Bancroft Mill Museum on Gillians Lane, Barnoldswick BB18 5QR between Colne and Skipton.
The Bancroft Mill Engine Trust is a registered charity which preserves the last working steam mill engine in the area. It is a working cotton textile museum which opens many summer weekends - check their web-site for details of what days they are actually in steam and how you can find them - see http://www.bancroftmill.org.uk for details.
At the mill, there is a lot of industrial engineering and architecture on display - you can spend hours there learning all about some pretty heavy-duty 20th Century engineering and the Lancashire textile industry. If children have never seen anything like this, they will be amazed at all the machinery, the noise and all the steam.
The key exhibit is the magnificent mill engine, with its two cylinders (called James and Mary Jane) and 16 foot flywheel. The cylinders are arranged so that James (high-pressure) turns the flywheel, and the waste steam goes to Mary Jane (low pressure) who then gives the flywheel another turn. The used steam from Mary Jane then goes to a condenser (where is changed back to water), before it goes to the boiler, where it is converted to steam again and send back to James. This clever arrangement can generate over 600 horse power. Whilst 600HP is less than you'd get from a Bugatti Veyron, a mill engine produces an awful lot of turning power (torque), meaning that the Bancroft mill engine originally drove some 1,250 looms and various other mechanical equipment. In case any-one isn't sure what a "loom" is, it is a machine which is used to weave cloth. In the case of the Bancroft weaving mill, it could produce 200,000 yards of high-quality cotton cloth per week in its heyday. The Trust still run some of their Lancashire looms, and you can buy some of this excellent cloth in the form of top-quality cotton tea towels and other samples in their shop. The Lancashire loom was preferred for fine cotton because it was semi-automatic. If a thread broke, it rang a bell (so the weaver could fix it) and it stopped itself if it ran out of thread. In this way, one weaver could operate up to 6 looms at once, which reduced labour costs to one-sixth of what a traditional hand weaver could manage.
The mill engine was powered by steam, and this is delivered by a Cornish boiler which dates from as early as 1912. The boiler house is worth a trip on colder steaming days; and you can really feel the heat generated by the massive fire inside the cast iron boiler. The good condition of the 120 foot tall mill chimney is in part due to work done by the late Fred Dibnah who worked on the masonry structure and added some new steel support bands.
Importantly, though the charity is run by a band of dedicated volunteers who take great pride in running the mill and the factory; and are very helpful towards everyone who comes to see them. Hopefully you will like this video; and take the time to pay them a visit to see what they do. It's a great day out for anyone from small children who will learn loads of new things, right through to "old timers" who might even have seen or worked on machinery like this before.
Check out their web-site and find out when they are steaming - it's a great experience.
With many thanks
Simon Flory
Badger Specialist
www.badgerland.co.uk
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Steam Engine at Queen Street Mill & Textile Museum, Harle Syke, Burnley, Lancashire.by synchronoscope426 views
i used to work here voluntarry back in the 90's, was awesome watching that engine go, stoking the boiler, and the best was cleaning the boiler at the end of the year, you have to climb right inside it inside the flues, AWESOME
deejay28021981 1 month ago