Ainscough Flour Mill, Burscough report 18/4/08

[4737carlin]

H. & R. Ainscough built two steam Flour Mills at Parbold and Burscough, not sure what the deal is with the Parbold mill but i paid a visit to the Ainscough mill on Friday which closed in 1998
Bit of a death trap this one with plenty of holes in the floor where machinery has been removed i guess. These drop down several levels but least you can see them and the floors where there is floor is pretty solid so i guess its not as bad as places with bouncy floors which are going to give one day but even so you still have to watch your step.

A few shots of the place in use
http://www.flourmilling.net/pengland.html#burscough

No real external shots as such but the top of the water tower offered some good views across Lancashire
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5083a.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5091a.jpg

Lots of clearing has gone on outside recenrtly, there are plans to make this place into flats so maybe its the first stage
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5090a.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5107a.jpg

Back on the inside, an example of the floors...nothing we cant cope with thou
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5074a.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5073a.jpg

From what i was reading seems a lot of stuff was removed after closure, so unlike Flecthers which has stuff all over the place a lot of this is bare unless you poke around through doors, which of course we should be!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5111a.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5123a.jpg

Apparently these places where fire hazards and could go up real easy, i recall my mum telling me it was common to see the Spillers Mills down Seacombe docks near me on fire!!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5125cra.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5127a.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5110a.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5081a.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5071cra.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5064cra.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5060a.jpg

A few people have commented in the past how it always feels like your not alone in this place, constantly blowing doors and things banging, but were use to that right?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/4737carlin/Burscoughmill/640IMG_5056a.jpg

[KingElvis]

Cracking stuff there, I love a good mill and this one looks great :thumb

You take some great photos Carlin and I love the digrams on the control panels....great stuff

[Rebel]

Good stuff! It looks like that control panel tells the operator when the truck is full of flour. That place would have been dangerous because flour can be explosive.

[converse1]

Nice work there fella! Yeah flour is explosive given the right conditions. I remember my dad doing some electrical work in some mills when I was little and he had to use explosion/spark proof switch gear. I thought this was really impressive at the time :o

[BB]

I know the feeling in there, theres always noises.
the basement is not good, the pics i took down there showed how much moisture/crap is in the air. Nice big place tho! nice report! :thumb

[ERNIE99_UK]

Ive not been in a flour mill yet, nice shots of the control panel.

[andym]

It's a good explore is this, although it's a proper maze of a place. I didn't attempt that ladder when I went, it looked well dodgy when Gibbo and R1 went up, I'm surprised it's still standing a year on!

[Rin]

Flour mills eventually adopted what they called "Sweepers", who's only job was to clean the flour that collected everywhere. It was always all over the place.
Light switches in the mills used to operate by having the spark jump from one switch to another, which could ignite the dust and flour in the air, eventually causing a chain reaction that carried onward throughout the mill. Then Mercury box switches were invented, where the spark jumped from on and off in an air tight box full of conductive mercury. This was later banned because of mercury poisoning, which wasn't really a threat, similar to abestos. Still, it's considered harmful stuff.
Now all lightswitches make a physical connection to avoid exposing the spark to the air,
by having it cross a void. That solved a lot of problems. Of course, the engines could catch fire, someone could light a match for a cigarette, so on and such forth. Flour and grain mills are great.

[Mexico75]

Very nice, looks to be plenty of stuff left to look at :thumb

[4737carlin]

There is a lot still to see but from what i can work out the holes in the floor have been made from the removing of big machinery so there would have been much much more back in the day