When Quarry Bank was founded, society stood on the brink of the Industrial Revolution, which changed our world forever.
In 1784, Samuel Greg came to the rural hamlet of Styal and built a spinning mill on the banks of the river Bollin. He spent the next 50 years creating an industrial community and textile empire that was funded by his family’s business interests in cotton, sugar plantations, land holdings in America and heavily reliant on the labour of children.
Early history
Quarry Bank has long been associated with industrial activity. Before cotton arrived, rock was cut from the valley, giving the area its name. This ended long before Samuel Greg (1758–1834) arrived here in 1784 when he found a small, agricultural hamlet with a scattering of farms belonging to the Earl of Stamford and Warrington of nearby Dunham Massey.
Building an early industrial community
Samuel Greg was already a successful cotton textile merchant when he embarked on his new venture – bringing the process of spinning cotton into yarn under the roof of a single ‘manufactory’. From his home in Manchester’s fashionable King Street, the Irish-born Greg searched the local river valleys, before finding Styal. Two miles from Wilmslow and 12 miles from Manchester it became the centre of a business empire.
Samuel’s mill was thoughtfully built, with windows on the east and west to maximise daylight. The earliest phase of the building was planned around the use of an Arkwright Water Frame, which could spin huge quantities of yarn, powered by a wooden water wheel. The mill was profitable almost immediately. It was extended by 1796, and a steam engine introduced in 1810, intended to support but not replace the water wheel. The mill continued to evolve, closely following new trends though never at the forefront of innovation.
Samuel built a house for apprentices, which, by the early 1800s, could accommodate up to 90 child workers. Later, he and his son, Robert Hyde Greg (1795–1875), built workers’ cottages in Styal. Two-up two-downs with a cellar, these rows of red-brick were a way of binding a workforce to the mill. Records show that up to 14 people lived in one house and cellar.
Samuel and his wife, Hannah (1766–1828) built their family home here. Beginning in 1796 as ‘some rooms in the country’, the house was complete by 1810. Refined and genteel, Quarry Bank House stands in stark contrast to the institutional Apprentice House and the small, cramped cottages in the village. Samuel’s son and heir, Robert Hyde Greg (1795–1875) built Norcliffe Hall in 1831 on former farmland just a mile away, but members of his family remained at Quarry Bank house for generations.
Apprentice indenture (employment agreement) for Thomas Royley of Newcastle, Staffordshire, aged 11, to be an apprentice at Quarry Bank Mill for a period of ten years until his 21st birthday
Two miniatures, one of Samuel Greg, and one of Hannah Greg in oval frames set against green felt at Quarry Bank
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The workforce
Before 1833, with the first Factory Act, workers were not legally protected; men, women, and children as young as eight worked in factories, often for over 12 hours a day, six days a week. New machines changed the way people worked, de-skilling the craft textile labourers. Work was hierarchical, with jobs assigned according to age and gender. Women and girls made up the majority of the workforce, providing cheaper, less-skilled labour than that of men, who often occupied supervisory roles.
Child labour
‘Unless they begin early, they seldom acquire the necessary tact… Quickness, cleanliness and attention are the requisites.’ (Samuel Greg, interview with the Factory Commission, 1833.)
In 1800, some 20,000 apprentices were employed in cotton mills. Most were children who would otherwise be reliant on poor relief or workhouses. In the next decade as many as a fifth of workers in the cotton industry were children under the age of 13. They lived together in the purpose-built Apprentice House where they ate, slept, carried out chores, and learnt basic skills. These children were contracted and indentured to Greg and Quarry Bank for an agreed length of time, in return for their lodging, clothing and food. Child apprentices were employed at Quary Bank until 1847, ending when the practice was no longer profitable.
Health and safety
Mills were dangerous places and people suffered injuries and ill health. Quarry Bank’s archives hold some of the earliest industrial medical records in the world. Records of medical treatments, especially for child apprentices, provide insight into working conditions in mills before legislation. Occupational diseases appeared including ‘cotton lung’, caused by inhaling the fibres that filled the air. The extreme noise of the machinery caused hearing loss. Tuberculosis was common, caused by ‘kissing the shuttle’, as workers loaded the thread with their mouths. Treatments were simple, mostly herbal remedies, but some were gruesome, such as applying leeches to relieve inflamed eyes.
A mounted colour copy of an oval shaped painting believed to be the front elevation of Quarry Bank House with the river flowing past and part of the north elevation of Quarry Bank, including the clock tower.
A photo of the red brick facade of the Apprentice House at Quarry Bank in autumn/winter
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Worlds away
The Greg family were connected to the world beyond their valley. Samuel did not own Quarry Bank; he preferred to rent, deeming the cost of purchase too high. He did however own a sugar plantation called Hillsborough on the island of Dominica, and another called Cane Garden on St Vincent. He inherited these from his uncle, John, who settled in the Caribbean in 1765, and was the first government commissioner for the sale of land there. In 1817, Hillsborough had 132 enslaved people on the plantation.
On his death in 1834, Samuel left his plantations ‘with the Slaves and livestock which shall be thereupon’ to his eldest son, Thomas (1793–1839). Just one year later, on the abolition of slavery, Thomas received £5081 10s and 7d in compensation. On his death in 1839, he left the ‘money I am now entitled to in right of my slaves upon the West India estates' to his sisters. The Hillsborough estate remained in Greg ownership until 1928.
Samuel Greg also owned land in the Catskill Mountains, New York. Purchased before the War of Independence, the land passed down to his grandson, Henry Russell Greg (1832–94) who sold them in the 1850s for £5000.
Generations of Gregs
After Samuel’s death in 1834, the mills he had built across the northwest were operated by his sons, with Quarry Bank as the flagship. The business weathered periods of economic uncertainty, such as the ‘Cotton Famine’, when the blockade of southern American ports by Union forces prevented the export of cotton to Manchester during the American Civil War (1860–5), and political change including growing movements for workers’ rights.
The mill stood at the centre of a global business that passed through five generations of the Greg family until 1939 when Alexander Carlton Greg (1901–90) gifted parts of the site to the nation in the care of the National Trust, selling Quarry Bank House and the Gardens to private owners. In the face of terminal decline in textile manufacturing in Britain after the Second World War, the mill ceased operations in 1959 and opened as an industrial museum in 1976.
Quarry Bank and the National Trust
In 2000, the National Trust took over the running of Quarry Bank, the mill, the village, and apprentice house. Aware of the significance of Quarry Bank in the story of the Industrial Revolution, the Trust sought to repatriate house and gardens to bring together the complete industrial community as created by Samuel Greg. In 2006 Quarry Bank House and the Lower Gardens were purchased, followed four years later by the Upper Gardens and Glasshouse. A £1.4 million project to conserve, restore and reinterpret the site followed. The extensive archives are used to share the stories of the people who lived and worked at Quarry Bank and how they created a community that still thrives today. In 2010 a modern hydro-electric generator was installed on the River Bollin, bringing waterpower back to mill once more. Woodland restoration and habitat creation and careful management of the Bollin on the wider estate are helping to restore the remarkable survival of the Greg’s designed landscape.
Holding thousands of objects & papers, discover how Quarry Bank’s nationally significant archive reveals the stories of a complete Industrial Revolution community.
Wander through the dramatic valley garden, stroll by the river and tune into the sights and sounds of the season as you explore this rare retreat where nature and industry collide.
We want to make sure that Quarry Bank is accessible to as many people as possible. Here's what you need to know about accessing the mill, facilities, gardens and historic buildings.
From tour guiding to caring for the gardens and woodlands, find out about the volunteer roles available at Quarry Bank and how to apply to join the team. We also care for Nether Alderley Mill, click to find details of opportunities to volunteer at this hidden gem.
