Brookside Printworks was one of the very first textile printing factories in Britain, set up by the Peels of Oswaldtwistle in the mid 1700s. They were a notable family of early industrialists which subsequently produced Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), Prime Minister of the 1830s-40s and the creator of the Police Force, named after him as ‘Peelers’.
Just up the slope in the hamlet of Stanhill lived another great man, James Hargreaves (1720–1778) the inventer of the ‘Spinning Jenny’, a machine that revolutionised textile production.
Today the stone printing works have long gone and their attractive reservoirs are now surrounded by new woodland planting. All is turned turned over to nature where fragments of history can be stumbled upon amongst the trees and plants. Yesterday, in a sunny breeze, everything glowed in the colours of Autumn.