Quarry Bank Mill, Art Musem & Liverpool

I left extremely early this morning. The coach ride was quite long. I read some of North and South and then I talked my coach buddy Lindsay. We sit next to each other on the bus and have enlightening conversations.

We arrived at the Quarry Bank Mill a few hours latter. The mill is located right outside of Manchester. It is the largest running cotton mill in England. It is out in the country was powered by water. The huge wheel that makes the mill run was fascinating. We couldn’t take pictures, but I did get a post card so when I come home you can all see it. Because this mill is in the country the workers had better living conditions but they received a lower wage. We started the tour by ginning cotton (taking all the seeds out). It takes a really long time. I now understand why the cotton gin was so important. I’m still not sure why they call it ginning. Cotton doesn’t grow in England so the tour guides usually take a really long time explaining what cotton is and where they got if from for the young British children. But our group was already pretty knowledgeable about cotton and slavery.

After being "ginned" the cotton is cleaned and separated using brushes to prepare for spinning. Next, the cotton is spun into yarn by a wheel. Finally, the yarn is placed onto hand looms and then woven into cloth. We got to see the improvements of each one of these steps as they became more industrialized. For the first time I saw and felt what it would have been like to be a factory worker. Cotton is floating in the air, the noise of the machines is so loud (they only have about half the amount of machines that would have really been in there), the room gets hot, and the machines are moving so fast a limb could easily be caught.

After this we went to an art museum in Port Sunlight called the Lady Lever Art Gallery. It was a small exhibit. There were mostly Pre-Raphaelite paintings. These paintings have very bright colors because new paints were made during the industrial revolution. It was looked down upon as a low brow art form but this particular mill owner bought a lot the of the art because it was inexpensive at the time. There were not any terribly famous paintings but I did fall in love with a few of them. Oh these people made soap that we still use today--Lever. There was a display of soap advertisements at the bottom of the museum.

We arrived in Liverpool that evening. I have discovered that towns in England close after five; nothing is opened no one is on the streets. I think people really go home and spend time with their families because there is literally no one out. We walked along the Liverpool docks. It was quite a moving sight. Everything was so still. It was interesting to imagine people hustling around anticipating a trip to America. It started raining really hard so we went back to the youth hostel after we danced in the rain while singing a Beatle’s Song.