As a child growing up in the very early 70's on Brook St, I used to play on the mounds of rubble that once was Boston Mill.
I remember the brick columns which held the gates to that side of the mill, also the couple of occasions when gypsy caravans turned up on part of the ground that had been cleared.
One part of the derelict site that sticks in my mind was a scary, damp, large brick-lined pit, which had clay pipework leading into it, and moss and algae on the walls. It was maybe 10ft square, and about 8ft deep, it could have been smaller as we were only nippers.
Looking back I think it was a pit where a large water driven cotton loom or another piece of water using machinery sat in place.
Several years later as the motorway passed through Hyde, and across the bottom of Brook St, this site, including the scary pit, was covered over by the rising embankment of the motorway trench.
Then in the early 80's, as I passed this embankment, walking up the path that leads from Morrisons to the bottom of High St, I noticed a sunken hole maybe about 10ft in circumference and 5ft deep, had appeared on the side of the embankment, directly over the spot where this pit had been buried about 20ft down. We'd had some extremely heavy rain over the previous days and I think this caused the ground to give way and the echo of the pit to be revealed.
Just to add, the sunken whole is still there, but it has bushes growing out of it and is behind the blue boarding that line the area today waiting for redevelopment.
Courtesy of Hyde Cotton Mills by Ian Haynes
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As a child growing up in the very early 70's on Brook St, I used to play on the mounds of rubble that once was Boston Mill.
I remember the brick columns which held the gates to that side of the mill, also the couple of occasions when gypsy caravans turned up on part of the ground that had been cleared.
One part of the derelict site that sticks in my mind was a scary, damp, large brick-lined pit, which had clay pipework leading into it, and moss and algae on the walls. It was maybe 10ft square, and about 8ft deep, it could have been smaller as we were only nippers.
Looking back I think it was a pit where a large water driven cotton loom or another piece of water using machinery sat in place.
Several years later as the motorway passed through Hyde, and across the bottom of Brook St, this site, including the scary pit, was covered over by the rising embankment of the motorway trench.
Then in the early 80's, as I passed this embankment, walking up the path that leads from Morrisons to the bottom of High St, I noticed a sunken hole maybe about 10ft in circumference and 5ft deep, had appeared on the side of the embankment, directly over the spot where this pit had been buried about 20ft down.
We'd had some extremely heavy rain over the previous days and I think this caused the ground to give way and the echo of the pit to be revealed.
Just to add, the sunken whole is still there, but it has bushes growing out of it and is behind the blue boarding that line the area today waiting for redevelopment.
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