IN a couple of seconds the remaining section of what was once the biggest mill in Europe disappears into a cloud of dust.

The seven floor Irwell Bank Mill at Stoneclough became a huge pile of rubble after demolition men blew it up with 30lbs of gelignite on April 4, 1977.

Crowds of local residents turned out to watch the spectacle and waited expectantly as demolition experts from a London firm drilled into brickwork around the base of the building and laid the charges.

With a loud bang the mill front wall sank gracefully to the ground and a 100ft high dust cloud covered the site.

Work on demolishing the mill had been going on since the previous August and the explosion was the last of a series which brought the vast building down.

The mill was originally built on the site in 1869 and in 1897 it became the Irwell Bank Spinning Co. In 1904, the mill was extensively rebuilt and refitted but it was to close in 1959. It’s estimated that over a 50 mile stretch of the River Irwell and its main tributary, the Roach, around 100 cotton mills, in addition to a large number of other industrial undertakings—slipper factories, bleach works, coal mines, tanneries, paper mills and gas works, were built. It could be argued that no other inland river has made a greater contribution to the industrial greatness of this country.

After its glory years, the former spinning mill was the building in which Andrew Flatley set up the Flatley Drying Company. Hugely popular in the 1960s, the Flatley Dryer was a metal box on wheels standing about 3ft 6” high. Inside were wooden rails and you hung your wet washing on it to dry and put the lid on, having plugged it into the electricity to warm it up.

The venture collapsed as more and more households acquired central heating and could dry and air clothes over radiators. Flatley got in trouble too when he copied the Hoover single tub washing machine and started to market it. Flatley himself was born in 1916 and died in 2005 aged 89. He was a serial entrepreneur who made lots of different items, including a radio that looked like a toy train, grandfather clocks and all kinds of furniture.