After a brief spell as a woollen mill, In 1890 the site was acquired to manufacture ultramarine blue powder the under the name of the Lancashire Ultramarine Company, it became so successful that the company was taken over in 1928 by Reckitt and Colman Ltd. Ultramarine blue is primarily a laundry agent but has many other uses such as in paint manufacture, wallpaper printing and textile printing,
The pigment was manufactured from a finely ground mixture of sulphur, china clay, soda ash, pitch and velspar. The grinding and mixing was achieved using a large dry ball mall an example of which can be seen on display today outside the Whitewater Hotel. The ground mixture was then loaded into crucibles and stacked in one of 13 kilns and then fired using coal to a temperature of 800 degrees centigrade over a period of three days, it was then allowed to cool over a period of two weeks, before subsequent processes of crushing, grinding, washing and colour blending