cotton mill

plural cotton mills

1. A building housing spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from raw cotton.

   Oldham is a typical Lancashire former mill town, with the town and its surrounding area once dominated by the cotton manufacturing industry. A number of the large cotton mills still stand in the area, although most are now either in use for other purposes, or stand empty and derelict.

   2019 October 23, Andy Coward, “New acclaim for Oldham Loop”, in Rail, page 58

   1 more example

   In the factories, were the problem of labor discipline was more urgent, it was often found more convenient to employ the tractable (and cheaper) women and children: out of all workers in the English cotton mills in 1834-47 about one-quarter were adult men, over half women and girls and the balance, boys below the age of eighteen.

   1962, Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution 1789-1848, page 50