Queen Street Mill

Queen Street Mill

Queen Street Mill
Location within the Borough of Burnley
Cotton
Weaving mill
Architectural style Single storey
Owner Queen Street Manufacturing Company
Further ownership
Current owners Lancashire Museums
Coordinates 53°49′N 2°12′W / 53.81°N 2.20°W / 53.81; -2.20Coordinates: 53°49′N 2°12′W / 53.81°N 2.20°W / 53.81; -2.20 53°49′N 2°12′W / 53.81°N 2.20°W / 53.81; -2.20
Construction
Built 1894
Completed 1895 (1895)
Floor count 1
Design team
Awards and prizes and listings Grade 1 listed building (25-12-2013)
Power
Date 1894
Engine maker William Roberts of Nelson
Engine type Tandem compound
Valve Gear Corliss valves operated by Dobson trip gear
rpm 68
Transmission type Direct drive to line shafts
Boiler configuration
Boilers Twin Lancashire boilers, coal fired
Pressure 140
Equipment
Date 1894
Manufacturer
  • Pemberton
  • Harling & Todd
No. of looms 990 (now 308)

Queen Street Mill is a Grade 1 listed building in Harle Syke, a suburb to the north-east of Burnley, Lancashire. It was built in 1894 for the Queen Street Manufacturing Company. It closed on 12 March 1982 and was mothballed, but was subsequently taken over by Burnley Borough Council and maintained as a museum. In the 1990s ownership passed to Lancashire Museums. Unique in being the world's only surviving operational steam-driven weaving shed, it received an Engineering Heritage Award in November 2010. It is open to visitors and offers weaving demonstrations but is currently threatened with closure.

Location

Queen Street Mill is a former working mill that lies within Harle Syke. It is a suburb of Burnley an industrial town in the North West of The United Kingdom Harle Syke is approximately, 4 km from Burnley town centre and a part of the civil parish of Briercliffe with Extwistle. It is 22 miles (35 km) north of Manchester and 26 miles (42 km) east of Preston, two other former large industrial towns that were significant during the industrial revolution. Harle Syke is on high ground to the south of the River Calder near the M65. The hamlet was built on grid-iron layout and housed seven cotton mills, or weaving sheds.

History

The Queen Street Mill Manufacturing Company was established in 1894, capitalised with ₤20,000 in £5 shares. The first board of directors was listed as Brierley Edmondson (weaver), William Kippax (weaver), George Lane (builder), John Nuttall (glazer), Thomas Pickles (foreman), John Taylor (weaver), Whitaker Whitaker (weaver), and James Corrin (Headteacher, Haggate School) who became the first company secretary.[1] The company built the Queen Street Mill between 1894 and 1895. As money was scarce only one Lancashire boiler was installed, and it was six years before the second was bought. The weaving shed was single storey, and the mill frontage was three storey. All the looms were bought from Burnley companies, Pemberton & Co. and Harling & Todd Ltd., and have not been replaced. The mill was originally equipped with 900 single shuttle Lancashire looms capable of producing grey cloth. When this was not enough, the company installed a further 366 looms at Primrose Mill, Harle Syke which was the room and power mill immediately adjacent but slightly downhill. To the workers it was known as the bottom shed.[2]

The completed cloth was taken by horse and cart and train to finishers for bleaching and dyeing. Around 1910, the hauliers, ex-employees of the mill invested in two steam driven flat bed lorries. These were impounded in 1915 for war work, and horses briefly returned.[2] In April 1913 quotes were sought from William Roberts & Co of Nelson to upgrade the engine, which mainly included replacing the slide-valve cylinders with more efficient Corliss valve cylinders. This work was carried out during the following Wakes Week.

The financial structure of the company inhibited change, and the original equipment was not improved again or replaced but the company continued to weave when other firms had closed. Mains electricity was only introduced in 1947.[3]

Following the ending of its grants from Burnley Council and Lancashire County Council this, the last steam-powered mill in the world, will be closed in April 2016.

Harle Syke Strike, 1915

Weavers were paid by piecework; a good four-loom weaver was paid 24 shillings a week, only slightly less than the tackler. Harle Syke workers had always been paid slightly below the list, which management explained as being due to the carriage costs to Burnley. In August 1915 there was a strike that lasted for several weeks triggered by this injustice. Many workers were also shareholders and took a dividend from the profits of the mill, so they refused to join the strike. Leaflets were printed by the Weavers' Union accusing them of scabbing and being "Knobsticks". The issue was resolved in December 1915 when the War Bonus came into effect and weavers were persuaded to see this as the rise they had been seeking. Cotton Control was introduced in 1918, which led to a four-day working week.[2]

Fire, 1918

A serious fire occurred in October 1918. The fire did not affect the boilers or the engine, and the mill was fully operational again 10 days after the incident. However, the mill front was damaged, and was subsequently rebuilt, though as a single-storey building. During the rebuilding, the mill looms were relocated to the bottom shed. As forementioned, Prudence the engine, was undamaged in the fire and was renamed Peace, in respect for the fallen soldiers of the First World War.[2]

Museum, 1983

By early 1982 the mill was only operating 440 looms and was no longer financially viable. It finally closed on 12 March 1982, and the mill was mothballed. The mill was rescued by Burnley Borough Council in 1983. It was reopened in April 1986 as a working textile museum. It passed to Lancashire County Council's Museums Service who carried out major refurbishments assisted by English Heritage, the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the European Regional Development Fund. It re-opened again in 1997.[4] The mill again produces cloth as a result of the demonstration, and the machinery is deemed a collection of national importance. It is open to the public at least three afternoons a week between March and November.[3]

In 2015 it was threatened with closure by the Labour-controlled council as the Tory government withdrew much of Lancashire's funding.[5]

The mill

Architecture

The mill was of four-storey construction, with a large single-storey weaving shed. After the fire in 1918 it was remodelled into a single-storey building, space being taken from the weaving sheds for a new preparation area. On closure in 1982 it was reconfigured by Burnley Council, the weaving shed was partitioned, about a third being used for rentable industrial units, and a similar area being used for visitor facilities. The 37-metre (121 ft) chimney and the 60 m x 25 m lodge lay to the south. The boiler house, the engine house and chimney are Scheduled Ancient Monuments.[6]

As originally built the weaving shed was about 170 metres (560 ft) by 160 metres (520 ft), with the typical north facing roof lights (windows) giving natural light, the shed housed 990 looms. On the Queen Street side was the boiler room and engine house, and the four-storey warehouse. The ground floor was the weft department, the first floor was offices, the cloth warehouse and temporary storage beams, the second floor was the winding and beaming department for beaming and drawing in, and the third floor was the preparation department for tape sizing. After the fire the ground floor of the frontage was rebuilt and used for winding and preparation, 100 looms were removed, and part of the Harrison Street end of the shed became the new warehouse. Rowland Kippax who worked there however reported "there were now 1040 looms, there were nine tacklers looking after 130 looms each".[2]

Power

Steam is raised by two Lancashire boilers built by Tinker, Shenton & Co, Hyde. The first was installed in 1894, and the second in 1901, when a 120-tube Greens Economiser was fitted.[7] Feed water is now supplied by a Weir pump fitted in 1956. Both boilers were stoked manually, until secondhand Proctor automatic stokers were fitted in 1962. Boiler No.1 had the Shovel type and the coking type was fitted to No.2; the manually stoked 1901 boiler is the only one used today.[4]Coal was obtained locally from Bank Hall Pit but now with pollution controls being stricter it has to be imported. At its peak it burnt 6 tonnes a day, but now uses only 10 tonnes a month. The steam raised to 100 psi in the boiler house, drives the original tandem compound horizontal stationary steam engine. The high-pressure cylinder (HP) is 16 inches (41 cm) and the low-pressure (LP) 32 inches (81 cm). It uses Corliss valves. The engine drives a 14 feet (4.3 m) flywheel running at 68 rpm. The 500 horsepower (370 kW) engine was built and installed by William Roberts of Nelson in 1895.[8] It has never been moved from this location and runs perfectly true. Power is taken from the crankshaft by a series of directly driven line shafts.[3] Currently the mill uses coal bought from the United States and Russia.

Equipment

The glory of this mill is its completeness. When yarn enters a weaving mill, it is on different size cops and cheeses, and these had to be wound onto pirns to fit in the shuttles used by the looms installed. The equipment is here and used. For the weft, there are two remaining banks of pirn winders manned by one operative.[3]

The warp needs to be taken from a 300 bobbins on V-shaped frame and wound onto a beam. Four or five beams are merged to make the 2000 end beam that is needed, and they are placed in the Cylinder Tape Sizing Machine (made in 1919 by Howard & Bullough Ltd. of Accrington[9]). The threads pass through the size to stiffen them and reduce friction. The size is a mixture of flour soft soap and tallow: specific to this mill. They are dried over steam-heated cylinders and wound onto the final beam, the weavers beam.

The weavers beam is now placed on the Drawing-in frame. Here each end is passed through the healds, and then through a reed. This job was done by a reacher-in and a loomer. The reacher-in, who would be young and usually a boy, passed each end in order to the loomer. The mill still has two Drawing in frames. Alternatively, if the loom had already run that cloth, a short length of warp thread could be left on the healds and reed, and a Barber-Colman knotter could tie in warp threads to the new beam. This process took 20 minutes, considerably faster than starting afresh. Spare healds and reeds are stored above head height for that purpose.[3]

The loomed weavers beam would be taken into the weaving shed. One weaver would tenter 6, or 8 Lancashire Looms, which would be kept working by a tackler. Today there are 308 looms from 1894 built by Pemberton, or Harling & Todd of Burnley. These would require 65–80 weavers and 3 tacklers. At its peak there were 990 looms, all driven by overhead line shafts.[3]

Museum exhibits

In addition to the original machines, Lancashire Museums also display other textile machines they own or are restoring, and weave some specialist commissions. One of the commissions is a blue and white shirting that is sold exclusively to 'Old Town' of Holt, Norfolk, who produce Victorian workware. Another is weaving woollen Jewish prayer shawls. There is a large Hattersley Standard Loom, and a treadle operated Hattersley Domestic Loom. There is a Sulzer, and a Saurer telescopic rapier loom that operates at 180 picks per minute. There is a collection of shuttles and machines used to make and maintain them. Also, there are machines for making reeds and healds.

Notable events/media

The weaving shed was used in a scene in the 2011 film The King's Speech. The museum was also used to portray the Milton steam mill in the BBC series North & South and Life on Mars.

See also

References

Notes

  1. ↑ "Queen Street Mill Textile Museum:People". Burnley: Lancashire County Council. 2011. Retrieved 20 March 2011.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Kippax, Rowland (1 August 1978). "Village had eleven flourishing mills". Briercliffe Society (Burnley, Lancashire: Burnley Express). Retrieved 22 March 2011.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "The last remaining steam powered mill in the world". Lancashire County Council. 2011.
  4. 1 2 Dunkerley, Paul (2008). "Engineering Timelines-Queen Street Mill". London: Engineering Timelines reg. charity no. 1128041. Retrieved 26 March 2011.
  5. ↑ "East Lancashire MP vows to fight for axe-threat museums". Lancashire Telegraph. 18 November 2015.
  6. ↑ "Queen Street Mill Textile Museum". Lancashire County Council. 2011.
  7. ↑ Date uncertain, the current Economiser dates from 1934.
  8. ↑ Ashmore 1982, p. 190.
  9. ↑ Queen Street Mill Textile Museum. Preston: Lancashire County Council. 2012.

Bibliography

External links

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