A trip to the Lake District this week for a look behind the scenes at Stott Park Bobbin Mill [pictured above] as the English Heritage property gears up to opening for the new season.
It’s a story of industrial heritage, a rural Lakeland backwater that was home to the bobbin mills that served Manchester’s ‘Cottonopolis’.
The Industrial Revolution-era industry has long since disappeared from the Cumbrian fells but Stott Park remains — the last working mill in Cumbria.
Here’s a preview of my article:
The four-acre site provides a striking contrast to the surrounding Lakeland fells, the working mill set amongst woodland and dominated by a towering brick chimney.
Unlike other nearby English Heritage sites, such as Furness Abbey and Brougham Castle, the conservation task at Stott Park is a very different proposition.
Property manager Mick Callaghan says:
“We’re trying to preserve a workplace as it was in its heyday. It’s as if the workers had just gone for a break, leaving their coats on hooks by the door.”
Read the full story in the next issue of English Heritage magazine.
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