Besides the 220 foot chimney at Ellenroad, still bearing the footprints of the late great Fred Dibnah who spent half his life scampering up such things as a steeplejack and the other half bring them crashing down, the great treasure to be found here is the engine house housing the mighty steam engine.
Victoria and Alexander
Even for those of us who don’t take enormous pleasure in donning a pair of greasy overalls, the steam engine is a wondrous beast of epic proportions and a reminder of what made Britain Great. The twins Victoria and Alexander, named after the mill owners children and lovingly preserved in impressive green and gold livery produce 3000 horsepower. According to James Parkinson’s 1892 treatise ‘How to start a cotton spinning mill’ 1 horsepower was needed to run 100 spindles with a second steam engine, ‘for economies sake’. Like so many cotton mills that forged the industrial landscape in these parts, Ellenroad was all about the economies of scale.