Report - Hartford Cotton mill, Oldham

dweeb · Jun 15, 2008

This place is epic. No other way to describe it. As a mill complex it is actually very complete, with chimney, engine hall and tower intact. That said it has took a battering since closure!!

My main goal was the tower, so we headed up to the roof, and inside. The next ladder is awesome, and consists of a series of foot holes in two wooden boards, something I have never seen in a building before. The next flight has been burned and is very dodgy, but it held and we were on a small wooden catwalk above the water tank. The round windows at the top of the tower have been bricked up but ornate ironwork that is hidden from the outside is still in place and visable on the inside.

While mooching in the mill I passed through a small hole, into an amazing engine hall, extremley similar to "the gauntlet" that I had seen in Wigan a few weeks before. The hall had the same channel in the floor, and the stairs that were missing from the Wigan mill were in place (although in a poor and dangerous state). Instead of glazed bricks, this engine hall was lavishly decorated in Green and White ceramic tiles, with arched windows in tan and red brick.

Unfortuantly our visit was cut short by a scag head, who appeared from nowhere and was clutchng a dead pigeon

Time to leave...!!

I am in awe that the ruinous mill in Wigan is the centre piece of the town's redevelopment and this fine building is to be demolished for housing. I will NEVER understand town planning