Originally Higher Mill, Helmshore Mills Textile Museum is a water-powered fulling mill and a 19th century condenser cotton spinning mill, with working machinery. Built by the Turners in 1789, and rescued from dereliction by Derek Pilkington and Chris Aspin in the 1960s, it is now managed by Lancashire County Council Museums Service and details the changes made in textile technology over the last three hundred years through the use of interactive displays. Mill ponds, weirs, sluice gates and an aqueduct are also part of the museum as well as a 19th century working waterwheel, fulling stocks and other machinery associated with the finishing of woollen cloth, an original Arkwright water frame, and a Hargreaves Spinning Jenny. It also houses a museum and bookshop selling, among other things, books on local textile history.
In 1856 Joseph Porritt established Sunnybank Mill, an enormous mill which once housed the world's largest spinning mules. The other main Helmshore mill dynasty were the Whittakers, one of whose mills makes up part of the Textile Museum.
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