Year 1 trip to Helmshore Mills Textile Museum

The children in Year 1 have been learning about local history and what life was like during the early 1900s. As part of this learning, each class went to Helmshore Mills and went on ‘The Cotton Story’ learning journey.

We were given a tour of the mills and got to soak up the atmosphere of factory life as well as experiencing the original working machinery in action. We didn’t expect it to be so noisy; we had to watch people’s lips move as we couldn’t hear them speaking. In the early 1900s, children as young as 7 would have been made to work in the factories after school to pick up all of the waste cotton from behind the machines. On our trip we had a little go at this, although, luckily for us, none of the machines were on at the time.

We also got to see what life would have been like for families at the time and how their homes would have looked. We were shocked to see the children working at home too and when we tried it we thought it was really hard work.

We had an amazing day and learnt so much about what life must have been like for cotton mill workers.