On our way to the Lake District we stopped off at
Quarry Bank Mill. This fitted in with adventure 31 - travel back in time (from our Amazing Family Adventures book), enabling the girls to find out about victorian working conditions!
Quarry Bank Mill in
Styal,
Cheshire, England, is one of the best preserved
textile mills of the
Industrial Revolution and is now a museum of the cotton industry. The mill was started in 1784 and over the
following one hundred years, harnessed water power to drive
the machinery which prepared the yarn for spinning, but later moved on
to steam power in order to power the actual looms. We went inside the restored industrial building into
which much of the original machinery has been replaced.
You can trace the whole process through from the arrival of the sacks of
cotton bolls through to the cotton being prepared as yarn, to it being
loaded onto the looms and made into different fabrics
The clattering noise from just one machine is pretty deafening:
multiply it to reflect the fact that in the 1830’s there were over three
hundred looms operating, and the cacophony must have been terrifying!
We then visited the The Apprentice House where young apprentices who arrived at Styal Mill in the 19th century were housed. The guided tour talked about life these children had - who
were very lucky compared with their friends who were not chosen to go
with them but who were left in the Liverpool workhouse.The girls had a
taste of the life of an apprentice, trying bed making, emptying chamber
pots, writing with a slate pencil copying copperplate handwriting and
seeing real live leeches in the medicine cabinet!
We then had a quick wonder round the very beautiful gardens!
