Stott Park Bobbin Mill

Stott Park Bobbin Mill was built in 1835 to make bobbins on which to wind textile yarn. Around a hundred bobbin mills operated in the Lake District between the 1780s and the end of the nineteenth century. Such mills used water power and local supplies of wood to provide bobbins for the large number of spinning and weaving factories in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Stott Park is the region’s only working bobbin mill. It produced a quarter of a million wooden bobbins a week. The machines for turning timber into bobbins were powered by a 7-m diameter water wheel and from the 1880s a steam engine. By 1941, an electric motor was installed. It diversified its products but ceased operation in 1971. It was conserved and in opened to the public in 1983 by the government heritage agency – now English Heritage. Visitors are guided around the workshops with their lathes, belt drives and drive shafts. The steam engine is in working condition.