A little bit of Congleton’s history at the public library

Now a little bit of Congleton’s history went on display at the public library today.

Peter and the exhibition

It was the last part of an exhibition which recorded the town’s history and focused particularly on its industrial past and the textile mill by the river at Mill Green.

This was the Old Mill opened in 1752 on the bank of the river Dane by Mr Clayton.

Mindful of the opportunities the Corporation granted him the land between the Dane Bridge and the King’s Corn Mill at a low rent for the next 300 years.

Within 40 years his was the largest mill in the town employing over 600 people and was followed by other mills which made good use of the small streams that flowed through the town.

But Mr Clayton’s Mill was always the most important and continued in business till its closure in 1998 and demolition five years later.

Part of that site has now been developed by McCarthy and Stone who specialize in retirement homes.

They were particularly interested in having a permanent exhibition featuring the history of the area and approached me and Peter Topping to research write and illustrate the project.

Now given that we had already done something similar for their Chorlton development it seemed an obvious new venture.

The finished two panels telling the story including Peter’s painting of the new development went on permanent display in the foyer of the building in February and today we handed to the public library a second set of panels commissioned by McCarthy and Stone telling more of the story of Mill Green and Congleton.

All of which just leaves me to point you in the direction of the library in Market Street and thank the staff who were most helpful.

Picture; of the finished display in the library by Peter Topping

Silk Mills and workman's cottages, down by the river Dane in Congleton

Now when you live in Manchester you do rather overlook all those other textile centres around the country which is not as it should be.

The Old Mill, Mill Green, date unknown

All the more so as my sons have lived in Yorkshire and part of my maternal family came from Derby.

And so to Congleton, which is 40 minutes or so away from the city and home to a rich heritage of silk mills including one of the oldest in the country.

This was the Old Mill opened in 1752 on the bank of the river Dane by Mr Clayton.

Mindful of the opportunities the Corporation granted him the land between the Dane Bridge and the King’s Corn Mill at a low rent for the next 300 years.

Within 40 years his was the largest mill in the town employing over 600 people and was followed by other mills which made good use of the small streams that flowed through the town.

But Clayton’s Old Mill stood out not only because of its design which consisted of five storeys but also because of the large water wheel and machinery which were designed by James Brindley.

The River Dane in 2014, with the mill site to the left

The wheel was five and half feet wide and twenty feet in diameter and the original wooden wheel were replaced by a succession of different iron wheels, fitted over the mills long working life.

And it did have a long working life starting in 1752, it closed in 1998 and was demolished in 2003.

So over the next few weeks I want to explore a little more of its history and also of the people who lived beside it in Mill Green.

In 1851 the area directly in the shadow of the mill was home to 17 families.
Most were dependant on silk manufacture and most I guess were employed at the Old Mill.

But there was also a miller, gamekeeper, ostler and a blacksmith, which pretty much reminds us that we were not far from the countryside.

Cottages close to the River Dane and Mill Green

Nor were they all native to Congleton, more than half of our householders were from outside the town which of course fits with a place which was a magnet for employment.

And at the end of Mill Green was the pub. This was run by Peter Leech who was 43 and from Withington.

In all there were 78 people in the seventeen houses of which six were children and few in their old age.

The rest went out to work, with some like Henry and James Jolly aged 13 and 14 just starting out in the mill.

Both described themselves as piecers and they had followed their elder brother into the factory, which appears to have broken a family tradition.  Their father was a butcher, one of their brother’s a plumber and another shoe maker.

But whatever their occupation it was the mill which dominated Mill Green.  Just a year before young Henry Jolly began work there it was described “as the largest and most conspicuous structure in Congleton, built of brick.  It is 240 ft wide, 48ft high consisting of five storeys’s, and is lighted by 390 windows.”*

And next time something of how the mill prospered and finally came to an end.

*Bagshaw’s Directory of Cheshire 1850

Picture; the Old Mill, date unknown, courtesy of Cheshire Archives, CALS; Local Studies Collection, the River Dane today from the collection of Andrew Simpson