Hemmer Royds Mill - The North - Summer 2015

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mookster

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Seeing Hippie Alien's recent post from this class spot reminded me I don't think I ever posted up a thread from this huge mill. So while I take a little bit of time out from exploring due to a couple of health issues (not going to be dropping dead, don't worry) I thought I might as well deliver one.

It was the last spot - and most anticipated - on one of mine and Landie Man's big roadtrips during 2015, and after parking up in the quiet village the mill is situated in we slipped and slid our way up and in. It quickly became apparent that getting around the building wasn't going to be an easy job with many locked and breezeblocked doors slowing progress. We ended up having to go to the very top floor of the main part of the mill to find the one unlocked door that would allow us into it's main floor areas, and the less said about the search for the way up into the 'epic' floor the better. We tried everything we could think of, as we knew we were within tantalising reach being just one floor below but it took us a good hour of running in circles to work it out. The sense of satisfaction when I popped my head out of the hatch and was confronted with a floor covered in dismantled machinery was immense :D

This floor is now comprehensively locked up sadly, but it was fun while it lasted. Given that it was directly adjacent to one of the active areas of the building separated only by a sliding metal door and the way in was incredibly noisy it's no wonder that they caught on eventually.

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Thanks for looking, more can be found here https://www.flickr.com/photos/mookie427/sets/72157652339756680/ ;)
 
Great stuff Mooks. Weird name for a Mill though...

Get well soon.

I know right, anyone would think I've made it up :D

Cheers guys...hopefully by mid February I'll be all fixed up. Chronic pain is a bitch.
 
Great stuff Mooks. Weird name for a Mill though.

Hemmer and Royd were the surnames of very wealthy 19C families in the cotton and wool trades. The word Royd is a very ancient old English word for a parcel of cleared land used for farming at the end of a valley or meeting point of two rivers. Most of the West Yorkshire use of 'Royd' when associated with mills, is a reference to position/location and not owner's name - In this case I think the word refers to location.

Amazing report, really love the shot of the concrete stairs which have years of wear on them. - Quote Jat-33

The stairs you refer to are certainly not concrete and are an important relic of a particular method of stone stairway construction. Stone stairs were normally constructed from solid rectangular blocks of stone to ensure strength. When a strata of particularly strong stone was found, it was possible to construct stone stairways in the traditional wooden method of tread and riser - as we have here. The wear gives testimony to the tread of hundreds/thousands of young women and girls who worked these mills for a mere pittance and 12 hour plus shifts. Very good as these images are, they cannot bring home the danger and noise that were ever present in these belt driven weaving sheds/mills. It was pretty bad in the '60's and early '70's when H&S had started to rear its head, God knows what it was like originally!
 
Hemmer and Royd were the surnames of very wealthy 19C families in the cotton and wool trades. The word Royd is a very ancient old English word for a parcel of cleared land used for farming at the end of a valley or meeting point of two rivers. Most of the West Yorkshire use of 'Royd' when associated with mills, is a reference to position/location and not owner's name - In this case I think the word refers to location.

Thanks for the explanation it's very interesting, I didn't know that's the origin of the word Royd, but I think you missed my point. ;)

Hemmer Royds - Haemorrhoids...
 
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Hemmer Royds - Haemorrhoids...

No I sussed that, but had my 'ignore the loutish behaviour' hat on! Mind you, standing for around 12 hours a day, 7 days a week etc, is enough to produce a good 'crop' very quickly. The mills were the reason that when antique markets became all the rage, when they were held in West Yorkshire, they were always full of what the Dealers called 'milking stools'. Ignorant buggers, no self respecting weaver would be without their 4 legged, circular topped stool - It would also be used by the youngest child in the weaver's family to rest on, when they were not crawling about under the operating loom collecting bits of wool fluff and dropped warp and weft. Anybody who has worked in or been in a weaving shed full of 100 plus Dobcross looms, will know that it was no place for a child as young as 5 or 6! My wife's families' mill was still noisy enough in the '70's to warrant mandatory hearing protection, even after fitting the looms with very modern 'silent drives'. Interestingly we have an original stool from my in-laws Castleton Mill, dated from the year the mill first opened and with the initials NL carved into the top. Searching the Mill records reveals that Nelly Lock was a young woman with three children, all eventually employed at the Mill, she worked for 40 odd years at the same job in the mill.
 

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