Economy
New Mills' economy was originally built on agriculture, then coal mining and then cotton spinning and bleaching. There was a little weaving but cotton bleaching and calico printing continued into the second half of the twentieth century. The mills have now all closed. Today Swizzels Matlow, who make children's sweets, is a large employer. The company transferred to New Mills from London during the Blitz and has remained ever since. Well-known brands include 'Parma Violets', 'Refreshers', 'Drumstick' lollies and – perhaps most famously – Love Hearts. Folk memory relates that children from local schools were often asked to test new sweet flavours that were created..
There is also a history of iron working, though this has ceased. Ironstone was also found in shales of the lower coal measures, and early water-powered charcoal furnaces were located at Jow-Hole furnace towards Furness Vale. In the nineteenth century, the Midland Iron Works occupied Barnes Mill in the Torrs; the Victoria Foundry was on Hyde Bank Road (among their products were gas lamp posts for the town council) as was the other small foundry in Wilde's scrapyard. On Albion Road in Newtown is John Hawthorn's foundry. There was also a brass foundry, on the site of the current Heritage Centre.
Tourism was boosted in 1984 when the Torrs was reopened as a riverside park, and further when the spectacular Millennium Walkway opened in 1999, joining the two ends of the gorge.
The Plain English Campaign has its headquarters in the town.
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Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Everyone is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure.”
—Anthony, Sir Eden (1897–1977)
“Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)