A Taste of History

Hi, Would you like to try some hundred year old ice-cream? If your first thought was, surely it would have melted by now…you are right.  The ice cream in question is based on a recipe dating to the late 1800s or early 1900s. Elizabeth Mary Greg, better known as Bessie was an interesting woman.  The great granddaughter…

Voices of the Mill Workers

Hi, This week Helen our Collections and Archive Intern discovered some letters written by workers at Quarry Bank.  I could not wait to find out more, so over to Helen. Working in the archives, it can sometimes be easy to overlook the day to day experiences of the workers at the mill amongst the many…

Printing block collection and a 70 piece puzzle

Hi, Museums are like icebergs, what you see is only a fraction of what is really there.  Quarry Bank is no exception and in the unassuming rooms at the back of the Mill, which house the collection and archive, are many intriguing items. The Drawn Out of Love exhibition has taught me a lot about…

Meet the Interns

I’m handing over to Sophie for this post, our new Visitor Experience Intern. Hello! My name is Sophie and I’ll be bringing you behind the scenes sneak-peeks, tales of the staff and volunteers hard work in the Mill and across the estate, and lots more stories from the goldmine that is Quarry Bank’s archive. I…

Drawn Out Of Love – our new exhibition

Last week Laura left Quarry Bank and we wish her great success in her new ventures. My name is Kate and I’m the Visitor Experience Officer here, I’ll be carrying on Laura’s work and sending out the blog with the help of Sophie Kembrey our Visitor Experience Intern. Our brand new exhibition ‘Drawn Out Of…

Piecing together Robert and Mary’s Romance

Well folks, this is my last ever blog post as I leave Quarry Bank for pastures new, and I have decided to end my tenure as blog creator & editor by returning once more to one of my favourite stories from the archive; the romance of Robert Hyde Greg and Mary Phillips, and I warn…

“Sorrow & succeeded dependence…bind us closely together” – life after Hannah Greg

I’ve been burying myself in the archive in the run up to Christmas and these first few days of 2015, working my way through a wonderful set of letters that have entered the archive on an indefinite loan. The loan includes letters, photos, and post cards belonging to the Greg family, and were in the…

Christmas with the Apprentices

Last year the cataloguing team found a series of letters relating to Robert Hyde Greg and his family at Christmas. It made me think about the very different Christmas that was happening at the Apprentice House. Christmas was without a doubt the best day of the year for the apprentices, who worked six days a…

Remembering the fallen soldiers of Styal – Heroes of Adventure

Today, 96 years since Armistice was declared, and the First World War ended, people around the world remember those who courageously gave their lives. At 11 o’clock this morning, the staff and volunteers of Quarry Bank gathered in the Heroes of Adventure exhibition to observe the two minutes silence. Styal village lost 24 men in…

‘Keep up with jargon in four languages’ – a Greg summer holiday

Our cataloguing project is still under way and we are still discovering new information about the Greg family and the workers. One of our archive volunteers, Ian, has been working on the letters relating to a family holiday taken by Robert Hyde Greg and his family in the 1850s… In the summer of 1857, Robert…

“You have a very good raw material to work upon” – brotherly advice to Robert Hyde Greg

Last year I shared a letter with you from Robert Hyde Greg, expressing his joy to his new fiancée, Mary Philips, that she had accepted his offer of marriage. The archive volunteers later found a letter from his father Samuel Greg, describing his delight for his son, and advising the couple not to worry about…

Heroes of Adventure – what our visitors think

Our exhibition Heroes of Adventure has been on display for a few months now, if you still haven’t seen it, here are some kind comments from our visitors about the exhibition, who will hopefully persuade you to come and visit… “It shows how brave and selfless people were. It proves that we must learn from…