The Mill

As well as wartime nostalgia, the English are really good at showing off their industrial archeology. And there's a lot of it about, of course, what with them having invented the industrial revolution after all.


One very fine example, and well worth a visit, is the Quarry Bank Mill, near Styal in Cheshire. It was a cotton mill, and it's now a museum of the industry. It's on the Bollin River, the waters of which used to power its water wheels.

It's owned and run by the National Trust, and their volunteers were doing a fine job of showing us what it was all about.




There were lots of references too to a British TV series which had been made there, and by all accounts was an attempt to dramatise and also educate about early industrial life. It was called 'The Mill'. Reviews were mixed, I understand. Wikipedia tells me that it was well received by viewers, but Ceri Radford in The Telegraph summarised it as: "Take every cliché you can think of about the Industrial Revolution, mix them all up into one gloomy morass of woe, and that’s pretty much last night’s opening".

I liked my visit a lot. Especially those massive water wheels. Here's the National Trust page on the place:
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/quarry-bank