Manchester Trip : Quarry Bank Mill (Part Two)

I’ll have to upload these photos as a job lot as I can’t really add a great deal of context to them (it might surprise my two loyal blog readers, but my knowledge of industrial equipment isn’t perfect to say the least), but they were what turned the cotton into clothing and other items at the mill.

The volunteers turned a lot of these machines on and they’re not the quietest things. I can only begin to imagine what the noise must have been like when all of the machines were running at full capacity. It’s no surprise that many people working here lost their hearing. Some of the machinery isn’t actually from the mill, but has been brought here to show the sort of industrial equipment that was here.

Some videos of the equipment (and Richard).

An apprentice’s indenture.

A wage cup from the mill, this is how everyone received their pay.

The toilet facilities at the mill for the workers.

The main waterwheel here is enormous, of a quite breathtaking size, but it was hard to get a photo of it to show just how substantial it was. This is the original wheel pit when they had a smaller waterwheel in operation.

I did manage to get a video of the waterwheel though from the side.

Liam likes engineering projects.

In April 1847, the original 1818 shaft was found to be cracked and so it was replaced with this new iron shaft. It was repaired in 1873 and taken out of usage in 1904.

Richard then bought a load of fabrics from the shop, although Liam and I resisted such temptations.

And with that, we all had to think of getting home. Richard went off in one direction, Ross and Liam in another, but not before they dropped me off at Manchester Airport’s free drop-off car park. For the observant, this is where my little series of posts about Berlin started….. Anyway, this was a quite marvellous weekend and excellent company, I’m looking forwards to the 2025 expedition which I think is to Cardiff.