The Collection

Fire at Lee Mills – The Aftermath:

The full story is below; this is Collection Co-ordinator Liz Gillett's follow-up report and thanks to those who helped:

"Thank you very much everyone who has responded so generously to the Appeal following the fire at Lee Mill. So far over £2500 has been raised towards the removal bill, which is wonderful news. Your encouraging and supportive letters are also very much appreciated at a time when morale is low.

There has been a steady trickle of helpers coming to the Mill for a day or more. Already we have unpacked all but about three of the pallets. The worst damage is to balls of yarn that were found to be saturated as the water used to put out the fire had come through the ceiling of the old unit, but they have dried out fairly quickly, spread out on a clean towel with a cold fan on whenever we are working at the Mill. To my surprise they don't smell of stale water!

The men – husbands, partners and sons – have put up all the shelving units and they are now in their permanent places. There are good-sized gaps between the bays to allow space to work, to lift things off shelves and to store larger items such as looms, spinning wheels and some knitting machines.

The next step is to move the knitting machines so that all of one make are in the same bay. At least now, as a result of the work we did last autumn, all the machines are properly and clearly labelled, so this should be done fairly easily – it's just physically tiring.

A very useful aid, though, is a supermarket trolley which was abandoned in the dairy yard when we first moved into Lee Mill last year. With three or four machines on board, or up to six boxes, it really does make the moving process less exhausting!

Once the machines are in place we can then move the boxes of spare parts, loose carriages, manuals etc to be near the machines they are part of.

When that is done, a unique code will be allocated to each shelf, and an inventory will be prepared with a map of the layout so that we know exactly what is where. This was the stage we had reached at the beginning of June, before the fire.

There are still about 250 boxes of catalogued items here, awaiting transport and shelf space, and a further 200 boxes of items waiting to be catalogued. Regular help with cataloguing will be provided from late September by members of the Leeds branch of the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies, which will help to overcome the backlog.

Slowly but surely we're getting there! It's good to know that so many people support our efforts."

The Story of the Fire – the Guild Collection was damaged, but not destroyed …

Mary Hawkins writes: "When we should have been celebrating Jubilee Day, we were standing outside the mill looking at fire damage. The fire was apparently started by vandals outside the mill. The intense heat broke through the window, behind which the wooden stairs were located. The stair well acted as a chimney and took the fire straight up to the top floor. The Collection was saved by the fire door, but suffered from damp, soot, smoke and the fireman's hoses. At this stage we had no means of entry to check."

Guild Collection Co-ordinator, Liz Gillett, appeals for help:

"Next year is the Guild's Silver Jubilee. We were hoping that by next July we would have had a chance to stage several Open Days at Lee Mill in order that our Collection could be shown to a wider audience and we could get on the first step of the ladder towards registration. Sadly, over the Jubilee Holiday, there was a fire in the building we were using for storage and we have had to revise our plans."

The fire was deliberate …

The fire was deliberate and the local CID is involved. The Fire Brigade, with nine fire engines, took three hours to put the fire out and save the main fabric of the building. We were incredibly lucky that the asbestos panels lining the stairwell prevented the fire reaching the floor where the Collection was, although the stairs were destroyed which meant that the Collection was stranded out of reach (except via a ladder!)

Yorkshire Museums Service recommended a firm of specialist removers – one of only three such firms north of Birmingham – and their eight packers and two drivers with fork-lift trucks and removal lorries took eight hours to move everything two hundred yards into another, slightly smaller unit in the same mill complex. We could not possibly have done this on our own.

… new unit may prove even better …

As fortune would have it, the new unit may prove even better for our purposes, not least because the storage area is on ground floor level and there is a separate office up a few stone stairs. It will be possible to hold Committee Meetings, study days and cataloguing sessions in the office, which is quite comfortable, about 17 feet square and carpeted. It has a work surface around part of two walls, six power points, and plenty of lighting. There are phone points in the office and in the storage area should we wish to connect at a later date. We have also inherited some tables and chairs plus a working fridge, a convector heater and two sets of metal shelves. All ceilings are concrete, the walls are rough stone painted white and are in good condition with no signs of any leaks. The unit is attached on three sides to other occupied units and will be cheaper to heat.

However, using professional removers was expensive and insurance does not cover removal costs, but our legal requirements state that it is essential to protect the Collection. This has used £2899.88 of Guild reserve funds. It will be hard but not impossible to replace this money and we are confident that we can do it with everyone's help and support.

Our'Mission Statement'

Our 'Mission Statement' is to strengthen our position and reputation as the 'Number One' organisation for knitting and crochet in Britain. If we can show that we have active support from Guild members and others, it is much easier to obtain extra funding from elsewhere.

Please help us now

Whatever you can give – money, items you have made to sell, your time to help in fund-raising or to help at Lee Mill – will be an enormous help and will be greatly appreciated when we are facing such an unexpected demand on our resources.

Thankfully, the Collection is stored according to professional standards and while none of the items are damaged, some were wet, many smell of smoke and all the bags and boxes are covered with a film of soot. A group of volunteers go the mill whenever they can to clean, sort and 'air' things. Please let me know if you would be willing to join this group.

Open Days

We hold Open Days to give you the chance to come and see for yourselves what we are talking about and what we are doing; the photographs here give an idea of the scale of damage caused by the fire and the amount of work involved.

If you would like to offer to help in any way please contact:

Liz Gillett
PO Box 4421, Kidderminster DY11 6YW (Please enclose an A5 stamped, addressed envelope, if you require information)
Phone: 0113 266 4651

• more about Open Days
• more about the Lee Mills Story
• back to The Collection

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