1
A
brief
history
of
the
Trust
A
brief
history
of
the
Trust
Image Credits: ‘Brimscombe Port c.1795, unknown artist. STGCM 1961.24 © Museum in the Park, Stroud’
The birth of the Stroudwater Textile Trust
by Ian Mackintosh
It all began with a letter in the mid-1980s. The Committee of the Stroud District (Cowle) Museum Trust had completed the meeting’s agenda items when the Curator, Lionel Walrond, read a letter sent from the owner of Tal-y-bont Mills. It said that, unless we came to collect it, a milling machine made by the Ferrabee brothers of Phoenix Iron Foundry, Stroud, would be scrapped. This caused outrage as the Committee was in the process of attempting to ‘nail jelly on the wall’; in other words, to find a future for Stroud Museum that gave an adequate account of the local textile industry and which created an up-to-date display of the many items the Museum had in store.
A rescue mission
It was true that I, like the majority of Committee members, had little or no idea of what a milling machine did, and scant knowledge about the Ferrabees and their long-departed foundry (now the site of the Stroud Brewery) either, so it was important that people involved in the local woollen cloth industry quickly came forward to help. Peter Griffiths, director of Marling and Evans, went up to inspect the milling machine and came back saying that it was indeed worth saving, but that there was a lot more machinery of interest there.
So, guided by the expertise of Terry Eldridge, textile teacher at Stroud College and former employee of Winterbotham, Strachan & Playne, a group of volunteers began saving a quantity of machines. The image below shows Dr Ken Southgate (foreground) and John Best at Tal-y-bont in 1993, working on a rare wooden-framed spinning mule made by Sykes of Yorkshire. Volunteers ranged from willing ignoramuses like me to venerable engineers who had retired from the Central Electricity Generating Board but had grown up in families working in textile mills in the north of England. The interest of the local industry bore further fruit when firms offered us their redundant machinery. Then, with the closure of mills, we suddenly accumulated cloth samples and business records as well.
To solve the problem of housing this machinery, we have relied on the generosity of others, and the growing collection has been moved through a succession of more or less suitable stores. Without the goodwill of these property owners, our efforts would have come to naught as the District Council, having helped us to transport the machines back to Stroud, then decided that their new museum should not include them. Either we had to set up as an independent trust, or the collection would be scrapped. A grant was promised to help us get started, but it was then rejected by the councillors after the Trust was established in 1999.
A home for the Stroudwater Textile Trust
There has, however, always been an undercurrent of goodwill towards what had now become the Stroudwater Textile Trust. The Planning Department recognised the architectural value of the numerous local mills, and Nailsworth Town Council was debating how to respond to the collapse of local industry in the 1990s. The brilliant proposal by Keith Browne, a friend of Terry Eldridge, that the Town Council should take a very long lease on part of Dunkirk Mill as a condition of granting planning permission on the conversion of this important mill, and then sublet it to the Trust at a peppercorn rent, saved the day. The recently-established Heritage Lottery Fund made a grant that financed the establishment of our first site – and Dunkirk Mill Museum was born.
Through the 1990s, volunteers worked hard to make it possible to tell the story of Stroudwater textiles. The generous support that was given then, and now, by local people and firms means that their efforts have been rewarded. Sadly, we have had to discard machinery that we could no longer accommodate, but historic machines, from local mills and from further afield, are now working at our two sites, Dunkirk Mill Museum and Gigg Mill Weaving Shed (see images below). The work is unfinished, as we still have important machines that need a secure home. As always, local support is key to keeping the show on the road.
