Around Cheesden Lumb Mills, near Norden, Rochdale.

The evocative ruins of Cheesden Lumb (Lower) Mill, also known as 'Alice O'Shoddy's', 3 miles to the north of Rochdale, at (SD 82381617), are all that remain of the once-thriving woollen mill that began its life way back in 1786. The Industrial Revolution was still to make its mark in the Cheesden Valley, where twenty other mills, including Cheesden Lumb Higher Mill, would eventually be built in the 19th century; Higher Mill (also known as Mr John's) being built in 1845 was a cotton-spinning mill. Cheesden Lumb Higher and Lower mills are located just to the southeast of Cheesden Bar on the (A680) Edenfield-Rochdale Road by walking along the Croston Close Road, which runs alongside the Cheesden Brook for 3 miles towards Birtle. A three-storey section of wall survives at Cheesden Lumb (Lower) Mill and a waterfall still flows out of a rounded-arch at the base of this - the Cheesden Brook actually flowing from beneath the mill. By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th the mills of the Cheesden Valley were abandoned, soon to be consumed by nature and ruination, and today only the scant remains of these once mighty industrial buildings survive, though their memory lives on.

A.V.Sandiford & T.E.Ashworth writing in 2000 tell us: "When the mills first came to Cheesden Valley they came not to challenge the cottage weaver but to help him, to provide him with a service and to offer him the facility of developing mechanisation. When Cheesden Lumb Mill was built in 1786 a little below the confluence of the Cheesden and Kilgate Brooks, it was operated by another John Kay as a fulling mill.

"In an advertisement in the Manchester Mercury on the 29th August 1809 offering the mill for sale by auction, reference is made to 'one water wheel, one stock, one perching mill, blueing house and brimstone stove, and woollen carding engines, one billy, one teaser, together with all the tenters thereto belonging.' Here we see the furnishings of a mill equipped to provide a full range of services for the cottage weaver; carding engines to prepare the fleece for the spinning process, a billy, which was an improved form of spinning jenny; and a teaser, a circular drum covered with 'teasels' (a variety of thistle grown in Somerset) over which the cloth would pass to raise the 'nap' and provide a texture suitable for blankets and warm clothing. Here, too, were the blueing houses and the brimstone stove for the bleaching of cloth, and the 'tenters thereto belonging', hooks on which the bleached and washed fabrics would be stretched to dry. The bleaching process adopted at Cheesden Lumb had been in use since Roman times. The cloth would be hung in a room in the centre of which would be placed a pile of sulphur. A piece of hot metal was then placed on the sulphur and the room would soon be filled with the fumes of sulphur dioxide to effect the process. It seems, however, that not only the cloth was subjected to this treatment for it is said that mothers would occasionally place their children amongst the fumes to cure them of whooping cough!"

Sandiford & Ashworth go on to say: "In 1845 John, of the family of Ramsbottoms of Cheesden Pasture, built another mill a short distance to the south of Cheesden Bar Mill and operated it, predictably, for cotton waste spinning. Officially titled Upper Lumb Mill it was more familiarly known as 'Mr John's', and when the father died the business was taken over by his son James. Later he went into partnership with Joshua Hitchon of Longlands Mill but the attraction and convenience of the nearby towns caused the company to buy Moss Mill in Rochdale for 600 pounds and on May 27th, 1884 'Mr. John's' together with it's fifty looms finally ceased operation.

"The building of 'Mr. John's' in 1845 and also of George Parker's mill some eight years later, both directly for the purpose of cotton waste spinning, clearly suggests that by this time the hard waste trade was by no means a 'survival' industry for the upper valley but a flourishing business in its own right. Parker's mill was built in the valley of the Killgate brook, a tributary of the Cheesden Brook, a little to the east of Cheesden Lumb Mill. It was situated within 150 yards of the Rochdale - Edenfield turnpike at a point close to the New Inn. Known locally as 'Plantation Mill' it traded in later years as Carr, Parker and Company but, like Ramsbottom and Hitchons, the company eventually moved out of the valley, to Charles Lane Mill in Grane Road, Haslingden. The valley mill closed in 1891 but the business, now owned by James Rothwell Ltd., of the Vantona Group, is still concerned with the spinning and weaving of cotton waste in the manufacture of raised sheets.

"Cheesden Lumb Mill remained active in wool textiles into the middle years of the nineteenth century. J. H. Howarth writes, '"The mill formerly belonged to John Kay, a woollen manufacturer, who had two sons, John who until lately (c.1900) resided in Rochdale, and James, one time Master at Shuttleworth Church School. "'The mill was taken over following the death of John Kay the elder by John Haworth of Croston Close. He acquired a long lease and enlarged the mill and took out the woollen machinery, substituting 'devils' for breaking up hard waste.'" Other sources suggest that in 1854 the mill was occupied by the devisees of one John Bowker but there is little doubt that by the end of that decade Haworth's 'devils' were busily at work at Cheesden Lumb, expanding further the, perhaps unique, concentration of the cotton waste trade in the upper valley.

"Haworth had one daughter, Alice, who grew to be a very shrewd and confident businesswoman. She married Richard Ashworth who consequently took over the operation of Cheesden Lumb Mill. But Richard was a kindly, practical person who would be the first to admit his lack of business ability and was content to leave the manage-ment of the mill to his wife. This she did with some vigour and when her father died on November 14th, 1875, his age matching the years of the century, she inherited Cheesden Lumb, the mills of the Croston Close Estate 'and all the machinery and goods therein and respectively belonging thereto', together with properties at Rigshaw Close, Sedger Hey, Edenfield and Wardle The list of properties bequeathed to Alice was prefaced in the will, drawn up in 1868, by the commonly used phrase 'if not otherwise disposed of by me in my lifetime'. There may however have been more than a little substance in this phrase for Mrs. Elizabeth Bate, a granddaughter of Alice states that at this period John Haworth perhaps foreseeing the eventual decline of the valley, was giving serious consideration to the sale of the mills. Alice, however, persuaded him against such action, but in the years that followed the death of her father the difficulties of an isolated industrial community surrounded by thriving and prosperous cotton towns must have, at times, presented her with a formidable challenge. The growing difficulty of obtaining useful work is evident in an entry in Worrall's Textile Directory of 1887: Richard Ashworth, Cheesden Lumb Mill, Norden. 750 Spindles. Lampwicks and at Croston Close Mill, Nr. Bury.

"From the flourishing days of the early 1800s when the mill provided all manner of services for the wool textile trade, from the vigorous days of the 1860's when Haworth harnessed the mill to the rapdly expanding cotton waste trade, Cheesden Lumb had come to rely by the end of the 1880's on the manufacture of lampwicks.

"But Alice remained undaunted. From her house on the hill above Croston Close Upper Mill, she briskly traversed the valley and her various properties by pony and trap. When plans for the Ashworth Reservoir were laid in the 1890's she vigorously challenged the decision by the landowner, the Earl of Derby, to close the mills in the reservoir's catchment area. She had more than one stormy encounter with Thomas Statter and his son, agents for Lord Derby, and stoutly refused to surrender her water rights. A legal battle ensued but the requirements of the new reservoir were too much even for Alice and the judgement went against her. She left the valley in 1898 and took up residence at Tor Hey in Greenmount, Bury. She died on June 4th, 1928 and was buried in the Haworth vault in Edenfield Churchyard. The Bury Times for June 9th carried only a brief paid announcement in the Deaths column: ASHWORTH. On June 4th at her residence Tor Hey, Greenmount, Alice, wife of Richard Ashworth, aged 85 years. Richard however survived to reach the grand old age of 95."

Sources & References

Please note the three colour photos of Cheesden Lumb Mill are by courtesy of Mr Stephen Oldfield and are Copyright © Stephen Oldfield, 2021.

Sandiford, A. V., and Ashworth, T. E., The Forgotten Valley, Bury and District Local History Society, 2000.

Clayton H. D., A History of Ashworth, Ashworth Hall, Rochdale, 1979.

https://www.heywoodhistory.com/2017/12/mills-c-e.html

https://www.heywoodhistory.com/2016/02/the-lost-mills-of-cheesden-valley.html

https://lancashirepast.com/2020/10/03/cheesden-lumb-mill-near-heywood/

https://cheesden.blogspot.com/

Copyright © RayS57, 2021