Todmorden Mills, Historical industrial site in Don Valley, Toronto, Canada.
Todmorden Mills is a former industrial settlement in the Don River valley in Toronto, now the Todmorden Mills Heritage Museum and Arts Centre. The museum keeps four buildings from the original settlement: the old paper mill of 1825, a brewery and two houses. The site also holds an art gallery, a theatre and the Todmorden Mills Wildflower Preserve, a forested area beside the museum.
Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe granted Don River land to Aaron and Isaiah Skinner in 1795 to build a lumber mill, and the mill ran under the Skinners until about 1855. A brewery followed in 1820 under Thomas Helliwell and John Eastwood, and the Taylor family then bought both and converted the mill to felt paper production. Milling ended in the 1920s, when the building became a riding stable.
The name Todmorden comes from the English town of that name, brought by John Eastwood, one of the brewery's first owners, whose family had emigrated from there. The site keeps four buildings from the settlement, among them a paper mill dated 1825, a brewery and two houses; the museum plans to restore Helliwell House to its 1890s appearance.
The Don River was straightened during construction of the Don Valley Parkway, cutting the site off from the water; the former riverbed is now a pond, and the old bridge only leads to a parking lot. The museum grounds hold four original buildings, including the 1825 paper mill and a brewery. A trail connects the site to the Todmorden Mills Wildflower Preserve, created in 1991.
In the early 1940s the site held a small German prisoner-of-war camp, housing men of the German merchant marine interned in Allied ports when the war began. They often worked as labourers at the nearby Don Valley Brick Works. In 1945 the prisoners were repatriated and the camp closed; soon afterwards its buildings burned down, likely set by vandals.
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