{"id":370545,"date":"2025-08-24T20:09:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T20:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/370545\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T20:09:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T20:09:14","slug":"yorkshire-mill-stops-working-in-drought-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/370545\/","title":{"rendered":"Yorkshire mill stops working in drought conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexandra Crombie<\/p>\n

BBC News, Yorkshire<\/p>\n

\"MartinMartin Stockdale<\/p>\n

Gayle Mill volunteer Martin Stockdale said the summer holidays were normally the attraction’s busiest time of year<\/p>\n

A Victorian mill has seen reduced visitor numbers due to drought preventing its historic machinery from functioning.<\/p>\n

The lack of water to power the attraction means visitors can no longer watch demonstrations of the workings of Gayle Mill, near Hawes in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.<\/p>\n

Volunteer Martin Stockdale said seeing the mill running was a key pull factor for the former cotton mill, which was built in 1784.<\/p>\n

“A lot of our visitors travel a long way because they want to see the machinery in action,” he said.<\/p>\n

A drought was officially declared in Yorkshire earlier this summer<\/a> for the first time since 2022, as the area experiences one of the driest years on record.<\/p>\n

The turbines at Gayle Mill are powered by the Gayle Beck, but have been stuck in place while water levels remain low.<\/p>\n

\"MartinMartin Stockdale<\/p>\n

While water normally “gushes” over the overflow, the mill said there was not currently enough flow to operate either of its turbines<\/p>\n

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Gayle Mill said there was “just about enough water to fill the mill race” last week, with all stopcocks switched off.<\/p>\n

Normally, water would be “gushing over the overflow even with the stopcocks open”, it added.<\/p>\n

With no further rain forecast, volunteers were not expecting to be able to operate either the generating turbine or the main turbine during the next week.<\/p>\n

“We’ll still be running tours as normal, but there will have to be explaining rather than demonstrating,” the post added.<\/p>\n

“We feel it’s certainly impacted our footfall,” Mr Stockdale said.<\/p>\n

“Now it’s still and silent, it’s an empty building, it’s a dead building to be honest.<\/p>\n

“Normally it would be a hive of activity, there would be machinery working, there would be belts moving and slapping.”<\/p>\n

The situation has been “made clear” to potential visitors, which Mr Stockdale said has “clearly” dissuaded them.<\/p>\n

Normally their busiest time, Mr Stockdale said the summer holidays had seen potential visitors finding other things to do that are not affected by the drought.<\/p>\n

“Apologies in advance, there really isn’t anything we can do about it,” the mill added in its Facebook post.<\/p>\n

“Even if there weren’t a hosepipe ban, we’d need a lot more than a hosepipe to make a difference!”<\/p>\n

The building was operational until 1988, ending its life as a sawmill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexandra Crombie BBC News, Yorkshire Martin Stockdale Gayle Mill volunteer Martin Stockdale said the summer holidays were normally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-370545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115085558754665466","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}