Quarry
Bank Mill, Styal
In between Wilmslow and
Manchester Airport is the village of Styal, now a pretty dormitory
area whose peace is these days interrupted by aircraft taking
off, but for a long time it would have been the clatter of looms
...
... from the cotton textile
mill built, here in the countryside, in 1784, by Samuel Greg of
Belfast.
The existence of the substantial
water flow of the River Bollin at this point was the most important
reason for siting the mill here. Water power, harnessed through
a mill-wheel was the only practical way, in the late 18th century,
of driving the newly developed textile machinery.
Samuel Greg sited his factory
in the countryside, so that he could have a more self-contained
operation where employees, who would have entered the mill daily
through this door, were more reliable because separated from the
gin-soaked filth and squalor of the towns.
A major source of employees
for all the mills were children and Greg imported them from Poor
Houses and Orphanages all over the country and housed and had
them continually supervised closely in his Apprentice House built
six years after the mill.
From 1939, the Mill and
surrounding Styal Estate have been in the ownership of The
National Trust and they have developed the mill as a working
cotton textile museum.
Across the fields, away
from the mill, we can see some of the cottages, and one of the
chapels, that were built in the 1820s to house the growing workforce
of this successful industrial colony. But for the 'plane taking
off, a scene as it might have looked 100 years ago.
Back at the Apprentice House
we could be back 200 years ...
... and it's washday! I
suppose it's always washday, now that it's part of the working
museum. Inside the outhouse, you can see the wood-fired boiler
and the two tubs, with what I call possers, are the washing machines
(human powered!).
The intention of Greg was
to have the colony as self-sufficient as possible and a sizeable
kitchen garden was used to advantage with all those growing bodies
to feed. By the standards of the time, Greg treated his employees
quite well.
Across the Village Green,
the main concentration of dwellings at Oak Cottages.
The cottages have a basement
where food could be kept cool(-ish), coal could be stored for
the fires that were the sole form of heating and for cooking ...
... and clothes could be
washed.
Bathing would only be accomplished
on a weekly basis and could have taken place in the living room,
in front of the fire, especially in winter!
Tacked on at the end of
the row of cottages the village school built with the cottages
in the 1820s; before that education would have been provided ...
... either here in the adjacent
Unitarian Chapel or the Methodist Chapel across the village. It
is probable that there would have been some efforts at education
prior to the introduction of universal education in the 19th century.
The adherents of the non-conformist churches were generally enthusiastic
self-helpers and auto-didacts and that extended into their families
also.
Continued
in Part II
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