tomlt
Established Member
In the best spirit of Wallace and Gromit, I wanted to tell you about a recent visit to a very interesting place for anyone who's a bit "woodie". The tale starts with me and the Mrs on holiday last week in North Yorkshire (Wensleydale actuallly , hence the wallace and grommit bit). In a small town called Hawes we came across and interesting little place Gayles Mill, as it turned out this place was quite something.
Built in the late 1700's Gayles Mill is an Awkright design mill originally used for spinning cotton imported from America, however due to its inland location and poor access it quickly fell out of use as a cotton mill. In the later 1800's someone had the bright idea of converting it into a sawmill and it had been a working saw mill right up until the 1980's, all this time powered by nothing more than water. Origninally an overshot waterwheel provided the power, but this was replaced in the early 1900's with a fabulous gilkes water turbine which still powers the mill to this day. The mill closed as a business in the 1980's due to various reasons and a failing econonomy, thankfully it was picked up by the heritage conservation folks in the late 90's and was restored and re-opened in 2000. The mill is a visitor centre today and still contains a large quantity of line shaft machinery all powered by the 100yr old turbine as you'll see from my photos. The mill isn't in active use today although on the first sunday of each month they fire up the main saw and slab up some trees for fun, sadly I wasn't there on one of these demo days. They also run various courses which you can book onto and experience using some of the mills equipment whilst under instruction from the tutors.
Apologies for the quality of the photos, I only had my camera phone with me, but if this has given you a taste then I highly recommend a visit!
Tom.
Built in the late 1700's Gayles Mill is an Awkright design mill originally used for spinning cotton imported from America, however due to its inland location and poor access it quickly fell out of use as a cotton mill. In the later 1800's someone had the bright idea of converting it into a sawmill and it had been a working saw mill right up until the 1980's, all this time powered by nothing more than water. Origninally an overshot waterwheel provided the power, but this was replaced in the early 1900's with a fabulous gilkes water turbine which still powers the mill to this day. The mill closed as a business in the 1980's due to various reasons and a failing econonomy, thankfully it was picked up by the heritage conservation folks in the late 90's and was restored and re-opened in 2000. The mill is a visitor centre today and still contains a large quantity of line shaft machinery all powered by the 100yr old turbine as you'll see from my photos. The mill isn't in active use today although on the first sunday of each month they fire up the main saw and slab up some trees for fun, sadly I wasn't there on one of these demo days. They also run various courses which you can book onto and experience using some of the mills equipment whilst under instruction from the tutors.
Apologies for the quality of the photos, I only had my camera phone with me, but if this has given you a taste then I highly recommend a visit!
Tom.