Oakridge Silk Mill, Ashmeads Mill and Henwood Mill
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Subject
The images show the Silk Mill, c. 1880. The women employees stand outside and on the left, one or two young girls can be seen. On the top of the roof is a bell, used to summon the women to work and beneath it a clock, which must have been useful to the villagers.
Coal for the steam engine had to be bought all of the way from Bakers Mill Lock by pack donkeys so it is not surprising that the mill closed in 1890 and was demolished c.1897.
Description
The following on Oakridge Silk Mill has been transcribed from a newspaper article of c. 1957 of unknown source.
We are greatly indebted to Miss L. F. Peacey, of Oakridge Lynch, for this picture of the Oakridge Silk Mill, which was demolished about 60 years ago. Fragments of the lower storeys remain and the spring which supplied the water for the steam engine is still very much in evidence.Mr. Harry Gardiner, of Water Lane, informs us that he can remember the last engine-driver, Mr. George Hale, great grandfather of Mr. D. F. H. Chapman, who owns one of Stroud's cooked meat shops.
The mill house is still occupied. Behind the Mill can be seen Oakridge Wesleyan Chapel; which was built in 1874 on the site of a former chapel.
The history of Oakridge Silk Mill is a little uncertain. Miss M. A. Rudd in her ‘Historical records of Bisley’, published in 1936, says it was "built by one of the Jones family of Chalford, and worked by him in order to provide employment at a time when there was great distress in the district, about sixty years ago (i.e., 1877)."
A directory of 1876, however, states that the proprietors were then Tubbs and Lewis, who also owned an elastic mills at Dudbridge and still own mills at Kingswood, Wotton-under-Edge.
The mill manager was Henry Foden. In the "Stroud News" of November 2, 1877, we read: "A pleasing and interesting little ceremony took place at Oakridge Silk Mill on Friday afternoon last, viz., the presentation to the manager, Mr. Henry Foden, by the employees of the mill, of a handsome electro silver Iiquer frame, as a small token of their esteem and respect, and of their due appreciation of the manner in which he has conducted the business of the mill for the past five or six years."
In reply, Mr. Foden said "they all knew how bad the silk trade I had been and how mills near to them had closed. They had been able, with but little short time, to keep on through it all.
The Silk Mill, therefore, would appear to have been built earlier than Miss Rudd suggests.
In 1876 there was another silk mill in the parish, Ashmeads Mill, to the west of the Village. It was owned by John Knight and managed by Nathan Frost.
To complete the industrial picture of Oakridge, which had its own tailor, National schoolteacher and Wesleyan schoolmistress, there was Henwood Mill, owned by Robert Habgood, miller. This last locality figured in a postscript to our recent articles on Daneway and Tunley.
History Group Notes on The Silk Throwsters
Oakridge mill was built by John Jones, the son of Nathaniel Jones of Green Court, Chalford. Nathaniel Jones, a wealthy clothier, gave each of his four sons £1 OOO to start silk throwing mills as he was concerned about the high unemployment in the Chalford following the closure of the woollen cloth mills.
John Jones built the mill in Oakridge around 1856 and he is reported to have said "that women should not walk all the way to Chalford to work". He died in 1860 "of inflammation of the brain" at the age of 31 after cutting off rivets to beat the boiler smith at Seville's Mill in a bet.
His widow, Mary, remarried a commercial traveler, Charles William Rudolf de Bary who had been staying at the home of a lawyer, William Trotman Lambert, in Chalford at the time of John Jones's death.
De Bary took over the running of Oakridge and Ashmeads mills but in 1869 the mills were taken over by a solicitor from Essex, John Alexander Sparling.
From 1874 to 1879 Oakridge mill was owned by the firm of Tubbs Lewis and run by their manager Mr Henry Faden.
In 1880 William Chapman, the owner of several mills in Chalford area, took over and employed Nathan Frost as manager.
The mill finally closed in 1897 and was demolished.
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