Photo-a-Day  (Saturday, 21st July, 2018)

Good photo Mick. At first glance I thought it was a jail, some of the workers might have thought so too.

I always thought that mill was Rylands mill, or are there two mills side by side. Also was this photo taken from Hornby Street. By the way an excellent clear photo.

The mill looks disused, is it ?. What a splendid opportunity for luxury apartments, very nice area as well. Old buildings like this deserve to be saved. Like the photo Mick, that bike of yours must clock up more miles than a London cab !!!.

An interesting view, where is it taken from Mick?

Thought this was Roland’s Mill

I thinks it called Pagefield Mill but it was once owned by John Rylands.

I was in Hornby street.

There is loads of information about this mill in the John Ryland's Library in Manchester, it's really interesting. I agree about it being a good idea to be used for housing and made in lovely apartments. It is a great building and used to be used by Wigan College.

The firm that bought the mill from the college was going to turn into apartments, but it seems that now they'd rather see it burned to the ground, sad as it's a wonderful building.

The original name was Gidlow Mills until it became Wigan & Leigh College Pagefield Campus.

Walt (North Yorks) the building has been disused for years now and is a constant problem for nearby residents, the fire department and police since it has been plagued by youths starting fires and vandalising it, not to mention risking their own lives in trespassing in dangerous areas. The local council have had no success in forcing the owners, who are not U.K. based, to secure the premises, and have been forced to use substantial amounts of Council Taxpayers money to partially secure it, with limited success against trespassers.

It's quiet now this proud old Mill
Redundant, silent, unused, still
Once it rang with a thousand noises
Of clattering Looms and Mill girl's voices
Now it's working days are done
It's glory days forever gone.
Only shadows now walk it's floors
Of broken windows and creaking doors
In solitude and decay it lies
And slowly, proudly, sadly....dies

Not having a particular interest in history, prior to reading the comments by Rosie G, I hadn't previously made a connection between the John Rylands library in Deansgate and this building.
However, back in October of 2003, the library, having received a grant from the heritage lottery commission, amongst other funding bodies, closed it's doors to the public, in order to carry out extensive alterations to the fabric of the building.
Before work could commence however, the entire contents of the library had to be carefully catalogued, packed and barcoded, then removed to storage.
The boxes filled with books and ancient manuscripts were then loaded by hand into what can best be described as 8' x 8' x 8' tea chests, three boxes to a wagon then transported to Winsford, where they were unloaded by forklift and stored underground for the duration of the renovation works, in the relatively stable humidity of the old workings of the salt mines.
The Leeds based firm Harrow Green won the contract for the work.
The emptying of the library took a full five weeks and employed two wagons and at least a couple of dozen packers, plus library staff.
Once the library was empty, the building work commenced and went on for the best part of eighteen months or more, the library re-opening to the public sometime in 2005 I believe.
I personally had no involvement in bringing the contents of the library back from Winsford on completion of this multi-million pound renovation work.
Just a useless bit of info on an otherwise uneventful day, but thank you for taking the time to read this.
As an aside, the predictive text wants to put 'swahili' into the verification code box.

Blimey DTease, you're getting pretty good at this poetry lark.....It rhymes and scans, it must be said.
But don't be letting it go to thi yed.

Very good poem, DTease, and a very funny one, Ozy! x.