Leyland Probus Club members visit last remaining 19th century textile mill

For their August outing, 18 probus members and friends had the Satnav challenge of finding Queen Street Textile Mill, Burnley, for a guided tour.

Visitors admired the Grade 1 listed building with its 120-foot chimney and pond filled with 500,000 gallons of water. They also saw 'Peace', a steam engine with two coal fired boilers.

Knowledgeable guides demonstrated the process of taking a weak thread of cotton through to strong fabric emerging from the loom.

The weaving process was explained on a Handloom but a Lancashire loom was also used to demonstrate the craft and dangers associated with weaving, allowing visitors to feel the power and noise and understand why weavers learnt to lip read.

The 90-minute visit gave details of the working life of children as young as thirteen working long shifts.

The grand finale was the weaving shed with over 300 looms. Though rarely operated these days, the looms are still operational and have appeared in many film and TV productions – including North and South, Life on Mars, The King's Speech, Peterloo and A Christmas Carol.

Queen Street Mill is a former weaving mill in Harle Syke, a suburb to the north-east of Burnley, Lancashire, that is a Grade I listed building.

It was built in 1894 for the Queen Street Manufacturing Company. It closed on March 12, 1982 and was mothballed, but was subsequently taken over by Burnley Borough Council and maintained as a museum. In the 1990s ownership passed to Lancashire Museums.

Unique in being the world's only surviving operational steam-driven weaving shed, it received an Engineering Heritage Award in November 2010.

Previously open to visitors and offering weaving demonstrations, the museum closed in September 2016 and in April 2018 Lancashire County Council announced that the museum, along with Helmshore Mills Textile Museum and the Judges Lodgings in Lancaster, would reopen three days a week.

Leyland Probus is a club for retired men who meet on the second Monday of the month for a meal, a chat and an interesting speaker at Fox Lane Social Club.

If you are interested in joining Leyland Probus you can email the club secretary at [email protected].