Lancashire

26 May 24  Helmshore Mills Textile Museum.  Mostly cloudy with a few glimpses of the sun.

The Helmshore Mills Textile Museum.

The Higher Mill.  This is the older of the two mills and originally
processed the woollen fabric produced by local hand loom weavers.

In the office.

Cloth Folding Table and Teasel Raising Gig.

Teasel Raising Gig.  For raising the nap on the fabric.

Teasels are thistle like plants specially grown for the woollen finishing industry.
The spiky heads of the plants were dried and attached to a large wooden roller.
 There are about 4000 teasels attached to this machine.

Dolly Scourer.  Used to wash the cloth after it had been fulled or milled.

Mangle.  Used to squeeze as much water as possible out of the fabric
after it was removed from the Dolly Scourer.

Fulling Stocks and the waterwheel.  The fulling of woollen cloth involves matting together the
woven fibres to to create a thick, uniform fabric.  The process involves scouring, beating, rinsing
and tentering (stretch drying).  In the mechanical fulling stock scouring and beating are combined.

Rotary Milling Machine.  In the 1830s a new way of shrinking cloth was invented using
rollers.  The cloth was threaded through the rollers and the ends roughly sown together
to make an endless loop.  When the machine ran it squeezed the wet cloth in three directions.

Scutcher machine.  The scutcher mixed the cotton waste very thoroughly
and made it into a thick sheet called a lap.

Scutcher.  Delivery end, where the lap was fed onto an aluminium tube.

Depiction of a Weaver's Cottage.  Before industrialisation spinning and weaving
was a cottage industry. Children hand carded the fleece into usable fibres,
women spun the fibres into yarn and the men did the weaving.

Hand loom weaving.

Sir Richard Arkwright and his prototype Spinning Machine.

Arkwright Water Frame.  This is the last complete working example
of Arkwright's water frame in existance.

Breaker and Finisher carding machines.  Carding is the process
of combing out the cotton fibres, ready to be spun.

Carding machines.

Carding machines.

Power loom.

Fire fighting machine.  Due to the amount of cotton fibre
in the air fire was a constant danger.

Condenser Spinning Mules.  This machine spins the cotton into a fine strong
thread suitable for weaving.  There are 714 spindles on this machine.