Upper Mills, Slaithwaite - July 2015
Visited with Fudge
This mill has been subdivided into units like a lot of mills in the area - there are still two or three textiles firms operating here, and even the micro-brewery Empire Brewing (Huddersfield has more micro-breweries per head of the population than anywhere else in the UK), but hands down the best place, IN THE WORLD never mind just this mill, is The Handmade Bakery, who occupy a unit in the former weaving sheds... if you're ever in the area, get yourself in there and order a Savoury Danish and a coffee. Different class!
Anyways, whenever we find ourselves down here, we always have a wander through the grounds of the mill and peer into a small room filled with gear. I think this probably goes for a lot of the Leeds guys too - who regularly come on holiday to Huddersfield to experience real Yorkshire character rather than the watered-down, vomit-inducing, yuppy-esque version they practice on the other side of the M62. There's never really been a way inside this little derpy room, until that is Fudge noticed an opening very recently. It was a miserable, late Sunday afternoon by this time, but so eager was I to get in before the working week, we convened for a look just before sundown. We'd always assumed the room, being full to the brim with junk and old 70s kit, was out of use... we should really know better by now.
As early as 1544 there was a fulling mill on the site, as is recorded in Arthur Kaye's Court Rolls - "both the walk mylnes (fulling mills) at Slagthwate owt of the Hoole ground". The estate was owned by the Dartmouth and Kaye families. Obviously it's just the name that has survived. This particular Upper Mills was a scribbling and fulling mill built at the end of the eighteenth century by Messrs Shaw & Haigh. By 1910, James Holroyd & Son were here, with Elon Crowther spinning cotton in the mill by 1924. Elon installed an impressive water turbine and steam engine in 1924, which were unfortunately removed in the late 80s and reside in Masson Mills, Matlock Bath now. At one point we peered through a hole in a wall at the top of climbable pipe and saw what I think were the control panels in the same room as these bad boys used to be...
Now the mill as previously mentioned is divided into units. Companies involved in textiles include Kingfisher Weavers, Weavetec and The English Cloth Company - I'm not certain who owns this little unit.
We had a good craic at getting into other parts of the mill. There is of course a lot more to the mill we didn't manage to access. Worthy of note... just outside the front gates of the mill is the only working guillotine lock gate in the country, part of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal.
Shot with the last ten or so on a roll of Ilford XP2, and then had to switch to Kodak Gold, so I've tried to alternate the sequence of photos to make the order a bit more coherent.
Well there you go, another one for ya.
Visited with Fudge
This mill has been subdivided into units like a lot of mills in the area - there are still two or three textiles firms operating here, and even the micro-brewery Empire Brewing (Huddersfield has more micro-breweries per head of the population than anywhere else in the UK), but hands down the best place, IN THE WORLD never mind just this mill, is The Handmade Bakery, who occupy a unit in the former weaving sheds... if you're ever in the area, get yourself in there and order a Savoury Danish and a coffee. Different class!
Anyways, whenever we find ourselves down here, we always have a wander through the grounds of the mill and peer into a small room filled with gear. I think this probably goes for a lot of the Leeds guys too - who regularly come on holiday to Huddersfield to experience real Yorkshire character rather than the watered-down, vomit-inducing, yuppy-esque version they practice on the other side of the M62. There's never really been a way inside this little derpy room, until that is Fudge noticed an opening very recently. It was a miserable, late Sunday afternoon by this time, but so eager was I to get in before the working week, we convened for a look just before sundown. We'd always assumed the room, being full to the brim with junk and old 70s kit, was out of use... we should really know better by now.
As early as 1544 there was a fulling mill on the site, as is recorded in Arthur Kaye's Court Rolls - "both the walk mylnes (fulling mills) at Slagthwate owt of the Hoole ground". The estate was owned by the Dartmouth and Kaye families. Obviously it's just the name that has survived. This particular Upper Mills was a scribbling and fulling mill built at the end of the eighteenth century by Messrs Shaw & Haigh. By 1910, James Holroyd & Son were here, with Elon Crowther spinning cotton in the mill by 1924. Elon installed an impressive water turbine and steam engine in 1924, which were unfortunately removed in the late 80s and reside in Masson Mills, Matlock Bath now. At one point we peered through a hole in a wall at the top of climbable pipe and saw what I think were the control panels in the same room as these bad boys used to be...
Now the mill as previously mentioned is divided into units. Companies involved in textiles include Kingfisher Weavers, Weavetec and The English Cloth Company - I'm not certain who owns this little unit.
We had a good craic at getting into other parts of the mill. There is of course a lot more to the mill we didn't manage to access. Worthy of note... just outside the front gates of the mill is the only working guillotine lock gate in the country, part of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal.
Shot with the last ten or so on a roll of Ilford XP2, and then had to switch to Kodak Gold, so I've tried to alternate the sequence of photos to make the order a bit more coherent.
Well there you go, another one for ya.
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