Quarry Bank Mill 2023, England

We had visited Quarry Bank Mill a few times since it is near Manchester Airport, so it's a good spot to kill some time before a flight (or to walk around after being on the plane too long and not wanting to drive an hour and half).

Quarry Bank Mill

We visited the gardens. The mill generated its own town, with gardens made by locals (both the working class people and the owner of the mill). Some gardens were for pleasure, others for practicality. 

Walled gardens

Flowers along a path

View to the mill (not so great)

Quarry bank part of the area

Hillside formal garden

More hillside formal garden

Two bridges

View to the Owner's House (not so great)

The owner's house is available for tours but we did not go there.

Back of the house

The door on the road is the front door, right?

The mill has a lot of displays on various aspects of the mill's history. First, we read about the Greg family moving to the area and building the mill in the 1700s.

Travel trunk and itinerary

An extensive exhibit talks about the health problems of people working at the mill back in centuries past. One of the hands-on challenges is to put a brain together. My daughter and I couldn't get it done. Had we already been at the mill too long?

Brain puzzle

Some of the repetitive work led to physical limitations (in addition to mental problems like not knowing how the brain goes together!). Some workers did have more dynamic tasks, like engineers or supervisors. young people would sometimes be tested if they had potential for more complicated work. My son tried a challenge to move a ring around without touching the metal pole in the center. The trick is the pole's shape--a human!

Test for work-worthiness

We saw plenty of machines that clean and weave the cotton processed here.

Carding machine

Kids worked at the mill along with parents, sometimes 12-hour days for six days a week! A display talked about various laws that put limits on how much and what age children could work. The first law created four inspectors to cover the 3000 mills to make sure they were following proper standards.

That girl manikin seems to have an opinion

In the basement of the mill is a lot of information on how they used the river power to power the mill. My kids enjoyed the gigantic wheels and seeing how the engineers moved a bit of the river to make the power levels more consistent.

Water management

After a few years, they realized that the weather had an impact on productivity (too little rain meant too little power). The owners bought a steam engine to supplement the river power. The machine was for pumping water, so the local engineers had to rig up something to change the up-and-down motion into rotary motion. It was fascinating!

Original steam engine

As you might guess, dear reader, we visited on the way to airport to continue our European adventures on the continent! More too follow!