ABSTRACT
In Quarry Bank Mill, a former textile factory converted into an industrial museum offers its visitors three particular features. First, there is a complete industrial ensemble from 1784 in front of their eyes: the factory building itself, the residential building of the founding family of the company and housing for workers. Second, visitors can experience the industrial machinery for textile production ‘in action’. The energy sources required for machine operation include a water wheel of exceptional dimensions and a steam engine. The third feature is that after more than two hundred years, Quarry Bank Mill still meets its visitors embedded in nature and landscape, evoking the clash between industrial production and the beauty of nature, making visitors reflect on the relationship between technical and industrial progress, on the one hand, and the increasing destruction of the natural foundations of life, on the other.
