The Grove Mill or Silk Mill. Hamnett tells us that this mill was built by Robert Shepley, of Shepley Street, and worked as a cotton mill by Benjamin Wilkinson, the person who taught Francis Sumner about cotton spinning.
Baines directory of 1825 records Benjamin Wilkinson as working the mill at that time, and Pigot 1824/5 lists him as a spinner without naming the mill, but Hamnett also says that it was in 1825 that it became a silk mill, the occupiers being Messrs. James Bosley, Smith, Bosley and Co., manufacturers of silk ribbons, etc.
Pigot’s directories of 1828/9 and 1835 record Bosley, Smith and Bosley (silk). Hamnett wrote that the mill was empty in 1840 and for some years after but in 1846 William Walker was there as a cotton spinner and the last tenant was Samuel Rowbottom, the mill being burned down during his tenancy in the early 1870s.