Carding Engine

Carding engine, made by Asa Lees & Co. Ltd, Oldham, 1896 and used at Moorfield Mill in Shaw.

This machine has rollers covered in tiny wire pins. They removed the last pieces of dirt from the cotton and untangled the fibres. White cotton fluff covered the clothes of people who worked the carding engines.

In the carding room, machines cleaned and combed the cotton. Loose fibres escaped from the cotton, making it the dustiest and most unhealthy place to work in the mill. By the 1820s, doctors in Manchester started to realise that cotton mill workers often became ill with breathing problems and sore eyes.