Midland Mills is a former flax mill

Flax mill

Flax mills are mills concerned with the manufacture of flax. The earliest mills were ones for spinning yarn for the linen industry.John Kendrew and Thomas Porthouse , both of Darlington developed the process from Richard Arkwright's water frame, and patented it in 1787...

 on Silver Street in Holbeck

Holbeck

Holbeck is a district in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.The district begins on the southern edge of the Leeds city centre and mainly lies in the LS11 Leeds postcode area. The M1 and M621 motorways used to end/begin in Holbeck. Now the M621 is the only motorway that passes through the area since...

, Leeds

Leeds

Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

, West Yorkshire

West Yorkshire

West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....

.

History

John Jubb built the first mill on the site in 1793 but sold his business and mill in the early 19th century. The new owner took advantage of the expansion of the flax spinning industry in the Holbeck area by diversifying into the manufacture of textile machinery. This machinery was sold to local and national mills, including the mills of Leeds entrepreneur

Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...

 Benjamin Gott

Benjamin Gott

Benjamin Gott was one of the leading figures in the industrial revolution, in the field of textiles. His factory at Armley Mills, Armley, Leeds, was once the largest factory in the world and is now home to the Armley Mills Industrial Museum.Gott was born in Calverley, Pudsey in West Yorkshire,...

. The mills changed ownership a few year later when the owners moved to premises on Meadow Lane, selling the Midland Mills site to the Drabble Brothers who were in the employment of John Marshall at the same time as Matthew Murray

Matthew Murray

Matthew Murray was an English steam engine and machine tool manufacturer, who designed and built the first commercially viable steam locomotive, the twin cylinder Salamanca in 1812...

. Drabble Brothers continued to manufacture textile machinery and also patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

ed designs for cart axle

Axle

An axle is a central shaft for a rotating wheel or gear. On wheeled vehicles, the axle may be fixed to the wheels, rotating with them, or fixed to its surroundings, with the wheels rotating around the axle. In the former case, bearings or bushings are provided at the mounting points where the axle...

s until a disagreement between the two brothers saw their firm go bankrupt in 1812.

Taylor and Wordsworth, two employees of the Drabble brothers, bought the site in 1812 and established Taylor, Wordsworth & Co. By the early 1850s both Taylor and Wordsworth had died but the company continued to trade under the same name but under new management. In the 1930s Platts

Platt Brothers

Platt Brothers & Co Ltd, was a British company based at Oldham, in North West England. They were textile machinery manufacturers, iron founders and colliery proprietors, and by the end of the 19th century, had become the largest textile machinery company in the world, employing over 12,000 workers...

 bought the factory, Platts soon became the largest textile machine-makers in the world, employing over 15,000 people. Unfortunately the economic turbulence of the 1980s caused recession

Recession

In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction, a general slowdown in economic activity. During recessions, many macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way...

 and the decline of manufacturing in the UK. The factory ceased trading in 1981 and Platts followed in 1982. The closure of Midland Mills marked the end of the textile industry in Leeds.

Present

Since 1981 Midland Mills has been divided into industrial units. Most of these have been used for light industrial work. Midland Mills is situated in the Holbeck Urban Village

Holbeck Urban Village

Holbeck Urban Village is the name given by local government and planning agencies to a mixed use urban renewal area south of Leeds railway station in Holbeck, West Yorkshire, England....

regeneration area.