page_title: New Mills
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: New Mills / History
caption_attribution_description: Torrs Hydro, New Mills is in New Mills, a village in the Peak District. It lies close to the confluence of the River Sett and the River Goyt. View of the Union Bridge Camera location53°&#160;21′&#160;50.4″&#160;N, 2°&#160;00′&#160;00.72″&#160;WView this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap - Google Earth
context_page_description: New Mills is a town in Derbyshire, England. It is approximately 8 miles south-east of Stockport and 15 miles from Manchester, at the confluence of the rivers Goyt and Sett, close to the border of Cheshire. The town stands above the Torrs, a 70 feet deep gorge, cut through Woodhead Hill Sandstone of the Carboniferous period. It is on the north-western edge of the Peak District, England's first national park.
  New Mills has a population of approximately 12,000, in a civil parish which includes the villages and hamlets of Whitle, Thornsett, Hague Bar, Rowarth, Brookbottom, Gowhole and most of Birch Vale.
  New Mills was first noted for coal mining, then for cotton spinning, bleaching and calico printing. New Mills was served by the Peak Forest Canal, three railway lines and the A6 trunk road. Redundant mills were bought up in the mid-twentieth century by sweet manufacturer Swizzels Matlow. New Mills was a stronghold of Methodism.
context_section_description: New Mills is in the area formerly known as Bowden Middlecale which was a grouping of ten hamlets. The name of New Mylne (New Mills) was given to it from a corn-mill, erected in 1391, near to the present Salem Mill on the River Sett in the hamlet of Ollersett. This was adjacent to a convenient bridge over the Sett. By the late sixteenth century the name was applied to the group of houses that grew up round it. Coal mining was the first industry of the area, with up to 40 small pits and mines exploiting the Yard Seam. The climate, good construction stone and the availability of stable land by fast-flowing water was ideal for cotton spinning. Cotton mills and print-works were built in the Torrs Gorge from 1788. Dwellings were built on the sides of the gorge, sometimes with one home built on top of another, both being entered at their respective street levels. Examples still exist on Station Road and Meal Street.
  By 1810, New Mills had nine cotton mills, plus three weaving mills and at least three printworks.
  Pigot's Directory 1835 describes New Mills:
  NEW MILLS, an extensive hamlet, in the parish of Glossop, and in the High Peak hundred, is 14 miles from Manchester, 6 from Chapel-en-le-Frith, and 8 from Stockport. It is pleasantly situate on the borders of Derbyshire and Cheshire; and, within a comparatively few years, has risen to importance in the manufacturing district; cotton spinning being carried on here to a considerable extent, affording employment to numerous hands.
  The factories are in a great measure hidden from public view in passing through the village, being built at the foot of the stream, under high towering rocks. Good house coal, as well as other kinds for the purposes of machinery, is obtained near to the village, the top bed strata running from sixteen to twenty inches thick. The village is built chiefly upon a stone quarry, but the soil in many parts is fertile, producing good crops of wheat and potatoes.
  A second group of 'later' mills formed by the newly opened Peak Forest Canal in Newtown, a hamlet 800 m away on the other side of the Goyt in what was then the parish of Disley in Cheshire. Increasingly these mills and houses merged into New Mills. The soft iron-free water was suitable for bleaching and finishing and printing. With the advent of steam, and the growth of the canal network to transport raw cotton, coal and the finished product, bigger mills were built and the smaller isolated rural mills were no longer competitive. By 1846, most of New Mills' mills had stopped spinning. The small mills moved out of cotton; the larger mills along the canal moved into finishing. Torr Vale Mill had added a weaving shed in 1836, and moved into producing towelling.
  The commercial method of calico printing using engraved rollers was invented in 1821 in New Mills. John Potts of Potts, Oliver and Potts used a copper-engraved master to produce rollers to transfer the inks.
  Before the construction of the high-level bridges the Torrs was a major obstacle; traffic had to descend 70 feet (21 m) to cross the Goyt and then climb the same height on the other bank. The first bridge to be constructed was the Queens Bridge on Church Road. The Union Road bridge was built in 1884; obtaining the land was difficult, as the arches needed to pass close to Torr Mill and properties on the Cheshire (south) bank, and Torr Top Hall had to be demolished. The new road was named after the 'union' of the two halves of the town. The first station in New Mills was at Newtown, on the Stockport, Disley and Whaley Bridge Railway; this opened 9 June 1855. This followed the line of the Peak Forest Canal staying safely away from the Torrs. The Sheffield and Midland Railway Companies' Committee company built two viaducts across the Goyt: one for a line to New Mills Central that opened in 1864, and one for the fast line through the Disley Tunnel which opened in 1904.
  Cotton continued to be worked at Torr Vale Mill until 2000, giving the mill over two hundred years of service.
  In the great storm of June 1872, Grove Mill and Torr Vale weir were dest
caption: The Union Bridge and the packhorse bridge it replaces. The gritstone strata of the gorge are visible.
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