Verla Mill Museum World Heritage Site

History

The fact that the Verla factory complex, including the associated housing estate, is not located on the large rapids of the Kymenlaakso river has saved it from conversion or demolition. There is no possibility of expansion here. However, beginnings are not auspicious. In 1872, Finnish born engineer Hugo Neuman builds a modest paper mill on the site, but it burns down just two years later. In 1882, Austrian paper maker Gottlieb Kreidl founds a new pulp mill in Verla, initially built of wood and complemented by a cardboard factory. His partners are German businessmen Louis Hänel and Consul Wilhelm Dippell. His brother Eduard Dippell subsequently constructs the ornate brick buildings on the west bank of the Kymijoki: the four-storey drying loft, completed in just three months in 1893, and the pulp mill, which is renovated in 1895, with neo-Gothic brick walls erected around the previous building to allow production to continue. In the same year, the decorative manor house, built entirely of wood, is erected overlooking the workers' cottages on the east bank of the river.

In 1922, Verla becomes part of the Kymi Corporation, Finland's leading forestry company at the time, which replaces the site's oldest grinder with a modern machine, thus doubling pulp production. In addition, a small hydropower plant is commissioned on the river and, with the exception of the grinders, all the machinery is electrified. However, production methods remain largely unchanged, for example in the drying loft, where women hang and take down the damp pulp sheets by hand. As early as the 1950s, even before the factory closes, there were public discussions about converting the entire plant into a museum, resulting in the establishment of Finland's first factory museum in 1972. UNESCO grants World Heritage status to the site in 1996.