TheHeir's loom and Agatha Christie

Do you know where the word “Heirloom” comes from?  I didn’t until last week. It was half-term  and, like many another parent, I was faced with a family who wanted Something To Do.  Now, by and large, the aforesaid family are fairly self-sufficient in the Something To Do department.  One of the better aspects of everyone getting that much older, is that – by and large – all they really need is transport and money.  Sometimes they even provide that for themselves.  However, the ditact went out:  we had to do something together.

That’s why we ended up at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal, Cheshire.  It’s a cotton mill, one of the oldest in the country and is in a very picturesque part of the countryside because it was originally powered by water. When steam power came in, it made more sense for the factories to be huddled together in towns, but for a long period of time, a cotton mill had to be situated next to a river.  The water wheel itself is massive and it’s a terrific sight to see it turning on its ponderous way.

The mill not only houses all the old machinery, it also acts as an exhibition centre for the story of cotton.  A lady dressed in vaguely Eighteenth century peasant gear took us through the process on cotton manufacture as it used to be conducted at home from fluffy bits from plants to yards of cloth.  The loom is a whacking great thing – about eight feet across by six foot high - housed in a wooden frame.  A loom represented a serious investment on the part of a family and were passed down from generation to generation becoming, in fact, the Heir’s Loom.  As cotton manufacture moved into factories, machines got bigger and much more powerful, but the essential process remained the same.

There’s an interesting Agatha Christie connection with this part of Cheshire.  Agatha’s sister married a Manchester manufacturer, James Watts. (The enormous Watts' Warehouse in the centre of Manchester is now a hotel). Agatha spent a lot of time at the Watts' house, Abney Hall.  Abney Hall is about five miles from Quarry Bank.  She used the solidly Victorian Abney Hall as the blueprint for the aristocratic Chimneys in The Secret of Chimneys and a whole raft of other country houses and paid a delightful homage to the hall in the introduction to The Adventure of The Christmas Pudding. However, perhaps the most striking “borrowing” is the name of Styal village for the house at the heart of her first book, The Mysterious Affair At Styles.  (I’m not sure if the change of spelling is deliberate, by the way; like many another outstanding writer, Agatha Christie’s spelling was lousy.)

One lovely feature of Quarry Bank Mill is the millowner’s garden. It's bounded by a large cliff of Old Red or Devonian Sandstone.  The rock, which was laid down when the land which is now Britain was at the centre of a desert continent.  As the name “Devonian” implies, it's common in Devon – the cliffs of Torquay, Agatha Christie’s home town are made of Devonian sandstone – and must have struck a chord with the young Agatha.  The garden has only recently been opened to the public and still has a secret air about it.  I'm willing to bet this was the garden she had in mind when she wrote about the very sinister Quarry Garden in the late novel, Halloween Party.

S’interesting what you can learn on a day out, isn’t it?