We decided to go to the mill because of the lovely bed throw in our hotel room. When we first arrived the scene in the shop was less than inspiring, as they were moving all the stock up to one end of the shop and covering over any stock they couldn't move due to their turbine being serviced that day.
Whilst umming and ahing about whether to buy ourselves a throw we thought we might as well have a quick look at the mill workings which were open to the public (at least until the turbine servicing began).
I didn't really expect much from the loom we saw on the way up to the mill, but when we got up to the spinning floor...wow! I was fascinated.
This machine stretches the wool rovings into thread as it moves across the floor and the winds the thread onto bobbins as it moves back, just like a woman with a spinning wheel but on an industrial scale.
The thread is then wound onto cones and the cones of thread and twisted together to increase strength.
This machine winds the thread into hanks ready for dying.
A few other steps occur, including winding the warp threads from many cones onto a beam, before the weaving happens...
This is just one of several looms and is dedicated to weaving the bed throws. You can see some of the mills historic bed throws in the background.
The mill was a water mill using the mill wheel to drive all the machines constantly. Nowadays the machines are powered by electricity but not from the national grid. The previously mentioned turbine generates the electricity required using the flow of the mill stream. So this historic mill is still water powered...
And after wandering around all this industrial machinery we managed to decide on a bed throw...
No comments:
Post a Comment