FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

[Tizer]

I can still see our Grandma Tillotson (Tillum) behind one of the weaving machines..
And hear that awful noise.

When I was a young child and my parents were both on shift work to pay the rent I can remember my dad taking me with him to Haston Lee Mill in Blackburn to give my mum some lunch. As you say Cathy, an awful noise, what we usually called it was a `din'! Also I can still smell it but can't think how to describe that characteristic smell. Anyone who's been in a working in such a place would know the smell.

NB: At first I wrote Roe Lee Mill aka Haston Lee Mill because it seems to go under both names on the web when I looked but then I remembered why it gets confused so often. The local area is known as Roe Lee and its on Whalley New Road on the way to Brownhill roundabout. A street goes off to the left, under the railway bridge and round to Roe Lee Mill. Another street goes off the main road to the right and up the hill to Roe Lee Park. Before reaching the park you pass Haston Lee Mill on the left. I'm writing as if they still exist but they might not now.

[Stanley]

The smell was mainly Raw linseed oil and whale oil, both of which were used in the shed for treating wood and leather connected with the looms.



Mary Wilkin putting a full pirn in a shuttle. Jim Pollard reckoned she was the best weaver in the shed.
The thing that always struck me about her was that she was one of the weavers who looked just as clean and tidy when they went home at night as they were when they started in the morning.....

[PanBiker]

I used to mend Mary's TV, she lived in Salterforth in one of the houses on the left of Earby Road before the former railway bridge.

[Stanley]

Mary always had a clean tablecloth at dinnertime....

[Tizer]

Thanks, Stanley and Ian, for those photos and comments about Mary. My mum was always smart and would have been like Mary in the mill. Of course it was all a bit off a shock for my mum coming to Blackburn after growing up in South Africa and having worked in the equivalent of a John Lewis shop in the Mediterranean climate of Port Elizabeth!