Monument record MDR11124 - Bump Mill (site of), Bump Mill Lane, Shirland, Shirland and Higham

A three-storey sandstone building with cast-iron windows. Sanderson's map, 1834, shows it as a bump (candlewick) mill. Now [in 1969] occupied by Fred Turner (Hosiery) Ltd. At other times it has been a corn mill, a mustard factory and a jam factory. (1) A water-powered 'bump mill' for the manufacture of 'bump' or candlewick formerly stood by the side of Bump Mill Lane, south of Heanor village. In 1789 Pilkington wrote that 'At Higham has been invented a machine for carding and spinning hurds (ie coarse flax) for candle wicks, for which the proprietor is said to have obtained a patent'. The building appears to have ceased operations as a bump mill by 1843, as the tithe schedule describes the site as 'Two cottages, courtyard and gardens'. It remained as two cottages until it was demolished shortly after the second world war. It was a stone building, two storeys high, which prior to demolition still retained traces on its north side of an old water wheel and mill race (the mill pond had been situated on the north-east side of the mill and had been filled in much earlier). (2)