History of the Lumbutts Site

The Lumbutts Centre was built on the site of an old cotton mill, which was built by the Fieldens. The cotton mill was demolished a long time ago but the tower, for the water wheels still towers above all the buildings in the area. This is a brief history of the Tower and the Mill, which was researched and written by local historian Dennis O'Neil.

The old township corn mill, formed the site on which Lumbutts top mill was built and when the Fielden Brothers purchased it in 1796, they were quick to see it's potential as a spinning mill and started to develop it along those lines. In the early months of 1806, they increased the capacity of the old mill dam, raising it's banks by 11ft. thus allowing the mill to run longer each day and at the same time, the power was increased by fitting a larger diameter water wheel.

In the years between 1815 and1817, the brothers built a new larger dam (lee dam) upstream of the old milldam and at a much higher level. The mill at this time had a 40ft wheel and it was deemed imprudent to fit a larger one. Samuel one of the three brothers had the idea of mounting two smaller wheels one over the other, and to make this possible he constructed a tower on the eastern side of the mill and in it mounted two 30ft. water wheels. These wheels were of the Fairburn type with gear teeth around their rims so that each one would drive the other. First the water from the new top dam was released over the wheels via a large header tank, which was mounted in the roof of the tower. As the dam became exhausted, the water from the old dam was introduced onto the lower. A jockey wheel running on the rim gears of the top wheel took the power into the mill where it made the spinning machines spin.

In 1831, after a long and bitter legal battle about availability of water to the other mills down stream to the Fielden's top mill, it was decreed that another large dam would be built at a higher elevation than lee dam, (Heeley dam). With this new head of water, Samuel added a new third 30ft wheel to his new tower, increasing its height again. This makes the mill tower in excess of 90ft one of the tallest buildings in the area and visible from all around Lumbutts.

Since the mid 1860's, only two working textile mills were left in Lumbutts village out of the four that had existed through most of the early years of that century, (between 1800 and 1862). The fielden brothers owned both of these mills which produced weft for their large weaving sheds at waterside in Todmorden. With the end of the First World War, the spinning mills of east Lancashire were flooding the market with good quality weft and warp and it became less cost effective for the Fielden's to produce their own. On Friday 24th December 1926, the two mills at Lumbutts closed down and the machinery was sold off on April 25th the year after. The empty mills remained and through the second world war they were used as government storage depots but when that conflict came to an end in 1945, the top mill was demolished and only the mill managers house and the water wheel tower were left standing. The cast iron roof of the tower, by this time, being weakened by corrosion, collapsed into the now empty tower and so it remained until around 1960 when a local man had all the apertures in the tower bricked up and for a short time it was used to breed boiler fowl, (this is an intensive method of produced hens for the market), but the project failed. Ten floors were fitted into the tower for this purpose but by 1980 the unique structure stood empty once again, the floors having rotted and collapsed into the base of the tower along with all paraphernalia of hen breeding, falling on top of whatever was there before and once again the tower fell silent. On 15th June 1985, the day of the Todmorden agricultural show, some local scrap dealers removed the lightening conductor, pulling away part of the parapet in the process.

In May 1989, the William Henry smith school, engaged Mr. Fred Dibnah, the well known Bolton steeplejack, to come to Lumbutts and survey the old water wheel tower with the intention of repairing, and where possible, renewing the building fabric to a point at which the structure would be safe. To do this, Fred erected six ladders to scale the tower, fastening them to the north face with ropes and metal staples.

"The fabric is in remarkably good condition" was Fred's comment, " the worst damage being caused not by time, wind and weather, but by mindless vandalism".

Fred started work on the tower in June 1990 having left his ladders in situ. A new lightening conductor was fitted to replace the one stolen in 1985. The balustrade was re-pointed and new metal ties were added to hold the capstones in place. Stainless steel clamping bands replaced the corroded iron ones around the chimney, but the large hole in the eastern parapet, caused by the removal of the original lightening conductor, was left as it was.

The water that used to power Lumbutts mill and other mills down stream of it came from Black Clough, a flow of water that falls some 350ft. down the face of the land to the south. The volume of water in the Clough could be augmented in times of poor supply from a large water catchments area on the moors to the south. The water then entered two large storage reservoirs at Gaddens. Black clough and Heeley clough empty their waters into a series of mill dams four in all, just to the south of the mill. Due to the contour of the land, each dam is at a different level so that the water released from the highest dam would feed the top wheel in the wheel tower of the mill, so starting the mill early in the day. Late in the same day, the lowest dam would supply water to the bottom wheel, and overnight the dams would be replenished ready for the next day.