The Forge Mill Needle Museum in Redditch, Worcestershire, is a historic museum depicting Redditch's Industrial Heritage. Opened in 1983 by Queen Elizabeth II, it records how in Victorian times, Redditch was the international centre of the needle and fishing tackle industry and once produced 90% of the world's needles. Models and recreated scenes provide a vivid illustration of how needles were once made, and the museum organises many exhibitions, demonstration, and workshops on how needles were used in the texile industry.
Site tours of National Needle Museum, Forge Mill and the neighbouring Bordesley Abbey can be arranged via the Redditch Local History Society.
Famous quotes containing the words forge, mill, needle and/or museum:
“We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world—introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably—that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it ... a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes—will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“I would build my house of crystal,
With a solitary friend,
Where the cold cracks like a pistol
And the needle stands on end.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)