We live in a Lancashire mill village. There are 33 original cottages, a primary school, reading room, chapel, cricket club, bowling green and the mill owners enormous house. The village is on the banks of the Leeds Liverpool canal. Around the village there has been development meaning there are another 45 more modern properties, fortunately these don't impinge on us. The village was originally built by the Parke family to entice local workers to their paper mill which manufactured very high quality paper and bank note paper. Most of this has now been knocked down to make way for a development, 25 years ago, of new houses and what remains is used by various companies, mainly car related. It,s currently scheduled for housing development.
The mill owners were Methodist so there is no pub. Everyone went to chapel twice on Sunday. Up to the mid 60s there was a team employed to maintain the outside of the houses, everything was painted the same colour etc. lovely front gardens. The school and chapel were built to benefit and "educate" the workforce. There is/was a reading room which was effectively a small library again for the villagers. The upper floor of this building had a fully sprung floor for dancing. Kathleen Ferrier often performed there - she was born a few miles away.
I do appreciate how lucky I am, though we didn't know this 38 years ago when we arrived!!
