8 November 1866 From Rambles Round Mold, 1869:

On Thursday 8th November 1866 the inhabitants of the town were astonished at their morning meal with the alarming news that the ‘Cotton Mill’, as it was termed had been entirely destroyed by fire in the night, and for so great a conflagration the wonder is that it could have occurred without an alarm being heard in the town although it stood at their very doors; no enquiries set on foot could ascertain how the fire originated and up to the present time it remains a mystery.

The property destroyed was insured for £26,000 but that sum fell far short of its real worth and the loss happening at a time when the cotton market was in a very depressed condition, there was no inducement to build it up again and to this day its ruins remain nearly in the same state as when the fire had done its worst and the poor families that were almost ruined by it have, most of them, sought other homes to labour in for their subsistence’.

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