Paradise Mill

Paradise Mill

Paradise Mill
Park Lane
Macclesfield
Cheshire
SK11 6UT

Tel: 01625 618 228

Web: Paradise Mill

About Paradise Mill

The Paradise Mill and the Macclesfield Silk Museum Heritage Centre are within a few minutes walk of each other and complement each other. It is therefore recommended that you visit both. Macclesfield can be fairly said to be the "silk town" of the United Kingdom. In fact, the main road from Stockport and Manchester to Macclesfield is still called "The Silk Road".

Paradise Mill

This mill was home to Macclesfield's last working handloom silk-weaving until its closure in 1981, when cheaper imported silks and high quality new synthetic materials made the production of silk in England an uneconomic prospect. It is a large mill and still houses over 20 original fully working Jacquard looms - each still capable of producing the kind of intricate and delicate woven patternwork that made the loom, and Macclesfield, famous throughout Britain for the production of fine silks.

Jacquard, a Frenchman, had invented his loom in 1804, and it was the first truly automated (and some say even "computerised") system for mass produced continuous weaving of complex and intricate multicoloured patterns by using punched cards. Jacquard looms often took many days to thread and set up, but that done, they could produce continually 24 hours a day thereafter, and revolutionised much of the weaving process in terms of the sheer quantity and intricacy of material produced.