Armley Mills

The earliest record of Armley Mills dates from the middle of the sixteenth century, when the local clothier Richard Booth leased 'Armley Millnes' from Henry Saville. A document of 1707 describes fulling mills here: one with two wheels and four fulling stocks, another grinding corn alongside two more stocks. By 1788 there were five waterwheels driving eighteen fulling stocks. Fulling was necessary and thoroughly unpleasant work — woven wool was felted by being struck repeatedly with great hammers while soaked in water, Fuller's earth and urine, the latter collected from neighbouring houses who saved it specially.

The mills sold in 1788, ten years after the Leeds and Liverpool Canal opened alongside them, to Colonel Thomas Lloyd, a Leeds cloth merchant, who expanded them into the world's largest woollen mill and leased their running to Israel and John Burrows. In 1804/1805 the mills were sold to Benjamin Gott — and burned down. The early mills were notorious fire hazards, airborne fibres igniting and taking hold in flammable structures. Gott rebuilt to fireproof principles, and it is that structure which survives and which carries the listing. By 1805 the mill held eighteen fulling stocks and fifty looms, powered by two metal suspension wheels named Wellington and Blucher after heroes of the wars against Napoleon.

Gott died in 1840 and his sons John and William introduced a steam engine to supplement the wheels; the waterwheels were phased out through the 1860s and removed in 1885. By 1907 part of the mill was let to tenants under a room and power agreement, and the woollen clothing manufacturers Bentley and Tempest took over. The museum still holds their accident book, a record of dangerous incidents during their tenure — a reminder that the business of cloth cost people dearly. Operations ceased in 1969, defeated by changing technology, lost markets and economic conditions. Leeds City Council bought the site and reopened it as a museum of industry in 1982. It was damaged in the Boxing Day flood of 2015 and has since reopened.

The museum stands between the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the River Aire, reached from Canal Road or Milford Place. Allow time for the textile gallery, which follows the complete woollen manufacturing process from carding machine to hydraulic rotary press, with a 1904 Platt Brothers condensor mule in working order and a Hollingworth Knowles Jacquard loom built to the firm's 1909 patent and in use at Huddersfield until 1980. The railway collection is extensive, with standard and narrow gauge rolling stock and a short display line that lets some of it run; the collection began in 1956 with Barber, acquired from the recently closed Harrogate Gasworks Railway. Among the models is the world's oldest model locomotive, built by Matthew Murray in 1811 as a prototype for Salamanca.

If you want the building at its most atmospheric, organised public ghost hunts are held at the venue by event companies and are the usual way to be inside the 1805 range after closing. Wear warm layers and sturdy shoes either way: this is a stone mill on sloping ground above moving water. Armley Mills is part of Leeds Museums & Galleries, so it pairs easily with Leeds City Museum, Kirkstall Abbey or Temple Newsam if you are making a weekend of it.