The Mill

[Shona]

Starting tonight (28 July) on Channel 4.

Another period drama!

Will it be more accurate than The White Queen? Will the women cover their heads? Will they have perfect teeth, perfect skin and perfectly shaped eyebrows?

Filmed at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal, Cheshire, which is now owned by the National Trust, the publicity material for the drama claims that it's based on real people and actual events which took place in 1833 - information was gathered from the mill's extensive archive (20,000 documents).

Says The Mill's creative director, Emily Roe: 'I just put my head around the door to the archive section and seven hours later finally tore myself away.'

[If I'd been in that archive, the OH would have struggled to tear me away after seven days let alone hours...and I have no connections with the area at all!]

The chief protagonist among the mill's workers is Esther Price - based on an actual worker at Quarry Bank.

Esther was born in Liverpool in 1820, the daughter of sailmaker, Thomas Price, and his wife Maria. Unable to raise Esther, Thomas placed her in the workhouse.

At the age of 12, Esther was 'liberated' from the workhouse and taken on at Quarry Bank Mill as an apprentice.

The mill used unpaid child labour until 1847.

In November 1835, Esther and another girl assaulted a fellow apprentice in an attack so violent that the mill's owners sent the young women to appear before the magistrates.

Worried about unrest, the mill owners stated that they would reintroduce the punishment of shaving off a girl’s hair, should she misbehave or abscond.

The threats didn't work. Esther and her friend Lucy Garner ran away in August 1836 with Esther disappearing for 10 days.

In spite of this, Esther continued with her apprenticeship.

In 1839, she gave birth to an illegitimate child, William Price, who died in infancy the next year. Esther gave birth to a second child, Thomas Price, in 1843. She married the father of her children, William Whitaker, in 1851 in Stockport. The couple had two more sons, William (1853) and Abraham (1855).

Esther died in 1861 and was buried at St Bartholomew’s churchyard.

Quarry Bank Mill was founded by Belfast-born Samuel Greg in 1784. By the time Samuel retired in 1832, it was one of the largest cotton-spinning businesses in the country. Following Samuel Greg's death in 1834, the running of the business was taken on by his son, Robert Hyde Greg.

The Greg family were Unitarians and, as well as owning other mills in addition to Quarry Bank, had extensive sugar plantations in Dominica.

Samuel Greg's wife, Hannah (nee Lightbody) was an abolitionist. An educated woman, she is given credit for making sure the children at the mill were educated and that there was medical attention available for the workers.

Quarry Bank Mill today is regarded as one of the most complete and least altered factory colonies of the Industrial Revolution.