Dis-used Industrial Mill

Rhyolith · 3 Mar 2017

A while back my van broke down in a welsh village. I had heard rumours of a old mill filled with old machinery in said village but never had time to investigate, with 2 hours to wait for the rescue crew ( -_- ) now I did!

Turns out it was only about 30metres from where I was broken down, the pair of massive wheels in the river were a dead give away!

Untitled by Rhyolith, on Flickr

There turned out to me loads of really quite beautiful gears and all sorts lying about in the bushes and in the river, I did't take pictures of these as I am not sure its wise to advertise the location of this place publicly. Anyway I found somewhere I could stick my camera through to take some flash images inside the mill (couldn't see anything inside due to darkness and it was not safe to go inside).

Untitled by Rhyolith, on Flickr

Untitled by Rhyolith, on Flickr

So a lot of cool stuff in there! There is even a book left open on top of one of the machines if you look carefully!

After taking the pictures I rescued the wheels from river (put them on the bank) and left to do some research on why something so cool had just been left to waste away... It turns out its an old woollen mill that was abandoned in the 1980s. The owners have been unable to sell and didn't have the money to work on it themselves, so unfortunately I think its un-savable to anyone without a fair bit of finance at their disposal...

demonwolf444 · 3 Mar 2017

Nice find! thanks for sharing, where i grew up there was a "spooky house" on the outskirts of the village - the old game keepers house which had a barn attached that we used to play in. This barn was full of vintage farm machinery in later years it was all dragged out and left to rust in a field, there is nothing like that old kit, big heavy castings, pulley wheels and gears. The pieces might have been of value but i didn't really know what i was looking at a lot of the machines were obsolete but there was a crank and gear operated sack lift which would lift heavy grain bags up to the bed of the trailer which i really wanted to take and restore as it was not too big but before i could speak to the farmer ( a friend of mine ) about it the whole lot was unceremoniously dumped in an old trailer for the scrap man. Unfortunately i inherited from my dad a desire to hoard and collect and save things so its probably just as well it went to the scrap man and didn't end up in the yard.

Hot stuff · 3 Mar 2017

Snap demon wolf, I have the same inherited gene that forbids disposal of anything that may come in handy or looks vaguely interesting. My life is full of just in case stuff and that'll come in handy bits.
It does break your heart seeing all that stuff redundant doesn't it? That's one of the reasons I like Beamish and the National Trust etc. Quarry Bank mill in Cheshire is full of old, working machinery that is being used to make fabrics for use in the Trust properties.

Cinimod · 5 Mar 2017

What a lovely and oddly sad find. I love places like that because it lets your imagination take hold about the noises and smells that would have been there................dom

TFrench · 5 Mar 2017

Have you had a wander round the slate mines above llanberis Rhyolith? At the very top theres the old cutting sheds with about 30 gigantic circular saw tables. Very cool place, I've climbed around there a lot.