks. These hooks held cloth stretched out to dry so it wouldn't shrink. Teasels, which are prickly plants, were used to raise the soft surface (called the nap) on the cloth. Later, machines called teasel raising gigs did this job.
The cotton story starts by showing a hand weaver's cottage. Inside, there's a frame loom with a hand-thrown shuttle. Mannequins show a weaver and two women spinning yarn on different types of wheels. A child is shown carding cotton by hand. You can see an old spinning jenny from around 1760 with 16 spindles. There's also a bigger, improved jenny with 50 spindles. The museum has an original Arkwright's first carding machine. You can see all the machines that took cotton from bales: an opener, a scutcher, a breaker card, a finisher card, a draw frame, and a complete water frame from 1790. In Whitaker's Mill, there are machines that prepared waste cotton for the cards. These include a single cylinder picker for soft waste and a six cylinder devil for hard waste.
The spinning floor is one of two such floors in the mill. It has all the machines needed to prepare recycled cotton (shoddy) and turn it into soft strands called slivers. These slivers then become rovings. The rovings go onto huge spinning mules made by Taylor, Lang & Co. These mules have 714 spindles each! The processes of opening, scutching, and mixing happened on the floor below. This spinning floor is the only original and complete one of its kind left.
The yarn made here is sent to another museum, Queen Street Mill, to be woven into cloth.
Museum Closure and Reopening
In November 2015, Lancashire County Council announced that it would stop funding five of its museums. Helmshore Mills Textile Museum was one of them. This was due to money problems the council faced. The museums were supposed to close in March 2016, but their closure was delayed until September 30, 2016.
The museum closed on September 30, 2016, for general visitors. However, it stayed open for school groups who booked visits in advance. By June 2017, the council was looking for a new group to run the museum.
Re-Opening Good news came in April 2018! It was announced that the museum would reopen. It now opens on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM during the summer season (from late March to early November). Since November 2022, the museum's Community Café also opens every Thursday from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM. This provides a warm place for people during the winter.
The Mills and Their Importance
The entire Helmshore Mills site is a protected Ancient monument. Higher Mill is also a Grade II listed building, which means it's a historically important building. Even the tall chimney stack across the road is also a separately listed building.
How Condenser Spinning Worked
Condenser spinning was a way to make yarn from recycled waste materials. Fine spinning often created a lot of waste cotton. This waste was then used as the raw material for a condenser spinning mill. The waste came in different forms: loose fibers, unspun rovings (soft strands), and even spun thread that was rejected.
No matter the type of waste, it first had to be "devilled" (broken down) into short fibers. Then, it was scutched and carded, similar to normal cotton. Because the fibers were very short, the process was a bit different. A machine called a Derby Doubler was used to mix the soft strands (slivers) together. A special feature of the spinning mule used here was that the rovings were on a large beam, not on individual bobbins. As the need for fine cotton spinning decreased, so did the need for condenser spinning.
Boilers and the Chimney
When a steam engine was put into Whitaker Mill, Lancashire boilers were very common. To work best, these boilers needed air to be pulled over the coals. This was the job of the tall mill chimney.
Since these mills are in a valley, the airflow could be uneven. So, the chimney was built on the hill opposite the mill. The smoke and hot air traveled through a special path (a flue) over the river and underground to reach the chimney. This created a strong upward pull of air, which was needed for the boilers to work efficiently.
The first boilers in Whitaker Mill were installed around 1855. Later, other Lancashire boilers were put in, but they were removed in the 1950s. Higher Mill had a different type of boiler, called a Cornish type, for heating.
Water Power at the Mills
Clean water was very important for processing the cloth. This water was collected from field drainage on the nearby hillside. It was stored in a large lodge (a small lake) on the other side of the river. When needed, the water was piped across to the mill.
The water wheel, and later the steam engine's condenser, could use the water from the River Ogden, even though it was quite polluted. A small dam (a weir) was built about 800 meters upstream. This diverted river water into a long, canal-like channel (a lodge) that led to the mill. After the water passed over the pitch-back water wheel, it flowed through an underground channel (a culverted tail goit) back into the River Ogden.
See also
- List of mills in Lancashire
- Listed buildings in Haslingden
- Cotton mill
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