Silk throwing was carried out at the steam-driven Woollam's Mill near Redbourn Common. The mill was taken over by John Mangrove & Son, but closed in 1938. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Brooke Bond took over the silk mill as a food factory. Whilst it was still open, a young man in the village fell into a vat of jam and died. After a successful lobbying campaign by schoolchildren in 2003, a memorial bench was unveiled to "Sticky Joe", as he had come to be known. After the closure of the factory in 1996 the old silk mill manager's house (the Grade II-listed Silk Mill House) was given to Redbourn Parish Council and it became the Redbourn Village Museum, opening in May 2000. The former silk mill site is now a housing estate.