Queen Street Mill Textile Museum

Our two Lancashire boilers are 30 feet long, 8 feet wide and hold 5000 gallons of water each.

When Queen Street Mill was opened in 1895, the co-operative could only afford to put one boiler in. The second was added in 1901. 

Today we use only one boiler and roughly 10 tonnes of coal per month. When the mill was operating commercially, around 6 tonnes of coal would have been used every day. That's more than the weight of a fully grown African elephant!

The coal that we use today is a mixture of Chinese and Colombian anthracite. This combination is used as is creates far less smoke than British coal. Terry our boilerman shovels all of the coal by hand, directly onto the fire.

The boilers were made by Tinker, Shenton & Co. based in Hyde, Manchester.

They would have been brought roughly 35 miles from Hyde to the mill, by horse and cart. The boilers would have been brought in one piece, before being lowered into position through the sliding doors in the side of the boiler house.

Peace is a 500 horse power (equivalent to 372,850 watts) tandem compound steam engine constructed by Wm. Roberts Ltd. of Nelson.

Originally the engine was named Prudence after Prudence Atkinson, the first Engineer's wife, who was also a weaver at Queen Street Mill. It was named PEACE at the end of World War 1 as a mark of respect to all of the soldiers, many of them from northern textile towns, who did not return home.

What was the role of Peace?

To provide energy to power the looms. At its peak, the engine would have provided enough energy to drive 1138 looms in the weaving shed, as well as other machinery around the mill.

Peace is powered by the Lancashire Boilers. The engine had to be kept in very good condition. If it broke down no one could work or get paid, so the job of the engine man was very important. The engine was stopped for 10 days in 1918 when a serious fire occurred at Queen Street Mill. Originally there was a lower ceiling in the engine house which formed the floor of a preparation room above. The fire burned through this and machinery crashed down onto the engine causing damage. The engine was back up and running 10 days later.

See Peace running

Whenever we are open you can see her in action, usually between 12.45 & 13.30, 14.15 & 15.00 and 15.45 to 16.30.

There are currently 308 Lancashire looms housed in the weaving shed, although at the height of production there were 1138 looms running (including some which were kept at the neighbouring Primrose Mill).

Lancashire looms are different from other looms because they use only one shuttle, so basic stripes or plain cloth were the only things that could be made here. All of the looms on display were made in Burnley by Harling and Todd or Pembertons. They date from the 1890s.

The Queen Street Manufacturing Company was mainly made up of mill workers and there was little spare money available to enable them to afford to modernise all of the necessary machinery. For this reason, these looms were operated commercially up until the 1980s. This unfortunately meant that they were unable to compete with textile manufacturers abroad who were able to produce a wider range of cloth more quickly and cheaply.

Many weavers went deaf from the noise but others were luckier. The advice given was to sing or talk to yourself to take your mind away from it!

The noise level was so high when the looms were running the weavers communicated using sign language and lip reading. The weavers would develop their own systems of sign language with their friends.

Still making textiles

We still weave cloth which we use to make a range of products called Simply Textiles. These items are available at both Queen Street and at Helmshore Mills Textile Museum. We hope to have an online ordering facility in the near future. If you would like more details on these products please contact the Museum.