New museum opens at Masson Mills in Cromford

Cromford Masson Mills new museum and visitors centre opens.

Transcript

00:00 So welcome to Sir Richard R Price Masson Mills, my name's Kevin, I'm your tour visitor.

00:07 This is the admission ticket and it acts as a clocking in card so we'll just give everyone

00:13 a chance to work their way through.

00:15 We're now on the ground floor of the original 1783 Masson Mill.

00:19 This is a doubling machine and this is original to Masson Mills.

00:23 It was put in here in the 1950s and it continued working until the mill closed in 1991.

00:30 We now use it to make our own coloured stringing piping cord which we sell up in our visitor centre.

00:37 So basically what it's doing is twisting thread together to make a nice strong cotton string.

00:48 [Machine noise]

01:09 So that would have been one of the first power looms.

01:12 Now these two looms here, these are both Yorkshire looms, these can weave Denning, Deptshire material and tea towels.

01:19 [Machine noise]

01:40 [Machine noise]

01:55 So just over there, that's the Masson Weir that was built by Arkwright in 1783.

02:03 It's an unusual convex shape due to the natural outcrop of rock.

02:07 The two boilers just over there with the grey lagging, those are German egg-ended boilers.

02:13 They were fitted in the 1950s and then these old boilers were turned to oil storage tanks.

02:19 That's why they've been sealed up.

02:24 This is the steam engine.

02:26 It's not the original, the original was taken out in the 1950s.

02:30 This came from Paddy near Berkeley in Lancashire.

02:34 It took 20 years to get it down here and to get it built.

02:38 [Machine noise]