HERE is Goose Eye when it was still a working hamlet centred on Turkey Mill with its rather elegant chimney.

Goose Eye had been involved in the paper-making industry since 1822 when John Town built Turkey Mill, although by the time it closed in 1932 it was run by Messrs Portals Ltd of Laverstoke in Hampshire. It was then employing a hundred workers, and producing paper for Indian rupees and Australian bank notes.

"When I was last in Goose Eye", commented a Yorkshire Observer reporter, "they had just dried off three-and-a-half tons of five pound note paper for the Australian Government. This had come off the machines at 50 feet a minute, the pulp being watermarked at lightning speed by a secret process."

By 1932, however, shortage of work was the reason given for the closure although some employees transferred to branches of Portals elsewhere.

Turkey Mill was later used for storing sugar and wool before being bought by Anderton Springs Ltd in 1948.