ABOUT
PEEL STREET MILL

If you turn into Peel Street in Heywood, the modern houses and buildings are hiding a fascinating story.

 

It’s the story of Peel Street Mill and it’s people. A story that stretches from the early 1800’s right up until 1937, when the last remaining piece of the mill – it’s giant chimney – was demolished in front of a crowd of 10,000 people.

 

It was a cotton mill, occupying the site that is now the Cherwell Wellbeing Hub in Cherwell Avenue, and through looking into its history we are unfolding fascinating stories of what went on in and around the mill. Stories of the entrepreneurial Kay family who built the mill; the lifestyle of the mill owners and the workers; the ups and downs of the business; numerous tragedies including the drowning of a 3-year-old boy in the mill reservoir known as ‘the lodge’; the ‘cotton famine’ where workers went on strike in support of the enslaved cotton pickers of the US southern states; an embezzlement case; a World War; the decline of the business; and the final denouement, the fellingof the chimney in front a crowd of 10,000 people.

 

This is a story that deserves to be told. It’s a story with deep links to the people and places in and around Heywood. It is a story of our past and how it connects with our present.