Wigan Album

Is this site now the Hewit Business Park near Orrell Station.

No Peter Orrell mill was at the bottom of Mill road off St James road at the side of the railway bridge about a mile from Hewitt park , all the fields and the mill are now a housing estate .

You got me thinking again Peter as I was thinking it was what became to be the paper mill as in the early 1960s a friend and I would often walk from Pemberton to a relations of his on Sandbrook Road, and the route went along the footpath by the railway going past the paper mill just off St James' Road, we would often get foreign canned food labels from the bales of recycling paper stacked near the fence, and though we couldn't read the writing we would always be amazed at the brightly coloured labels compared to the dull conventional British ones, I am still sure the mill in the photo is the one that became to be the paper mill, someone will know for sure.

Thanks Dave, I see now that the old brick and tile works was on the site I was thinking of.

My GG Grandfather Robert Derbyshire was Mill Manager here in 1881. He was a Spinning Master.

It was called Sandbrook Mill.

Helen B, Robert was my GGG grandfather, the mill burnt down in 1881, he also lost his wife earlier that year. The owner went to his relatives for a loan, (Canal Mill, Chorley), they refused him and he threw himself onto the railway line, just before Christmas that same year.

Bernard Derbyshire. I’ve messaged tou about Robert Derbyshire. Didn’t know about the demise of the mill owner.