Armley Mills Industrial Museum

The Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills is a museum of industrial heritage located in Armley, near Leeds, in West Yorkshire, Northern England. The museum includes collections of textile machinery, railway equipment and heavy engineering amongst others.

The Grade II* listed building housing the museum was once the world's largest woollen mill. The current structures were built in 1805 by Benjamin Gott and closed as a commercial mill in 1969. They were taken over by Leeds City Council and reopened as a museum of industrial heritage in 1982. It is located between the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the River Aire and accessed from Canal Road or Milford Place.

Armley Mills lie on the south bank and an island in the River Aire. The mill is 150 feet (46 m) above sea level, at a point.

Where the river is falling. A weir has been built upstream, and this maintains a good head of water to power water wheels. Water from above the weir enters the millpond, it passes under the main mill and over the water wheels falling into the goit On the south bank of the river, on the 150 ft contour, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was cut in 1777. This gave the mill a wharf which could be used for incoming raw materials, and outgoing goods and later for coal for the boilers.

Nearby is Botany Bay Yard which was so named because it was the first place in England where wool from Botany Bay in Australia was landed. There was a wharf at this location that served the Benjamin Gott Mill. There still exists the remains of the wharf unloading shed and what appears to be a sunken barge alongside the canal at this location.

The earliest record of Armley Mills dates from the middle of the sixteenth century when local clothier Richard Booth leased 'Armley Millnes' from Henry Saville. A document of 1707 describes them as fulling mills. One contained two wheels and four fulling stocks, while another was used to grind corn mill and two fulling stocks'. The mills expanded and by 1788 were equipped with five waterwheels driving eighteen fulling stocks. Fulling was a necessary but dirty process where woven wool is felted. The bundles of cloth are hit repeatedly by large hammers, the fulling stocks, while soaked in water, urine and a clay known as Fuller's earth. The urine which is a source of ammonia was collected from neighbouring houses, who specially saved it for the purpose.

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