Masson Mills Textile Museum

Kinetic energy – Masson Mills Working Textile Museum.

When planning my energy panorama I did not want to take one of a power station as I thought there would be lots of these submitted so I tried to think of something different, So I came up with the idea of how energy is used by man.

Masson Mill was built in 1783 and is Grade II* listed, located in The Derwent Valley in central England. Richard Arkwright started his cotton spinning mill here which led to a huge industry in Derbyshire and the Midlands. He developed the factory system, and is today known as "The Father of the Factory System". Today the mill is home to a Working Textile Museum, it has a busy shopping village and car park on site these help support the charity which look after the museum. It can be found on the south side of Matlock Bath in Derbyshire. Well worth a visit if you are passing through this area.

Originally a single waterwheel powered the mill, after 18 years this was replaced by two water wheels. A steam engine was installed in 1888. The rotational energy generated by these sources is distributed by a system of raw hide belts, ropes, pulleys and line shafts. A typical line shaft would be suspended from the ceiling of one floor of the mill and would run the length of that floor. One pulley on the shaft would receive the power from the floor below. The other pulleys would supply the power to each individual machine. Today (2005) these line-shafts are powered by electric motors but the museum is in the process of reinstating steam engine power, the engine is installed in the original engine house so will soon be up and running, the engine weighs 147 tons and came from a mill in Padeium in Burnley.

I have provided a sound recording so you can appreciate just how much noise these machines generate. Only some of them are operating today, so its hard to imagine how the workers managed to cope with it day after day when all the machinery in the mill was working at full capacity. The sound recording can be stopped by pressing pause on the mini player below the panorama.

What’s viewable in the 360 : Descriptions starting at initial viewpoint and panning right.

The line shafts ropes and pulley system. Lancashire and Yorkshire looms, which are over 130 years old Jacquard looms manufactured in the 1930’s by Hattersley Ltd. These weave much more complex and varied types of cloth and are more versatile that Lancashire and Yorkshire looms. The punch cards that you can see corresponded to one row of the design and the cards were strung together in order.

Condenser mule (far end of room) : Built in 1899, it was the last working condenser mule in the world. It was brought to Masson Mills from Field Mill, Ramsbottom, Lancashire where it was still working until August 1991. Mules combined the two processes of spinning and drawing the yarn into one machine.

On the back wall are hundreds of punch cards for the Jacquard loom. Other equipment seen here includes a warp knotting machine, Jacquard loom card cutting machine, and cloth piece press. Piles of spare belting for the line shafts.

If you view the Fullscreen version you will be able to zoom in on specific items.

Masson Mill was granted World Heritage Status in 2001 and is just as important as the Pyramids!

Derwent Valley Mills

Europe / UK-England

Lat: 53° 6' 45" N
Long: 2° 34' 42" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: Unknown / Undeclared.

Camera used Olympus 5050 fitted to home made nodal point adaptor.

I created this 360 degree panorama from a total of 25 photographs, each photograph is 1920 x 2560 pixels with around 50% overlap on each image. I used a standard Velbon tripod but fitted with a homemade nodal point adjuster. This allows me to fit the camera on its side thus allowing me to capture more vertical information on each shot. The camera used was a Olympus 5050, set to full auto mode.