Bredbury, Cheshire
Arden Mill is situated on Arden Road, Bredbury, by the river Tame. Arden Road leaves Stockport Road by the Arden Arms, the road being paved with gritstone setts.
In 1812 a gang of men attacked Arden Corn Mill. Apparently, they were Luddites and it seems as though their plan was to acquire flour made there using machinery. The miller at the time was Joseph Clay and, after threatening him, they removed the flour and sold it cheaply to people living close by. The militia, in the form of the Scots Greys, was summoned and they arrested four men, Thomas Burgess (35), a collier from Bredbury, Thomas Etchells (34), Samuel Lees (32), and James Ratcliffe (22), all hatters from Denton. In spite of being shot at, a fifth man, Nathan Howard, managed to escape by jumping over the mill weir. He later emigrated to evade capture and punishment.
The four men appeared before magistrates at Stockport where they were committed for trial at Chester, along with another 18 men who had been captured at Bolton, Congleton, Hyde and Wilmslow. All but two were convicted and the four men who attacked Arden Corn Mill were each fined one shilling and sentenced to seven years transportation to a penal colony. The prisoners were taken from Chester to Woolwich where they were handed over to the master of the Retribution Hulk and at this point they disappeared from history.
The Luddite movement began in 1811 and it ended in 1813. It was led by a fictitious character called General Ludd (also known as Captain Ludd or General Ludd) who was based on the earlier real Ned Ludd who was attributed with destroying stocking frames in 1779. This movement was mainly concerned with destroying textile machinery but as can be seen in this instance, they did attempt industrial sabotage by other means.
Civil and industrial disturbances did not stop with the Luddites. There was the Pentrich Rising in Derbyshire on the night of the 9/10 June 1817 and the Swing Riots of rural workers in the south and east of England in 1830, Throughout the 1830s and 40s there was general unrest as the process of industrialisation gathered pace.
Another early reference to the mill is in 1840 and this concerns the will of John Higginson, a Miller of Arden Mills, Bredbury. This shows that the mill was still being used for the grinding of corn using water power derived from the river Tame. By the turn of the 20th century, it is recorded that it was being used as a paper mill and by the time of the Great War its use was to be changed for a third time in aid of the war effort.
The above tithe map shows the mill in 1841. It will be seen that there are two tailraces from the mill that returned spent water back to the river but the headrace is not marked. The presence of two tailraces suggests the possibility that there were two waterwheels at the mill but there is no corroborative evidence to confirm this. It is suspected that the line drawn across the river adjacent to the mill may be the original weir that was removed when the weir further upstream was built but there is no confirmatory evidence that this was the case. However, the 1841 tithe map does not show a weir further upstream on the site of the present weir.
It was common practice with water-powered mills not to site them directly on the banks of rivers but rather to build them on a more convenient sites, in this case Arden Road, where it could be served by a man-made millrace supplied with water from a weir built across the river. The millrace above the waterwheel is the headrace and the one below it is the tailrace. In order to increase the head of water, the present weir (Arden Weir) was built across the river approximately 550 yards upstream of the mill site (Note 1). The date when this was done is unknown but it was certainly there in the 1890s. The headrace from this weir to the mill was cut along the left bank of the river and parallel to it. The tailrace, used to return spent water back into the river, was relatively short when compared with the length of the headrace. An input sluice was provided by the Arden Weir, which was used to control the amount of water flowing into the headrace. A short distance below this an overflow sluice was provided for use in the event of flooding, so that surplus water could be discharged back into the river.
The type of waterwheel(s) initially used to power the mill is unknown but from the lie of the land at the mill site it is likely that it was a high breastshot from which mitre gearing and line shafting would transmit power into the mill. During the 19th century, corn grinding went into decline in the area and at an unknown date it was converted into a paper mill.
An interesting development at the mill was the replacement of the waterwheel(s) by two water turbines in order to improve the efficiency. Once again, it is not known when this happened but it is likely that it occurred prior to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 or early in the war. This new source of power may have been introduced in association with the third change in use of the mill.
From the external appearance of these
turbines, it is likely that they were of the mixed flow reaction type in that
they combined radial and axial flow. This meant that water entered the runner
(rotating part like a propeller) radially and left it axially. Water turbines
of this type can be over 90% efficient and they usually operate at heads of
water of between 6 feet and 660 feet. The first modern water turbine was
invented by Fourneyron in 1830 but since then other engineers have introduced
variations to the original concept. The most important of these was the Francis
turbine, invented by the American engineer, James Bichiro Francis, in 1840.
However, the turbines at Arden Mill lack the typical spiral outer case of the
Francis turbine, so they must have been one of the other types. In use, an
electrical generator was attached to the runner shaft to form a single unit. It
is understood that these turbines generated up to 300 hp (224kW) and they
powered the mill as well and an adjoining row of cottages.
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| The two water turbines,
1971. Water from the headrace entered the turbines, radially, through the two pipes in the background. This was then discharged, axially, to pass into the tailrace through the two pipes in the foreground. |
Detail of the water turbines,
1971. This view is possibly from the headrace side looking inside the turbine on the right in the first view. It may show one of the generators, which would have been submerged in use. |
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| Detail of the water turbines,
1971. Possibly, these are the penstocks (sluice mechanisms) used to control the flow of water to the turbines. |
The tailrace from the water
turbines is in the background on the right, behind the stone wall,
1950s. The large rock in the river Tame is known as the Robin Hood Stone. |
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| Arden Mill is in the background on the far right and Hulme's Pit, in Hulme's Wood, is on the left, c1910. |
Contemporary local sources all agreed that the third change of use at Arden Mill involved the manufacture of guncotton. However, it is more likely that it was proposed to manufacture a similar but more modern material known as cordite. The chemist, Sir Frederick Augustus Abel (1827 - 1902), initially improved the manufacture of guncotton by the careful preparation of nitrated cotton to produce a fine pulp and this was complemented by the introduction of much longer washing and drying times. Following on from this, in association with the chemist and physicist, Sir James Dewar (1842 - 1923), he developed cordite, which was the type adopted by the British Government in 1891.
It is now known that in August 1917 Arden Mill was requisitioned by the Government as 'His Majesty's Cotton Waste Mill'. It was No. 153 of 218 National Factories established as a result of the Munitions of War Act, 1915 (5 & 6 Geo. V Cap 54). It was controlled by the Ministry of Munitions, which operated between June 1915 and November 1918, through the British and Foreign Supply Association. It was known as, No. 153, Woodley, Arden Mill DRB - Cotton Waste. Although it was requisitioned in August 1917 there is no record of the date of its first output. This implies that the large explosion that destroyed it occurred while the mill was still undergoing conversion to its new use, following which it was abandoned.
The remains of the mill were left almost untouched until later in the 20th century but eventually some small-scale manufacturing activity commenced again around the site. The name, Arden Mill, has been retained and nowadays some manufacturing still takes place there.
The millrace became blocked and overgrown and the sluices rotted away. In the 1950s it was still possible to see a gear wheel and shaft once used to operate the inlet sluice but these were then submerged in the river. Traces of the overflow sluice could also be seen in the wall below Arden Weir.
Surprisingly, the water turbines remained in situ until the early 1970s. They were best seen from the footpath on the opposite side of the river Tame where, with care, their distinctive shape could be discerned through the foliage. Their fate is unknown.
