Barons of Trovisqueira's woolen mill, at Riba d'Ave: first layer on a oblivion stratigraphy

Riba d'Ave is a small town in Portuguese NW, located at the center of the industrial textile explosion that shaped and redefined the Ave Valley. It is currently crossing a painful process of deindustrialization. The major factory in the region, Sampaio, Ferreira e Cia Lda, closed in 2005, leaving the landscape and the community in a state of disintegration. The memory and structures of this company, founded in 1896, remain very present in the landscape and in the collective imagination. However, a first factory installed there in 1881 by the Baron of Trovisqueira and his wife, which was in fact the basis of the whole process, seems nowadays, a little overlooked and poorly studied, both from the historiographic and industrial heritage point of view. This paper intends to recover part of the memory of this first inaugural factory, and articulate it with what still exists today in the landscape.