Country Images Magazine May 2015 - North Edition | Page 47

those working in Litton Mill. Children who were questioned by visitors
to Cressbrook Mill were so cowed by their employer that they only gave
favourable answers to questions about their welfare. Certainly they worked
the same long hours and from reports published in the Ashton Chronicle
dated May 1849, they were just as harshly treated as their brothers and
sisters further upstream. Their accommodation was also in a barrack
block, the building which still stands beyond the recently restored mill.
Its unhappy memories a thing of the past, part of the Apprentice House
was latterly converted into a hikers’ café known as Dave’s Tea Stop, one
of the few places in the Peak where walkers are at liberty to eat their own
sandwiches.

Litton Mill

Both mills no longer spin cotton, Cressbrook’s frames were silenced in 1965,
but Litton continued by spinning speciality yarns for another decade, still
powered by the river, but this time through a water driven turbine before
it along with its sister mill fell into decline, mute memorials to the lives of
countless so-called apprentices. In recent years developers have restored the
listed fabric and converted them into highly desirable apartments.

Cressbrook
Apprentice House,
now Dave’s Tea
Shop.

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