We hear today via The Telegraph & Argus of the sad fire (14 August) and demolition (17 August) of one of Haworth's last mills, Ebor Mill, which now housed not a worsted company as it did when it was first built in/around 1819 but a spring factory, Airedale Springs. In 1849, the mill was bought by the well-known Haworth family, the Merralls, who were prominent in the village and had many connections with the Brontës at differente points in their lives. Most famously, Branwell Brontë was friends with Hartley and/or Michael Merrall (sources differ; he probably knew both of them anyway). Branwell was dead by the time Michael Merrall took responsibility of Ebor in 1849 and the mill was in the Merrall family's hands until 1965 when it passed onto the current hands.
Ebor Mill is only the latest mill to have been devoured by the flames in recent years, which is a shame, apart from the loss to its current owner and workers, because it was part of the landscape the Brontës knew well and part of Haworth's history. The Haworth the Brontës lived in would have been dominated by the mills, both in the landscape and the lives of its inhabitants.
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