Report - Hartford Mill, Oldham - Jan 2013

[5erenaur]

I said in my Potato Wharf thread that I was going to ease myself back into some urbex this year and BurntSquirrel fancied a look at this place so I thought it’d be a good opportunity to brush off some more cobwebs.

Every time I’ve seen a report on this place it’s been said that “It won’t be there for much longer!â€. I figured I should go and have a look at this old mill before that came true so not being afraid of a bit of inclement weather we headed off to Oldham for a poke around this site.

Hartford Cotton Mill in Oldham was built in 1907, Its a typical red brick spinning mill synonymous with the surrounding mills of Lancashire.

The mill was expanded in 1920 and again in 1924 with power provided by a 1500hp Urmson & Thompson steam engine, capable of driving 120,000 spindles. Following the depression of the 1930's demand for cotton slumped causing factory closures and many workers to leave the industry. A brief period of activity followed during the Second World War as fabrics were produced for use in the war effort but by the mid 1950’s overseas production mounted increasing pressure to the British industry with Hartford ending production in 1959.

The mill was later used by Littlewoods as a distribution hub up until 1992. Since then the buildings have suffered a great deal of damage and vandalism and is truly a shadow of its former self.

The elements have really taken their toll on this place with huge holes in most of the uneven floors and windows being a thing of the distant past.

The weather really began to close in on us on the higher floors of the mill so we elected to head for a bit of cover in the engine room.

I wasn’t totally confident in the platforms support but had a bit of a look and tried to figure out a way to capture the scale of this room, I don’t think I did very well!

I’d heard the roof was worth a look so despite the weather I went up for a quick nose, the death stairs to the top were a bit dodgy to say the least...

Lovely day for it!

Deciding there wasn’t much point staying up there for very long we headed down into the engine room proper to have a look at the Victorian tiles and the boilers.

Having a bit of a pose for scale, I loved this room!

Everything in the room was covered by a good 2 inch layer of bird poo and as it was soaking from all the rain I didn’t fancy covering myself and then my car in it so I didn’t do any climbing around in there!

This was as close as I fancied getting to the asbestos boilers!

After a quick skirt around the outside of the mill to check we hadn’t missed anything major we decided to call it a day. We’d planned to visit another mill close by but looming uni deadlines (hence writing this report in an excellent procrastination effort) and the night were closing in so we decided to leave it for another day. My lens was also getting a bit damp and focusing was becoming a bit of a chore, I didn’t have any cleaning gear on me so any further photos would have been a bit crap!

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