This is Sude hill Mill. Home of the New Mill Knitting co. amongst other businesses now dissolved.
The buildings have recently been sold following the grant of planning permission to convert the Mill into apartments. Part of the adjoining buildings are still live and presumably are to be retained once the conversion starts.
According to Tweek, the machinery and equipment was cleared very shortly after we visited having spotted a wagon from Leicester Machine Movers pulling the machines out.
The Mill’s primary use was for the knitting / weaving of fabric and cloth using circular knitting machines, of which there were many still left in situ until recently. Many of the earlier machines were made by Mellor Bromley of Leicester, probably dating from the 1960’s with later models having the addition of ‘Wildt’ Some later 80’s and 90’s machines by Camber, also of Leicester were near the back of the knitting room.
Report of Wildt Mellor Bromley factory in Leicester by Goldie here: http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/wildt-mellor-bromley-leicester-january-2012.t67987
Threads of differing colours were fed through the top of the machines through spools held on racks nearby, patterns were then dictated by metal pattern discs, of which many still remained packed up in boxes. These machines produced a ‘sock’ of cloth that are either plain or patterned that was then rolled and packed.
We couldn’t put a definitive use or purpose for much of the cloth that remained as it just looked like generic material, a lot of which was half finished, with ‘socks’ still half finished on the machines.
Mills have been present on the site from the early 1800’s and have always been used for fabric manufacture, being either the teazing, scribbling carding and spinning of wool to the more modern knitting and finishing of fabric. The current building dates from 1855 following the destruction of the previous buildings by fire.
Having first checked this with Tweek & Fudge some time ago, it was one of those places that was visited and checked many times until finally we had a lucky break, typically when we were least expecting it. Early doors, derphouse, geovaccess and cregg found ourselves with the run of this mill whilst the sun rose.
Photographs, as always, I took a lot so click on the back button if that in someway offends.
You can’t get more Yorkshire than a boat that says ‘Eyup’ on the side.
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