RESURRECTED VILLAGE

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 23, 28 January 1936, Page 17

RESURRECTED VILLAGE

PROSPERITY AFTER POVERTY

The village of Havanna, nestling in the Cheshire hills, has twice been dead, says an overseas paper. Now it lives again more vigorously than ever before. Today it produces velvet —-some of which was used for the last Royal wedding.

A silk mill was the industry which gave Havanna birth two hundred years ago. About fifty years ago the production of silk stopped. The mill was dismantled. For years Havanna was practically a deserted village. Then a tobacco manufacturer, looking for a site for a factory, chanced upon forgotten Havanna, and the old mills which had produced silk were reconstructed for the manufacture of cigars.

People flowed back to the village, and for five years Havanna prospered. Just before the war the cigar industry there died, and Havanna died too.

The second resurrection took place fourteen years ago. The proprietor of a fabric firm modernised the mill and the cottages and installed machinery for velvet cutting. .About £30,000 was spent in building and equipping the new industry.

People from neighbouring villages, some ■of ■ them descendants of the ' original dwellers in Havanna, came back to the village. The old cottages have been transformed into modern homes with electric light. Unemployment is something the people of Havanna read about in the newsi papers. 1 The velvet mill provides work for i the village and for people who come jin each day from outlying districts.