Helmshore Textile Museum
This term, the History Department took Year 8 students out for a day visit to Helmshore Textile Museum in Rossendale. This is an unrivalled opportunity to learn first-hand about the living and working conditions of Lancashire textiles workers during the late 18th and 19th centuries. The mill contains the last remaining water frame in the world (made c.1770) and the girls get a rare glimpse of machines like the spinning mule in action. 200 years ago, Lancashire was the equivalent of Silicon Valley, a centre of technological and scientific innovation, and the keystone of what was then known as the Workshop of the World; Great Britain. Cotton cloth from Lancashire was sold, exported and worn all over the world, and there were about 80 mills in Preston alone, employing thousands of workers.
Helmshore Mill was part of a larger complex of mills built on the banks of the River Ogden, which today is a delightful nature corridor. Back then, it was a stinking open sewer, and the workers’ cottages backed directly on to it. As part of the day, the girls are taken on a fascinating walking tour of the village of Helmshore, which was largely built by the Turner family. This includes a school, a church, back-to-back houses and a pub.
The girls were intrigued to learn about the story of Mary Hindle, a local lady who was unfairly found guilty of taking part in a riot, in which handloom weavers protested against the new weaving machines at Turner’s mill by smashing them all. She was sentenced to be transported by sea to Australia, which was far from a holiday destination two hundred years ago. The girls also learned about the ‘tommy shop’. The workers were paid with special tokens that could only be spent in the tommy shop. Guess who owned it… yes, it was William Turner and so all the profits went back to him! It was this exploitative system that fuelled the creation of the Cooperative movement in the mid-19th century, which continues today as the Coop.
As ever, the girls were a credit to the school, and the museum staff made a point of telling us that PGHS is considered to be one of the best school’s to work with because of the enthusiasm of both the students and the staff.
Mr Ramsdale
Senior Assistant Headteacher
