Stott Park Bobbin Mill, Colton, Cumbria
This mill was built in 1835 to produce the wooden bobbins and reels vital to the Lancashire spinning and weaving industries. Bobbins were used to hold wool or cotton thread after it has been spun. Although small compared to other mills, some 250 men and boys worked here over the years. Some of them were drafted in from workhouses. They would produce a quarter of a million bobbins a week. The mill closed in 1971. In 1983 it reopened as an industrial monument. It is a complex of mainly stone buildings grouped around a courtyard, including lathe shops, an engine house, a boiler house and chimney, a blacksmith's shop, a circular saw shed, two coppice sheds and a wheelpit. It is now in the care of English Heritage (2011)
