History
Located between Bury and Rochdale, Simpson Clough Mill was built in the 1840s in Ashworth Valley along the Cheesden Brook initially as a Woollen mill for Oram Thomas & Sons.
Just before the start of WW2 it was purchased by JR Crompton where it would be used for food storage during the war.
Post war, the mill was converted into a paper mill, where filter papers were manufactured. Tea bag paper was apparently invented here and this is primarily what was produced along with coffee filters.
As well as the Heywood site JR Crompton had mills in Gloucester and Devon. The company fell into administration around 2006 where 15% of the 110 staff workforce received redundancy. They were then bought out by Purico and Simpson Clough Mill changed to Union Papertech. They expanded their product, manufacturing paper wrapping for sausages along with the teabag and coffee filters but still this wasn’t enough.
As with many businesses when the Covid outbreak hit in 2019/20 the business struggled even further with rising costs, the main factor being the rise in energy prices. Eventually switching down to run just the one machine.
Union Papertech eventually ceased operations at the Simpson Clough Mill site in January 2023.
The Explore
I first noticed this really as a kid, I used to camp just up the way at Ashworth Valley Scout Camp. Had some good nights there being feral in the woods. Back then the mill was always busy, I remember narrow the road being a nightmare because of the mill traffic.
Anyway since I moved out of the area I’d totally forgot about it, until I was at a funeral. Having a few scoops, my ears pricked up when I overheard a friend of the family mention how he was made redundant last January, at the Ashy Valley Mill. Ideal……..for me, not so much poor Charlie.
Anyway roll on a few months and I’d pretty much forgotten all about it again. Luckily though I’d let a certain @host know about this when I first heard of it’s closure. @host being a bit more eager than myself didn’t let it go. He checked on it a few times during the week where he was met by security guards reeling off the usual spiel of “seen you on the cameras, it’s stripped, nothing to see, police come” blah blah.
So yeah he’s checked it again and found what he thought might be a way in.
Off we go, the initial way we thought may work turned out to be a dud. However with a bit of perseverance we managed to slip inside.
Now it’s no Fletcher’s with regards to it’s age or scale as a paper mill, but it’s similar in the sense the place genuinely looks like they turned the lights off, shut the doors and have left it.
It used to house 2 Lancashire boilers but these were scrapped in the 70’s and it currently has this rather large Mexicon boiler, which you can see through the glass front in one of my photo’s.
Pictures
This is the engineering block security are in
Located between Bury and Rochdale, Simpson Clough Mill was built in the 1840s in Ashworth Valley along the Cheesden Brook initially as a Woollen mill for Oram Thomas & Sons.
Just before the start of WW2 it was purchased by JR Crompton where it would be used for food storage during the war.
Post war, the mill was converted into a paper mill, where filter papers were manufactured. Tea bag paper was apparently invented here and this is primarily what was produced along with coffee filters.
As well as the Heywood site JR Crompton had mills in Gloucester and Devon. The company fell into administration around 2006 where 15% of the 110 staff workforce received redundancy. They were then bought out by Purico and Simpson Clough Mill changed to Union Papertech. They expanded their product, manufacturing paper wrapping for sausages along with the teabag and coffee filters but still this wasn’t enough.
As with many businesses when the Covid outbreak hit in 2019/20 the business struggled even further with rising costs, the main factor being the rise in energy prices. Eventually switching down to run just the one machine.
Union Papertech eventually ceased operations at the Simpson Clough Mill site in January 2023.
The Explore
I first noticed this really as a kid, I used to camp just up the way at Ashworth Valley Scout Camp. Had some good nights there being feral in the woods. Back then the mill was always busy, I remember narrow the road being a nightmare because of the mill traffic.
Anyway since I moved out of the area I’d totally forgot about it, until I was at a funeral. Having a few scoops, my ears pricked up when I overheard a friend of the family mention how he was made redundant last January, at the Ashy Valley Mill. Ideal……..for me, not so much poor Charlie.
Anyway roll on a few months and I’d pretty much forgotten all about it again. Luckily though I’d let a certain @host know about this when I first heard of it’s closure. @host being a bit more eager than myself didn’t let it go. He checked on it a few times during the week where he was met by security guards reeling off the usual spiel of “seen you on the cameras, it’s stripped, nothing to see, police come” blah blah.
So yeah he’s checked it again and found what he thought might be a way in.
Off we go, the initial way we thought may work turned out to be a dud. However with a bit of perseverance we managed to slip inside.
Now it’s no Fletcher’s with regards to it’s age or scale as a paper mill, but it’s similar in the sense the place genuinely looks like they turned the lights off, shut the doors and have left it.
It used to house 2 Lancashire boilers but these were scrapped in the 70’s and it currently has this rather large Mexicon boiler, which you can see through the glass front in one of my photo’s.
Pictures
This is the engineering block security are in
