tarboat's photos with the keyword: compstall

The steam engines that assisted the waterwheels in powering George Andrew's cotton mill at Compstall required coal for the boilers and this was supplied for a time by a mine high up in Ernocroft Wood to the east of the River Etherow. The coal was brought down a self-acting incline and across the river on a trestle bridge to a staithe at the side of the canalised leat feeding the mill reservoirs from a weir upstream. From here tub boats hauled the coal in loads of about 8 tons to the mill. This is the remains of the last surviving tub boat which now sits rotting at the edge of the pool near the weir. These boats were 22 feet 6½ inches long by 6 feet 5 inches wide at the gunnels and at the bottom of the hold they were 18 feet 10 inches long, the vertical sides being 3 feet 2½ inches high. They were constructed of wrought-iron plates riveted together and towing rings were attached to the gunnels. There were also four rowlocks, used for steering purposes, as there was no rudder. The coal traffic on the navigation seems to have ended at some point between 1848 and the 1860s.

In the 1830s Thomas Andrew erected cotton spinning mills on the River Etherow at Compstall. To supply a suffcient head of water for the wheels that powered the mills the Etherow was dammed with a great weir about three-quarters of a mile up river from Compstall bridge and the site of the mill, and a canal-sized leat was built alongside the river. This sickle shaped weir is thirty feet high and stepped. Originally built of bricks, it has had to be repaired from time to time with concrete. Originally there were slots to set boards along the top to raise the water level even higher. Demand for water to power the mills was so great that the extensive reservoirs adjacent to the mills and the river above the weir were often drained by the end of a day's working. Today the weir and leat remain along with most of the mill buildings, whilst the surrounding land has become a Country Park.