Shrigley (village)
Coordinates: 54°24′40″N 5°39′50″W / 54.411°N 5.664°W Shrigley is a small village in County Down, Northern Ireland about a mile north-west of Killyleagh. It is named after Pott Shrigley in Cheshire. In the 2001 Census it had a population of 456. It lies within the Down District Council area.
Shrigley is a small satellite industrial village which grew up around the large six-storey cotton mill built in 1824 by John Martin. In 1836, Shrigley mill had more power looms than any other factory in Ireland. In the following year, Samuel Lewis described it at length:
The Grecian gate pillars, and some of the subsidiary stone buildings, were probably survivors of the original mill, and stood until quite recently. Naturally, the mill became the principal source of employment in the locality. Most of the workers lived in Killyleagh, but a number of blackstone workers' cottages, by no means unattractive though of course lacking modern conveniences, were built in a cluster along the three streets at the mill gate.
During his lifetime, the people of the district resolved to commemorate the contribution John Martin had made to their prosperity; a competition was held in 1870 for designs for a clock tower and drinking fountain in his honour; the premium was awarded to Timothy Hevey, a young Belfast architect apparently then working with Pugin and Ashlin in Dublin. The work was executed in 1871, and a truly remarkable, and typically High Victorian, monument was erected at the heart of the village - at the cross-roads outside the mill gate. John Martin died in 1876 at the age of 79; Timothy Hevey died in 1878 at the age of 33. Posterity took less than a century to make nonsense of what both had wrought.
...
Wikipedia