Hollin bank mill chimney
Barden mill/pendle village shopping outlet
Colne Nelson
Barden mill/pendle village shopping outlet
Colne Nelson
Ok, first post so here goes………..
My pictures are not so good, I have an olympus 1030sw camera. Pretty bog standard by anyone's imagination and I've never really taken photos until I started this urbex stuff. So now I've started to make an effort, although to be fair it was difficult to keep the camera still while 3 blokes moved about on the scaff planks atop of said chimney. I couldn’t find much on the net about the actual chimney tho.
History
Hollin Bank Mill is a steam-powered room and power cotton-weaving mill of at least two phases. It is built of coursed and random stone rubble on gently sloping ground on the east bank of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The first phase, built between 1891 and 1893, consists of a south-west facing multi-storey office, warehouse and yarn preparation block with a tall engine house and broad boiler house, for three boilers, attached side by side to its north-west end. Adjacent to the boiler house, directly on the canal bank, is the circular red brick chimney which bears the name Hollin Bank picked out in white brick. Behind the multi-storey block is a large single-storey weaving shed with a saw-tooth roof glazed to the north east. The second phase, built between 1891 and 1910, saw the mill doubling in size as a mirror-image version of the first phase was built back to back against it. It consisted of a second weaving shed butting against the first and with its own multi-storey block across its north-east end. A straight joint in the south-east weaving shed wall suggests that this part of the mill might itself have been built in more than one phase. The original engine and boiler complex continued to supply power to the entire site. The mill was severely damaged by a fire in 1917 but was evidently rebuilt soon after. The multi-storey blocks have been much altered but otherwise all of the mill components survive in fairly good condition. A freestanding red-brick shed and warehouse immediately west of the mill, built between 1891 and 1910, may or may not have been associated with the mill. It is not individually identified on maps nor in directories.
A friend of mine knows what I get up to and thought he would mention about this chimney, which was laddered as they are taking it down brick by brick, so without further a do I got in touch with the usual suspects…… Mr pink and Jobs and Paradox.
There was no hesitation from either suspect and within 48 hours we met up in the area and quickly discussed a few things we all needed to know. We then proceeded to crack on with the job in hand, parked up, sorted gear and walked down the main road carrying a rope, a bag and Jobs wearing his harness, police everywhere lol. To our access point , soon enough we had carried out a bit of rope trickery and were onto the wooded ladder, Mr pink went first, this guy is always like a kid in a sweet shop on this sort of thing, with the added spice of Jobs telling us about a chimney he was on some time ago when the ladders slipped down a few inch hmmm… lovely, not really what I wanted to hear just before we all solo the ladders!!!!
But wait……….. what the hell are those red and blue lights that seem to be flashing past us in the darkness of the canal!? Not very bright but striking enough to make everyone stop and have a good look round, mr pink who was about quarter to half way up the ladder froze too, but by now we realised it was 2 dogs being taken for a walk down the canal! The dogwalker got as close as he could as he was on the opposite side of the canal stopped and shone a beaming bright light at Mr pink who was on the ladder for what seemed like ages, he soon carried on his way down the canal and it was time to get on with it.
I was next up slowly and steadily, then the overhang at the top, its only a scaff plank but little things like that seem a much bigger ordeal at around 35 metres up than close to ground level, nice, now I'm on top, not long after Jobs arrives, closely followed by the presence of the 2 red and blue flashing dogs, here we go again!!! we all sort of kept down and still as Mr dogwalker shone his super high super beam at us, he didn’t seem too bothered and again…. Carried on his way down the canal, this time he took longer……. Or it just seemed longer because we all wanted him to piss off! I'm not gonna blame my shit camera for the blurriness of my photos, I'm gonna blame these two suspects for bouncing around and not keeping still, ha only joking…. I am shit with a camera but slowly getting better. Took a few pics, had a good look around and got down, packed the bags and made off buzzing my tits off.
Nice little job that, thanks Mr pink, Jobs and Paradox for being ground crew for the pics, thoroughly enjoyable evening!
Here's the ‘shit pics’, im sure someone will be along soon with some better ones…….
This is the little beast
View attachment 635121
Looking down the inside
Thanks for reading,
stonemonkey
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