The last leg of my recent three weeks of travelling involved visiting my hometown of Bury, Lancashire, where I had a small bucket-list of places to visit.
The first place I visited was Tentering Tower in Ramsbottom/Stubbins. Below, my friend Simon can be seen standing in the archway of Tentering Tower:
Simon lives in Ramsbottom and helped me to find Tentering Tower.
Have just read that Tentering Tower was previously used for the process of tentering: stretching and drying cloth attached to wooden frames by sharply pointed hooks (think I've also read somewhere that this is where the idiom 'to be on tenterhooks' comes from).
Have also just read that Tentering Tower was built to serve the Porritts mill (built in the second half of the 19th century) at the bottom of the hill from where the Tower stands.
The cloth-drying process is said to have involved new cloth being carried up the hill from the mill (s) below for it to be dried through the wind passing through the tower. For this reason, I guess, Tentering Tower is also known as Drying Tower or Wet Tower.
Thankfully, Tentering Tower seems to be protected as a grade II listed building.
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