ONLOOKERS FLEE FROM CRASHING MILL TOWER.

[Stanley]

ONLOOKERS FLEE FROM CRASHING MILL TOWER.
[1968 newspaper report. Oldham Chronicle(?)]

Hundreds of parents with their children crowded round to watch the end of a Royton Mill which had cast a shadow of fear over their homes.

Parents in Cleveland Grove, Royton, pleaded for months to have the old Shiloh Mill destroyed to stop their children playing in the ruins. But to the end the mill proved difficult to budge. As the charges went off on Monday evening, instead of the seven storey tower dropping neatly inside its own ruins it buckled outwards and crashed towards the houses.

Thousands of tons of bricks and rubble crashed through storerooms at the head office of the Shiloh Mill Group which used to own the mill. A power sub-station next door was buried, telephone lines were dragged down, the road blocked and flying bricks landed right up to the fence at the bottom of Cleveland Street as onlookers fled. Mrs Isabella Newton, whose house is next to the fence said “It was horrifying. I was just going across the road when I saw the wall buckling towards me. I fled for the house, terrified. If the wall hadn’t snapped off short it would have landed in the garden.” Mrs Newton, whose eight year old daughter watched the blast said “The children wanted to play on the grass slopes. Thank goodness we made them stay well away.” Mrs Ann Collinge (26) who lives a few doors away said “We have campaigned to get rid of the mill for the sake of the children. They kept playing in the ruins. Trust it to fall the wrong way. Still, as long as the danger is gone I don’t mind which way it fell.” She said it was a nice coincidence that it was blown up only weeks after the Chronicle story highlighting the danger.

The Group’s chairman, Mr Edmund Gartside, said “It crashed through the storerooms and cut off the telephones and the heating. It could have been more serious. We only had old papers in the storeroom and it could make it difficult looking up records. Our computer is also without power.”

The doors and roof of the sub-station were badly damaged but an Electricity Board spokesman said the machinery does not seem to have been damaged, we should have everything operating shortly. If it had damaged the high-tension equipment we could have had a blackout. There are 6,600 volts coming through there.

Mr Mervyn Simpson of Heywood, the man in charge of the blasting said “ I have been dropping towers and chimneys like this for years. This is the first time anything like this has happened. The outside wall became detached and fell the opposite way. There must have been a flaw in the brickwork. The insurance men call it an Act of God but I am an expert and it is not a term I like. I’ll see that tower falling the wrong way for the rest of my life. I haven’t been able to sleep worrying about it.”