Bygone Burnley: Padiham workhouse and corn mill

Bygone Burnley: Padiham workhouse and corn mill, with Roger Frost 05-11-24

Transcript

00:00This week we've come to Paddyham and we're at a site that not many people in Paddyham know about.

00:07Paddyham once had its own workhouse. It was constructed by 1729.

00:15It's clear from the documents that I've looked at that there was a building there a bit before that.

00:22So it might date to the 17th century.

00:25Now if it does, it was right at the beginning of the 17th century that the first Poor House Act was passed in the reign of Elizabeth I.

00:36What this was, was a farm and it was converted into a workhouse by the township of Paddyham.

00:44It was only a small workhouse and at first it catered for everybody who was poor.

00:53But by the 19th century, when people know much more about workhouses and poor houses,

01:00because of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, it became the workhouse for the Burnley Union

01:13and it specialised in caring and catering for children.

01:18Whereas the Burnley Workhouse, which was down on Caldervale Road,

01:22was for elderly people and for people of working age, both men and women,

01:31and the workhouse in Colne was for the oldest people who were still alive long into what we would call retirement.

01:41So the Burnley Union had three workhouses, the Paddyham, the Burnley and the Colne.

01:48Now Roger, we've moved a little bit further up the road from where the workhouse was located

01:53to this former corn mill on the edge of Oldham. Tell us a bit about this.

01:59Yeah, it's surprising really that there were so many corn mills in the Burnley area.

02:06The reason for it is that the main grain which was ground here and in other corn mills was wheat.

02:18But wheat in most years won't grow in Burnley because the growing season isn't long enough.

02:25It grows green and you can't grind the corn when it's green.

02:31They also grew barley which could be used even though the growing season was long

02:37because you malted it and you had to eat it up to malt it, so that worked.

02:43Oats was the main crop. Now oats were ground, all three grains were ground here.

02:50And this was built by a Burnley firm and I think they were called Eltoft and Company.

02:56There's a plaque up there but I can't read it now.

02:59This building was Oldham Corn Mill but virtually every community around Burnley had its own corn mill.

03:08In Briarcliffe where I come from for example.

03:12Here at Oldham there are a few interesting survivals of the corn milling days.

03:18Now one of them is the chimney.

03:21The chimney is a stone built chimney which is round.

03:25These kind of chimneys are very rare in this part of the country.

03:29There's only one left in Burnley and just behind where I am there is a millstone still surviving from the corn milling era.