Quarry
Bank Mill, Styal - Part II
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Adjacent to the mill-yard
is the manager's villa (built 1810); the Greg family mansion is
also adjacent but at the other end of the mill, and safely tucked
away behind a high wall.
Inside the mill, the manager's
office as it might have been in the 1920s ...
... and a demonstration
of hand spinning and handloom weaving as it might have been in
the 1720s, before the factory system got properly going.
The mill is fully operative;
converting raw cotton, that arrives in presspack bales, as seen
against the wall here, into progressively finer slivers through
stages on different but similar machines.
Then, by further drawing
and twisting, converted into threads ...
... and then wound onto
a beam in a manner suitable ...
... for the weaver with
his automatic looms to convert into cloth. The looms in the picture
above are still driven by water power from the 24 x 22 feet water
wheel ...
... the view here is of
the back of the 50ton wheel ...
... and here its interior
lit by Sodium-Lights as the wheel slowly turns under minimal load
conditions, but at full power capable of 100hp.
The opening of the Gallery
around the operating water-wheel, sponsored by United
Utilities, the local water company, is commemorated by this
mobile sculpture which spells out 'WATER FORCE' in an intriguing
and humorous manner.
The limitations of water
power became a hindrance as machines developed and each demanded
more power; also as the success of the Greg enterprise grew and
the mill had to be extended to take extra machines.
Steam power was, fortunately,
being developed over that period and as early as 1810 the first
steam engine to augment the water power was installed. It was
a single cylinder Boulton and Watt beam engine similar to this
one, of an 1820 vintage.
Early steam boilers were
inefficient and dangerous, but had been fairly well tamed by 1880,
when this Lancashire-type boiler was manufactured.
At various stages the mill
was extended ...
... until it reached something
like its current state at the start of the 20th century.
Much less widely appreciated
until our more leisured age, the interest and beauty of the fields
and woods of the Greg Estate surrounding the mill and village.
Paths radiate out from the
mill, up and down stream into the Styal Country Park, which is
what the public access areas of the estate have become.
The bare twigs of winter
are starting to burst out into leaf and bloom ...
... noble mature trees catch
the afternoon sun ...
... and a Golden Labrador
puppy is being introduced to the delights of water, from a beach
on the bank of the Bollin ...
... downstream from the
mill and the cascade over the dam wall.
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