A Horse's Tale — Stop 6
Hannah Visits The Goods Yard
Hannah was on the Toll Road alongside Mossley’s new station.
Illustration by children of Livingstone School
The loud screech and hiss of a steam engine pulling up filled her ears and smoke from the factories became even denser as the smoke from the train mingled with it.
Men started unloading waggons, piled high with bales of raw cotton from the Liverpool Docks, onto a turntable next to the main railway.
Then the waggon was turned round and pushed along a rail that disappeared into a tunnel under the road. The cotton was being taken to Brittania Mill which, when it opened, was said to be the largest mill that had ever been built by one man in the whole world!
Britannia Mill at its height was the biggest of it’s type in the world.
Canny John Mayall lent money for the new railway so that he could have his own siding that went straight into the mill. The tunnel it went through was used as an air raid shelter during WWII and later still for parties.
John Mayall started work in a woollen factory in Uppermill aged 7 to support his mother and sisters.
He worked and saved and by 1831 had enough to rent a mill with 700 spindles. By 1866 John employed 1500 people working nearly 400,000 spindles and was known as the King of Cotton.