Book Launch details at Masson Mills in Derbyshire

Since October, I have been working as a Visitor Centre Assistant at Masson Mills, between Matlock Bath and Cromford in Derbyshire. It is one parts of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site, which features a number of mills that were the first examples of the modern factory systems in the world.

I’m pleased to say that I will be having a book launch for my debut book, Anthony Woodville: Sophisticate or Schemer, which will consist of a talk and book signing, at Masson Mills Visitor Centre on Saturday 16th March between 11am and 1pm. It will be free entry, so it would be great to see as many of you there as possible. However, there is a pay and display car park on site, with one hour refunded with any purchase in the Visitor Centre.

For those of you who would like to know a bit more about the history of this mill, Masson, like its neighbour, Cromford, was built by the wig maker turned cotton spinning giant, Richard Arkwright, which opened in 1783. Its brick façade shows the site was to be Arkwright’s showpiece mill and took power directly from the River Derwent it sits on the banks of.

Entrance to Masson Mills

By the turn of the nineteenth century, both Cromford and Masson between them employed around 1,100 people, a huge number compared with other mills at the time. Whilst it has been added to since Arkwright’s time, after it was taken over by the English Cotton Sewing Company in 1897. It continued as a working mill until November 1991, thus ending 206 years of production.

The original mill building is still in existence. It now houses a conference centre and textile museum, featuring all sorts of machinery that have been salvaged from textile mills from around the country.

Statue of Sir Richard Arkwright in Masson Visitor Centre

It also has offices for Derwent-Hydro, a company run by the Needle brothers who now own the site, which until the pandemic was mostly a shopping centre. They reopened the Visitor Centre, Museum and conference space back in July 2023.

Masson Mills Visitor Centre

The Visitor Centre, which I currently work in, is a mixture of a shop and cafe area and can be found at the front of the building. It sells a variety of textile themed items, including some salvaged from parts of the mill. We even have the string and fabric produced from the machines in the museum for sale.

If you have a chance to, I would really recommend our machine demonstrations or guided tours. Our usual tour guide, Kevin, is wonderful and is very knowledgeable about the machinery. I have been on a guided tour myself and can wholly say, despite not being interested in the technology per say, Kevin made the hour long tour very enjoyable.

Some of the items for sale using string made on machines in the museum

At the moment, we are running the machinery demonstrations on Thursdays and Fridays between 1pm and 3pm. Prices as follows: £6 for adults, £4 for under 16s and free for under 5s. This will be running until March. Guided tours are still available for groups of 10 or more but do have to be pre-booked. If you would be interested in a tour, the contact details you can book through can be found at the bottom of this post. Daily guided tours for the public should hopefully be up and running again after Easter, so keep an eye out for further details on that.

The opening times for the Visitor Centre are Monday-Friday 11am-4pm. We have snacks and drinks available alongside our lovely shop. We also have a large onsite car park, which is housed in the newest part of the site. This can be paid for using an app, or using the pay station on the bottom floor. If you have any issues with paying, please let the Visitor Centre know.

Information on Masson Mills:

Website: https://www.massonmills.co.uk

Address:

Sir Richard Arkwright’s Masson Mills Derby Road Matlock Bath Matlock Derbyshire DE4 3PY

Telephone: 01629581001

Email: info@massonmills.co.uk