Queen Street Mill is a former

weaving mill Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudinal th ...

Harle Syke Harle Syke is a small village within the parish of Briercliffe, situated three miles north of Burnley, Lancashire, England. It was the home to eleven weaving firms, working out of seven mills. Queen Street Mill closed in 1982, and was converted t ...

, a suburb to the north-east of

Burnley Burnley () is a town and the administrative centre of the wider Borough of Burnley in Lancashire, England, with a 2001 population of 73,021. It is north of Manchester and east of Preston, at the confluence of the River Calder and River Bru ...

, Lancashire, that is a 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 Burnley () is a town and the administrative centre of the wider Borough of Burnley in Lancashire, England, with a 2001 population of 73,021. It is north of Manchester and east of Preston, at the confluence of the River Calder and River Bru ...

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 A weaving shed is a distinctive type of mill developed in the early 1800s in Lancashire, :Derbyshire and Yorkshire to accommodate the new power looms weaving cotton, silk, woollen and worsted. A weaving shed can be a stand-alone mill, or a ...

, it received an Engineering Heritage Award in November 2010. Previously open to visitors and offering weaving demonstrations, the museum closed in September 2016 (except for pre-booked school parties). In April 2018 Lancashire County Council announced that the museum, along with

Helmshore Mills Textile Museum Helmshore Mills are two mills built on the River Ogden in Helmshore, Lancashire. Higher Mill was built in 1796 for William Turner, and Whitaker's Mill was built in the 1820s by the Turner family. In their early life they alternated between work ...

and the Judges Lodgings in Lancaster, would reopen three days a week.

Location

Queen Street Mill is a former working mill that lies within Harle Syke. It is a suburb of

, an industrial town in the

North West The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

of the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. Harle Syke is approximately 4 km from Burnley town centre and a part of the civil parish of Briercliffe with Extwistle. It is north of

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

and east of Preston, two other former large industrial towns that were significant during the

industrial revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

. 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 A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Although some were driven ...

, 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. The company built the Queen Street Mill between 1894 and 1895. As money was scarce only one

Lancashire boiler A shell or flued boiler is an early and relatively simple form of boiler used to make steam, usually for the purpose of driving a steam engine. The design marked a transitional stage in boiler development, between the early haystack boilers and t ...

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

companies, Pemberton & Co. and Harling & Todd Ltd., and have not been replaced. The mill was originally equipped with 900 single shuttle

Lancashire loom The Lancashire Loom was a semi-automatic power loom invented by James Bullough and William Kenworthy in 1842. Although it is self-acting, it has to be stopped to recharge empty shuttles. It was the mainstay of the Lancashire cotton industry for ...

s 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 A room and power mill was a type of textile mill found in Lancashire, England, in the 19th century. Small businesses paid the owner rent for space for their machines and power from the mill engine or waterwheel. The system In, for example Nelson, ...

immediately adjacent but slightly downhill. To the workers it was known as the bottom shed. 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. 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 Wakes Week is a holiday period in parts of England and Scotland. Originally a religious celebration or feast, the tradition of the Wakes Week developed into a secular holiday, particularly in North West England during the Industrial Revolution ...

. 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. In November 2015 Lancashire County Council announced it planned to cease its funding of the museum and shut to the public from 1 April 2016. In March 2016 the museum was granted a six-month reprieve and remained open to the public until 30 September 2016 under the council. In April 2018 it was announced it would reopen Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from July 7 until 28 October 2018 and between Easter and the end of October 2019.

Harle Syke Strike, 1915

Weavers were paid by piecework; a good four-loom weaver was paid 24

shillings The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence or ...

a week, only slightly less than the

tackler A tackler was a supervisor in a textile factory responsible for the working of a number of power looms and the weavers who operated them. The title derived from the job, which was to "tackle" any mechanical problems encountered with the looms in ...

. 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.

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 World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

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

in 1983. It was reopened in April 1986 as a working textile museum. It passed to

Lancashire County Council Lancashire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Lancashire, England. It consists of 84 councillors. Since the 2017 election, the council has been under Conservative control. Prior to the 2009 La ...

's Museums Service who carried out major refurbishments assisted by

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

, the

National Heritage Memorial Fund The National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) was set up in 1980 to save the most outstanding parts of the British national heritage, in memory of those who have given their lives for the UK. It replaced the National Land Fund which had fulfilled the ...

and the

European Regional Development Fund The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) is one of the European Structural and Investment Funds allocated by the European Union. Its purpose is to transfer money from richer regions (not countries), and invest it in the infrastructure and se ...

. It re-opened again in 1997. The mill again produced cloth as a result of the demonstrations, and the machinery is deemed a collection of national importance.

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 Woolen (American English) or woollen (Commonwealth English) is a type of yarn made from carded wool. Woolen yarn is soft, light, stretchy, and full of air. It is thus a good insulator, and makes a good knitting yarn. Woolen yarn is in contrast t ...

Jewish prayer shawls. There is a large

Hattersley Standard Loom The Hattersley loom was developed by Geo. Hattersley, George Hattersley and Sons of Keighley, West Yorkshire, England. The company had been started by Richard Hattersley after 1784, with his son, George Hattersley, later entering the business alon ...

, and a treadle operated Hattersley Domestic Loom. There is a Sulzer, and a Saurer telescopic

rapier loom A rapier loom is a shuttleless weaving loom in which the filling yarn is carried through the shed of warp yarns to the other side of the loom by finger-like carriers called rapiers. A stationary package of yarn is used to supply the weft yarns ...

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.

Closure

In November 2015 the

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

-controlled

announced the withdrawal of funding from five of its museums:

Fleetwood Museum Fleetwood Museum is a local history and maritime museum in the English seaside town of Fleetwood, Lancashire. The museum was originally the town's Customs House and, completed in 1836, was one of the first buildings constructed in Fleetwood. Lik ...

, Judges' Lodgings,

Museum of Lancashire The Museum of Lancashire is an historic collection in Preston in Lancashire, England. The museum, which is based in the old Sessions House, is a Grade II listed building. History Construction of the courthouse, which was commissioned to accomm ...

and Queen Street Mill because of what the leader of the council described as "the financial challenges facing the county council as we deal with relentless cuts to central government funding combined with rising demand for our services". They were initially to close at the end of March 2016 but that month were reprieved until September 2016. The museum closed on 30 September 2016, along with the other four Lancashire museums mentioned above, except for pre-booked school groups. In October 2016 Lancashire County Council's website stated that "There has been an expression of interest from a potential new operator"; it stated that "Negotiations are underway to identify a new operator". In April 2018 it was announced it would reopen on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from July 7 until 28 October 2018 and between Easter and the end of October 2019.

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 chimney and the 60 m x 25 m lodge lay to the south. The boiler house, the engine house and chimney were previously

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...

s. The whole site was granted Grade 1 listed status in 2013 giving protection to the rest of the building. As originally built the weaving shed was about by , 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 Warp and weft are the two basic components used in weaving to turn thread or yarn into fabric. The lengthwise or longitudinal warp yarns are held stationary in tension on a frame or loom while the transverse weft (sometimes woof) is draw ...

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". Weaving shed, Queen Street Mill - geograph

Weaving shed, Queen Street Mill - geograph

Power

Steam is raised by two

s built by Tinker, Shenton & Co, Hyde. The first was installed in 1895, and the second in 1901, when a 120-tube Greens Economiser was fitted.Date uncertain, the current Economiser dates from 1934. 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.

Coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

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 Stationary steam engines are fixed steam engines used for pumping or driving mills and factories, and for power generation. They are distinct from locomotive engines used on railways, traction engines for heavy steam haulage on roads, steam cars ...

. The high-pressure cylinder (HP) is and the low-pressure (LP) . It uses Corliss valves. The engine drives a flywheel running at 68 rpm. The engine was built and installed by William Roberts of Nelson in 1895. 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 shaft A line shaft is a power-driven rotating shaft for power transmission that was used extensively from the Industrial Revolution until the early 20th century. Prior to the widespread use of electric motors small enough to be connected directly to e ...

s. Currently the mill uses coal bought from the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

. File:Queen Street Mill - Boiler House - geograph.org.uk - 528568.jpg, Lancashire Boiler File:Queen Street Mill - Boiler House - geograph.org.uk - 528569.jpg, Lancashire Boiler with feeders File:Queen Street Mill - Engine 'Peace' - geograph.org.uk - 531476.jpg, Peace, a tandem compound File:Queen Street Mill - Engine House - geograph.org.uk - 528573.jpg, Looking towards the flywheel. File:QSMM Starting.ogv, Peace starting up

Equipment

The mill is particularly notable for 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. 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 Sizing or size is a substance that is applied to, or incorporated into, other materials—especially papers and textiles—to act as a protective filler or glaze. Sizing is used in papermaking and textile manufacturing to change the absorption ...

(made in 1919 by

Howard & Bullough Howard & Bullough was a firm of textile machine manufacturers in Accrington, Lancashire. The company was the world's major manufacturer of power looms in the 1860s. History The firm of Howard and Bleakley was founded in 1851 with four workers ...

Ltd. of Accrington). 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. 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. File:Queen Street Mill - Pirn Winding Machine - geograph.org.uk - 528574.jpg, Pirning File:Queen Street Mill - Beaming Frame - geograph.org.uk - 531481.jpg, Bobbins for Beaming frame File:Queen Street Mill - Cylinder Sizing Machine - geograph.org.uk - 528575.jpg, Cylinder Sizer File:Queen Street Mill - Drawing in or Looming Frame - geograph.org.uk - 528577.jpg, Drawing-in frame File:QSMM Two Lancashire looms.ogg, In the weaving shed

Notable events/media

The weaving shed was used in a scene in the 2010 film ''

The King's Speech ''The King's Speech'' is a 2010 British historical drama film directed by Tom Hooper and written by David Seidler. Colin Firth plays the future King George VI who, to cope with a stammer, sees Lionel Logue, an Australian speech and language ...

''. The museum was also used to portray the Milton steam mill in the BBC series '' North & South'', featured in ''

Life on Mars The possibility of life on Mars is a subject of interest in astrobiology due to the planet's proximity and similarities to Earth. To date, no proof of past or present life has been found on Mars. Cumulative evidence suggests that during the ...

'' and most recently appeared in the 2015 BBC adaption of ''

An Inspector Calls ''An Inspector Calls'' is a play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in the Soviet Union in 1945 and at the New Theatre in London the following year. It is one of Priestley's best-known works for the stage and is c ...

''. Queen Street has also featured in a variety of documentaries including Channel 4's 2014 series ''Hidden Villages'' presented by

Penelope Keith Dame Penelope Anne Constance Keith, (née Hatfield; born 2 April 1940) is an English actress and presenter, active in film, radio, stage and television and primarily known for her roles in the British sitcoms '' The Good Life'' and '' To the M ...

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

Lancashire Museums website

Silent footage of museum opening by Prince Charles in 1986
Sam Hanna (

Vimeo Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software as ...

North West Film Archive The North West Film Archive (NWFA, established 1977) in Manchester, is a moving image collection for the North West of England. The archive cares for 35,000 items ranging in date from the pioneer days of film in the mid-1890s to video producti ...

)
Footage of Queen Street Mill's last days of commercial production 1982
(

BFI The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery (United Kingdom), National Lot ...

) {{weaving Cotton mills Textile mills in Lancashire Buildings and structures in Burnley Museums in Lancashire Steam museums in England Textile museums in the United Kingdom Cotton industry in England Former textile mills in the United Kingdom Grade I listed buildings in Lancashire Grade I listed industrial buildings Industrial Revolution in England Articles containing video clips History of Burnley Borough 1895 establishments in England