Modernist mill, Scotland – March ‘09

[wolfism]

No history this time – it will come later. Visited with Cuban.

The mill was planned in the late 1950’s, and completed at the start of the 1960’s. Once part of a famous textiles group, it closed several years ago and has since been subject to the neds’ sweet caress. The approach to it is typical of industrial wastelands throughout the country – past a rusting branch line railway, a gasometer, some electricity pylons; a coup with shootings of rubbish spilling into a canalised river, nearby a scrap metal yard with its hydraulic grab rending chunks of metal.







The sky was overcast all morning, the air laden with dampness. On the inside of the security fence – the thick yellow grass in tussocks – the broken crates and pallets, and scrap iron dotted around the perimeter. The mill’s boarded-up doors close off a majestically-scaled weaving shed – the biggest of its era in Europe – with mist hanging in the blue distance at the far end. Our boots crunched over ground-up fluorescent tubes, and large shards of wired glass which had fallen from the rooflights. Multi-coloured plastic bobbins were scattered over the floor, rolling in circles when the breeze caught them, and just beyond lay a series of deep, water-filled dyeing pits which look like a system of docks in miniature. Off to one side are pressed-metal stores strewn with woollen waste, as dirty as the coats of winter sheep.







Deeper into the mill are stacks of punched cards which once fed automated Jacquard looms (the looms were made in Paisley) – but very little machinery is left in this part. Inside a row of little rooms on the west of the weaving floor are steel chests full of the patterns which the Jacquards wove – printed out in garish colours by an inkjet plotter, looking old-fashioned and out of time. Beyond them lies a taller block held up by circular concrete columns, and clad in honey-coloured bricks – at the top was the beaming department, sitting brightly under ridge and furrow rooflights. Today, its timber parquet lies warped by the dampness, lifting at the corners and joints like an unpeeling stamp. There are inspection rooms to the side, flooded with light. The machine floors lay underneath, sitting above a joinery and engineering shop in the dingy basement, complete with sprinkler tanks emerging from an octopus of pipework.







Sound carried across the site, and after Cuban and I split up to explore the site, I heard the crunch of footsteps, and voices close by. I lay low in the mill’s showrooms, then heard dogs barking in the distance; the wind changed, and everything fell quiet again. Maybe it was nothing. Linked to the tall block via concrete bridges is a white-rendered tower which contained the mill's laboratories. These lay behind a wall of windows in typical Sixties style: a chequerboard of coloured spandrel panels and plate glass. Dusty chemical bottles and old lab instruments lie alongside sample rooms strewn with wool … skeins and strands and hanks and tufts, every colour you could wish for. A little like the room of wool at the back of Kirkheaton Mills. In this case, the new mill was built as man-made fibres came into use, and a large research effort went into developing lightfast dyes for use with nylon and other synthetics.







By contrast, the boiler house lies at the other side of the site, completely wrecked, and the stores beyond, stripped of wall and roof cladding, exposing their skeletons to the weather. All the columns and beams are stamped “Lanarkshire Steel Company” – who seem to have cast the structural sections in all my recent explores – like the paper mill, the transformer plant; the glittering prize and the fear factory. LSC is another lost name. You may think that the mill looks downbeat – but I particularly identify with Modernist factories like this. There's a delicacy to their steel-framed windows; the textures of zig-zag rooflights; the spindly metalwork and timber balustrades that were in vogue between the Festival of Britain and the dawn of Brutalism. More than anything, they expressed optimism in an industrial future which we struggle to feel nowadays.







Finally, as we left the site, we met a group of four schoolgirls heading towards the mill. They stopped whooping and shrieking when they saw the cameras – “Why are ye takin photaes? Are ye fae the Standard?” I explained what we were doing, but they weren’t convinced …

[BA]

Dont know why but I love this picture

[boxfrenzy]

Great report mate. I love the way a place that the majority of the public would deem horrible is seen here as really interesting and cool. Really classy pictures, love the different heights you've taken them from

[foz101]

Nice one. Colour amongst the pale emptiness always makes it that little bit nicer.

There's somewhere else I was told about which is around this way, but I heard off someone else and have forgotten the details
I'll let you know once I've chased them up.

[Cuban Bloodhound]

Good shots Wolfie. This place is a bit of a shit hole, but with just enough stuff left behind and natural decay it makes for some decent shots. A good day out as it's a fair size of a site and quite a relaxing mill around.

Oot front


Lol!


Part of the looms


Testing area


Lab


Joiners


Trap door


Small loom


Fabric


Entrance to security

[Muse]

Top report, they should have employed you to write their brochures

First class photos too, love the splashes of colour, a nice change when often the only bright spot we see is graffiti.

[wolfism]

Cheers all - there's loads of undiscovered stuff up this way - doing your own research always pays off.

There's somewhere else I was told about which is around this way, but I heard off someone else and have forgotten the details
I'll let you know once I've chased them up.

Would be very interested to hear about it, Foz (what was that I said about doing my own research!)

[KingElvis]

I like this lots, the colours are just great and the state of the place is just yummy.

[blair]

nice to see that scotland still has some left but most o its fucked up by neds

[coops]

nice pics guys a job well done