Silk Mill Business Park

Image: © Stephen McKay Taken: 22 Apr 2021

It would be easy to imagine that textile mills (possibly the inspiration for Blake's 'dark satanic mills') were exclusively a phenomenon of the industrial revolution in the Pennine towns of northern England. This mill, however, was established in a rural home counties town, now very much a part of the London commuter belt. The mill was built in 1824/5 by William Kay as a 'throwing mill' where skeins of silk were cleaned, spun and twisted for strength. The thread was woven into fabric elsewhere. Originally powered by a water wheel, a steam engine was added later. In 1840 the mill employed more children than adults, most of them drawn from the London workhouses. It eventually closed in 1898 after which the top two storeys and the chimneys were removed. The building has had a variety of uses since and is now a business park. Gerald Massey, an acclaimed poet who worked here as a child, penned these lines about the mill: "Come, little Children," the Mill-bell rings, and drowsily they run, Little old Men and Women, and human worms who have spun The life of Infancy into silk; and fed, Child, Mother, and Wife, The factory's smoke of torment, with the fuel of human life.

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