The

Alan

Postlethwaite

Collection

The Mill Photo Collection of Alan Postlethwaite

The Stroudwater Textile Trust was delighted to be offered this wonderful collection of photographs by Alan Postlethwaite.  It takes the form of eight walks around the Stroud Valleys, many of them through beautiful Cotswold countryside.  Alan introduces the collection in his own words.

Alan died in December 2024, shortly after being awarded Honorary Membership of the Trust. (The descriptions of the mills are by Ian Mackintosh.)

Introduction

I have lived in Eastcombe from 1972, when I took employment in Gloucester as a Project Engineer to develop power stations. During the late 1980s, having been confined to an office for far too long, I felt the need for outdoor exercise. What is more, privatisation of the electricity industry offered the prospect of early retirement. Having diseased lungs, unable to run or to climb mountains, I decided that my exercise would be long-distance walking, low-level, in summer. Aged 47, I started with Land’s End to John O’Groats on a coastal route via Wales, Ireland and the Outer Hebrides, taking five years. This was followed by Stroud to Southport via the Severn and Dee valleys, then Avonmouth to the Zuider Zee via the Thames and Dutch waterways. Finally, I walked the Western Front of the First World War from Belgium to Picardy, visiting the battlefields and cemeteries of my grandfather and other family members.

By the early 2000s, my body was starting to wear out. I also recognised that I had done all those wonderful long walks without ever exploring my own backyard properly. So I set out to put that right by photographing the Stroud Valleys and their adjacent hilltops. I photographed landscapes and anything interesting, including the very last working hydraulic ram in Gloucestershire, readily located by the regular thump of the water-hammer. Particular targets were to photograph every mill, church and pub.

The survey took three years to complete. I then printed the photos, suitably captioned, in six volumes. I enjoyed the exercise and getting to know the Stroud Valleys, but the printed volumes attracted very little interest from friends, family and acquaintances until I offered the mills to the Stroudwater Textile Trust. What you see here is not a full history of the mills, nor is it a complete survey of every local mill that ever existed. Some mills are hidden on private property; others have disappeared completely, overgrown by woods and jungle. Some I simply missed or failed to recognise.

To explore the mills of the Stroud Valleys today, you might start with the Frome Valley from Chalford to Whitminster, walking in comfortable stages along the canal towpath with excursions to any mills a little way from the canal. Another fine walk is from Horsley to Ruskin Mill past the training grounds and fish ponds of the Ruskin Mill Trust. The minor valleys can be more demanding to walk, requiring boots, maps and sometimes a machete through landscapes that can scarcely have changed much in a thousand years. Please enjoy this dip into the past when Stroud broadcloth was renowned throughout the world.