'Newby Bridge - Stott Park Bobbin Mill'

Finsthwaite, Newby Bridge, LA12 8AX. Tel 015395 31087

Location : Newby Bridge
Map - Ordnance Survey - SD 372884

A working mill built in 1835, Stott Park created the wooden bobbins vital to the spinning and weaving industries of Lancashire. Typical of mills across Cumbria, today you can see industry from a bygone age and watch as bobbins are made using the mill's original machinery. Although Stott Park worked continuously until 1971, it remains almost identical to its Victorian appearance of 100 years ago.

Everything is driven by belts.

With its Victorian machinery originally powered by a waterwheel and steam engine, Stott Park used birch, ash and sycamore to make wooden tool handles as well as bobbins. The mass of belts which fill the building still drive the cutting, boring and finishing machines than turn long thin poles into bobbins. You can watch a bobbin being made, and take it home as a souvenir.

Cutting the bobbin raw wood from a tree slice

Lathe for making bobbins

The resident curators give guided tours lasting 45 minutes, and demonstrations. There is a small exhibition and a gift shop.

Within the mill grounds is a coppiced ash tree of considerable size, with ten main trunks. Coppicing gives a regular supply of wood, and prolongs the life of the tree, giving new growth at the base rather than the top of the tree. Much of the woodland of the Lake District was once managed in this way.

See Britain Express for more information.

The site is in the care of English Heritage