Forge Mill Needle Museum

Did you know that Redditch was once the centre of needlemaking, pretty much world wide? Did you know that there was a museum (Forge Mill Needle Museum) devoted to needle making and needle use?

No?

Neither did I. But I had a splendid time when I found it!

It’s not a big museum, but it includes information and displays about needle making in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and there are volunteer guides who provide tours. I was lucky to be there on a day there was a tour – until that morning I hadn’t even known the place existed. Anyone who knows anything about the development of manufacturing processes and technology won’t be especially surprised by the poor labour practices or unsafe working conditions of the period, but in an era when some industrial diseases are on the rise (silicosis,:plague of miners, pointers, and now the makers of granite and faux granite kitchen worktops), it is good to be reminded that firstly improvements have been made, and secondly that they have to be kept.

The displays on the upper floor included needles right from the very start – a dried yucca thorn with fibre attached, referred to as “Eve’s Needle” – to the very modern, needles used in the space programme, or the preposterously fine needles used for corneal surgery. There were displays about uses of needles, in embroidery, book binding, sailmaking,surgery. The dressmaking display even included an absolute dead ringer for my dearly-loved hand cranked Jones sewing machine. There were displays about fish-hooks and fly tyeing (after all, a fish hook is basically a needle with a barb on the end. There was even a video about the operation of the scouring mill, each process demonstrated by an elderly man who’d been apprenticed there as a youth.

There’s also a cafe, and a visitor centre for the adjoining Abbey ruins on the site, and what looks like an interesting two or three hour ramble along the watercourse that I didn’t have time for.

I had a delightful day. Highly recommended!