The last couple of weekends has seen a lot of progress being made at  the NNE corner of the mill and further over into the Boiler House and Engine House.  The weather has been quite kind to us at weekends and just like the wild garlic our volunteer numbers grew! Now that the stage 2 HLF bid has been submitted I am able to settle back down to the practicalities.  Whatever the outcome of the bid we will be sticking to our programme in terms of the areas of the site we excavate.  Area 'A' - the main mill site - will be our first focus with areas 'B' - the ancillary buildings by the river - and area 'C' - Mellor Lodge - will follow on once all excavation and conservation work has been completed at 'A'. There is much to do and still a lot to discover.

Bob

The flue of the economiser which pre-heated the water entering the boilers and thus saved coal	Back wall of the mill	Volunteers work on the huge stone steam engine beds

footnote: In 1860 a new building, at the northern end of the main mill building, was constructed to house two steam engines and boilers, installed by Benjamin Goodfellow, a Hyde engineer, from this building a long tunnel flue connected to a chimney, up the hill behind. The installation of steam was such a notable event that a celebration dinner was held in the Navigation Inn, Marple, after the trial run of the boilers and engines, for managers and overlookers.