A Spinning Demonstration at Helmshore Mills Textiles Museum

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Helmshore Mills Textile Museum is housed in two adjacent former textile mills, Higher Mill and Whitaker’s Mill, in the village of Helmshore in the Rossendale Valley, Lancashire The museum covers a three acre site, most of it running alongside the River Ogden.

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Higher Mill was constructed in 1789 and Whitaker’s Mill in the 1820s by the Turner family, textile manufacturers from the Blackburn area. In their early life the mills alternated between working wool and cotton; by 1920 they were working shoddy (recycled cotton) as condenser mule mills. Although a considerable part of Whitaker's Mill was destroyed in a fire in 1857, it was rebuilt shortly afterwards and continued in operation until 1978.

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The mills closed in 1967 and they were taken over by the Higher Mills Trust who maintain it as a museum.

Source: geograph.org.uk