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Main Saw Mill.
Returning to the main building, and ascending to the upper floors by means of an external staircase, we find on the first floor the spacious joinery shop—no feet by 48 feet—furnished with a complete wood-working plant, and in which a numerous staff of skilled artisans is busily employed in the manufacture of interior house fittings and hard-wood joinery for church and chapel purposes. On this and the upper floor are workshops devoted to the manufacture of picture-frame mouldings in the white, now a leading speciality of the firm's business, which merits more than passing notice. This branch was introduced some fifteen years ago, and has been steadily and continuously developed, the firm directing their attention to supplying the trade with either large or small quantities of mouldings as required, orders for which are, as a rule, executed on the day of receipt, with the result that might be anticipated from such a policy of promptitude and punctuality, of gaining the substantial support of an extensive connection among the principal carvers, gilders and picture-frame makers in all parts of the kingdom. Special plant was erected for the manufacture of these goods, which are now turned out in thousands of feet weekly, in pine, oak and fancy woods, and in an almost infinite variety of designs. The stock warehouse for mouldings is a model of orderly arrangement, the various patterns and qualities being methodically stacked in numbered compartments, rendering it perfectly easy to at once obtain the size or design required, and thus greatly expediting the execution of orders. Buyers in this department may obtain from the firm, on application, their handsomely illustrated folio catalogue of patterns of mouldings, from which also may be derived some idea of the extent and variety of the goods supplied to the trade. A large proportion of the machinery in use at the mills was erected by the well-known local firm of Henry Savage and Co., of Parkinson Street, while a number of the latest machines put down are by Thomas Robinson and Son, Rochdale. The motive force for the machinery is supplied by a fine beam-engine of 100 h.p., or 300 indicated, erected by Thomas Home, of Westminster, and this is supplemented by five other auxiliary steam-engines in various departments of the works.
Engine and Double-bladed Horizontal Saw.
Adjoining the supplementary mills is another large corrugated iron building, used for the storage of joiners' redwood mouldings; and here also is kept the extensive stock of patterns in general use, while in the basement of the premises are the drying kilns for timber.