The Birth of Cottonopolis

Manchester in the 1740s.

Although Manchester  became synonymous with the cotton industry, in medieval times, it was known for woollens and linens. Tradition has it that Edward II invited skilled Flemish weavers to settle in north-west England during the 1330s. The term Manchester ‘cottons’ was in use as early as the sixteenth century, but these ‘cottons’ were made of wool.

By the early 1640s the area’s textile industries were firmly established. Cotton yarn (imported via Ireland) was woven with linen yarn made from flax to make sturdy ‘fustian’ cloth.
Families like the Chethams, Mosleys and Tippings became very wealthy buying and selling woollen cloths, linens, cotton yarn, and fustians. The wholesalers and master-manufacturers of Manchester became famous.  As these ‘Manchester men’ became richer they built fine homes and large warehouses for their goods.
In the early 1700s pretty, light all-cotton calicoes imported from India and the East threatened to wipe out Britain’s woollen industry. An act of 1721 banned the wearing of, weaving or selling of any printed all-cotton ‘stuffs’ or ‘calicoes’ whether imported or made in Britain. However, ‘fustians’ were exempted, to protect Manchester’s workers.  Woollen and worsted weavers petitioned parliament to ban fustians, too, but the ‘Manchester Act’ of 1736 upheld the exemption. All-cotton printed goods remained banned, however.

Handloom weaving.

During the 1740s, Manchester merchants bought the warps and raw cotton and gave the materials to weavers who worked in their own homes aided by their families. The raw cotton was carded (the fibres were straightened to form a long, fluffy ‘roving’), the rovings were spun into yarn, the yarn was wound onto bobbins, and finally woven into cloth on a loom.

John Kay’s flying shuttle (1733) made hand-weaving easier. Then several key inventions speeded up first the spinning, then weaving of cotton. Lewis Paul and John Wyatt had the idea of thinning out cotton fibre using rollers, and James Hargreaves’s machine, the ‘spinning jenny,’ patented in 1770, revolutionised spinning.

Hargreaves' spinning jenny at North Mill, Belper

Arkwright's water frame at North Mill, Belper.

Preston barber Richard Arkwright built on the work of Lewis Paul and Thomas Highs and created a spinning machine called a ‘water-frame’. Richard Arkwright petitioned parliament to get the ban on all-cotton cloths repealed in 1774. This gave a huge boost to the cotton industry. Then Samuel Crompton’s spinning ‘mule’ (1779) made strong yarn fine enough for weaving all-cotton cloth (calico) and delicate muslin.

Mule spinning room

Mr Gartside’s weaving establishment, opened in 1765, may have been one of the earliest factories in Manchester. (This factory appears to have used an early type of automated ribbon loom, a ‘swivel loom’. Each loom was tended by one weaver). By the 1780s there were two mills in Manchester; Richard Arkwright and partners had one near Angel Meadow, and Mr Thackeray had one at Granby Row.

The big breakthrough for mechanized weaving came when Edmund Cartwright patented a powered loom in 1785. In a future blog post, I’ll look at how steam power affected Manchester during the industrial revolution.

Lancashire's Heritage Crisis

Weaving shed, Queen St Mill.

On Saturday we visited Queen Street Mill at Harle Syke, Briarcliffe, near Burnley. This amazing site is Lancashire's last surviving steam-powered weaving mill.

The mill, a Grade I listed building, is home to a nationally important collection of textile machinery, along with its sister site, Helmshore Mills at Rossendale (another fantastic museum, which I visited while researching my book Narrow Windows, Narrow Lives).

The mill chimney.

Queen Street Mill originally housed 1,000 powerlooms; it was built in 1894 for the Queen St Mill Manufacturing Company.

You can see 'Peace', the 500hp engine which powers the weaving shed, and the boiler house is still home to the original Lancashire boiler. It was stiflingly hot in the boiler house (2 newer Lancashire boilers, made at Hyde in 1901, heat the water for the engine). Water is supplied from the mill pond.
When the engine is 'in steam', you can see several looms at work; the weaving shed houses about 300 looms. The noise was absolutely deafening, so it must have been unbelievably loud when all the looms were in use. The warehouse has several examples of different looms, including a Jacquard loom capable of weaving a tapestry. I was also very interested to see a demonstration of terry-towelling weaving, which I haven't seen before. You can buy towels, aprons and fabric woven at the mill in the gift shop.

Lancashire boilers need a lot of coal for fuel.

Peace, the 500hp mill engine.

I am sorry to say that Queen St and Helmshore both face imminent closure, along with three other Lancashire heritage sites  - victims of council cuts necessitated by Tory austerity policies which have disproportionately targeted the north and inner-city regions. The other Lancashire museums now at risk are the Judges' Lodgings, Lancaster; the Maritime Museum, Fleetwood; and the Museum of Lancashire, Preston. 
The closure of these five museums - now in a last-ditch fight to save their collections - will save the council just £64.2million, according to the Museums Association.
It seems a relatively small price to pay to keep these irreplaceable heritage sites open to the public, so if you happen to be a multi-millionaire or billionaire philanthropist with some spare cash, please contact the museums if you would like to help.
Queen St Mill and many other sites nationwide are open free of charge next weekend as part of the Heritage Open Days event, so do take this opportunity to visit.

Terry-towelling loom at Queen St mill.

Jacquard loom at Queen St Mill.

I am desperately saddened by the prospect of these museums' closure, and I sincerely hope that a way can be found to preserve them for future generations, so that tomorrow's children can see how their Lancashire ancestors lived and worked.

All photos © Sue Wilkes.

A Strut(t) Around Belper II

The Gangway.

After you have explored the Strutts' North Mill at Belper, you can walk under the Gangway, a stone arch which once connected the North Mill and West Mill (no longer extant). The Regency era was noted for industrial unrest during times of hardship (most famously the Luddite attacks of 1812).  If you look at the arch (built 1795) you will notice some musket holes placed there in 1810 so that the millowner and his men could fire at anyone who attacked the mill.

Crown Terrace, Belper.

When the Strutts built their mills in Derbyshire, they chose sites with fast-flowing rivers to power the machinery. However, often these rural sites did not have enough local people who could work in the mills. So millowners like the Strutts and Richard Arkwright built new houses with gardens to attract people to come and work for them, and you can see millworkers' housing on Green Lane, The Clusters, Joseph Street etc. Many of the houses have their own pigsty and privy - a vast improvement on the town housing in places like Angel Meadow in Manchester.

Belper boy Samuel Slater was one of the child workers whose stories I told in The Children History Forgot. Samuel began his career as an apprentice to Jedidiah Strutt; Slater became one of the founding fathers of the American cotton industry. 

More millworkers' housing, Belper.

The mill workers in Belper were mostly women and children (their menfolk found employment in local workshops). In 1816 the Strutts employed nearly 1500 people, including over 700 children (just 100 were younger than ten). On average the children earned 2s 6d per week.None of the children who worked at the Strutt mills were parish apprentices like those at Quarry Bank Mill; they were 'free labour' and lived with their parents.

The factory hours were from 6am until 6pm, including dinner and tea-times. Most of the children could read; the Strutts funded a Sunday school and day schools in the town, and built a Unitarian chapel (1788). 

Nail Shop, Joseph St.

The Strutts told a parliamentary select committee (1816) that their mills had benefits for local families as well as providing them with work: ‘before the establishment of these works, the inhabitants were notorious for vice and immorality, and many of the children were maintained by begging; now their industry, decorous behaviour, attendance on public worship, and general good conduct, compared with the neighbouring villages, where no manufactures are established, is very conspicuous.’ 

East Mill, Belper.

Unitarian Chapel, Belper.

Belper was a working textile town from the late 18th century until the 1980s. The town is still dominated by the huge East Mill (1912), built for the English Sewing Cotton Co., which took over the Strutts' mills fifteen years earlier. But the East Mill now stands empty and silent.
However, if you visit the Memories of the Mills website you'll discover millworkers' memories and oral histories of life in the Derwent Valley factories during the twentieth century.

Save Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry!

I was horrified to see that the Museum of Science and Industry at Manchester is in danger of closing.  It is reported that the Science Museum Group, of which MOSI is now a member, has a massive operating deficit. It seems that MOSI, the National Railway Museum in York and Bradford's National Media Museum may face the axe in order to keep the Science Museum in London open.

Lancashire was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and Manchester – ‘Cottonopolis’ – was its beating heart.  The first inter-city railway was built here, and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway station is an important part of the MOSI site. Manchester’s contribution to the great scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century such as computing is well known: MOSI is home to 'Baby', the first stored-programme computer built at Manchester University in 1948.

MOSI is a living showcase of our industrial past, in particular the industrial revolution, with nationally important collections relating to the cotton industry and the city’s social history.   If the collection is closed or dispersed, a wonderful treasure for past and future generations will be lost and is unlikely to be replaced. 

It seems unlikely that the City Council would take over MOSI, as it too faces swingeing cuts from Whitehall and has to prioritise funding for essential services.  But this could be a short-sighted view: I understand from the MEN report that over 830,000 people visited MOSI last year.  Visitors generate income for local businesses, which in turn pay their local rates, and hence more funding for Manchester.  A multiplicity of high quality tourist attractions are vital to help promote the city and attract visitors.

MOSI is not just a collection of machinery – the museum is a window into the past so that we can see how our Lancashire ancestors (including my own) lived and worked in Manchester.  It’s a great resource for local schools, colleges and students as well as tourists. Its closure would be a national disgrace, as well as a local tragedy.  

Although free admission boosts visitor numbers, I would rather pay a modest entrance fee, if this is the only way to keep the museum open.  However, it seems that the Science Museum Group does not have the power to impose entrance fees. 

Please take a moment to sign the MEN petition to save MOSI; there’s also one on Change.org. 

Update 6 May: The Financial Times is running the story this morning, and the MEN petition has already received over 20,000 signatures. 

Images:

Weaving shed, Haworth’s Mills, Ordsall, Lancashire. Illustration by H E Tidmarsh, Manchester Old and New Vol. II, (Cassell & Co., c. 1894).

Drawing cotton at Richard Howarth & Co., Tatton Mills, Ordsall, early C. 20th postcard.

Visit to BBC Radio Blackburn

Just a quick update to say I've been invited to speak on the Ted Robbins show on BBC Radio Blackburn next Wednesday - 24 October. I'll be talking about my new book, Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors, and if time permits, exploring some of my own ancestors' stories, and giving listeners tips on how to explore their own family tree.

It will be very interesting to visit Blackburn, which was famous for its 'greys' (fustians), and was also the original home of the famous Peel family of cotton manufacturers, who began the art of calico printing by rollers in Lancashire. I am really looking forward to exploring the town.



Image:
Fish Lane, Blackburn, traditional birthplace of Sir Robert Peel, first baronet (1750–1830).  Engraving by Evans from a drawing by Cardwell.  Pictorial History of the County of Lancashire, 1844.

Not long now!

It's less than a month to publication day for The Children History Forgot! Over the next few weeks I'll be discussing the many different jobs done by children in Georgian and Victorian times. Children worked in a huge variety of industries, not just in cotton factories or down coal mines.

Images: Lancashire child miners - 1842 Report on Mines.

A little girl working in a cotton factory. Engraving by G.P. Jacomb Hood. (1857-1929.) Grindon’s Lancashire.

The Green Valley with a Dark Heart

We recently visited the Greenfield Valley Heritage Park at Holywell (Treffynnon), north Wales. You can enjoy a lovely tranquil walk along the valley. There’s a museum of rural life and farm, replete with friendly chickens and pigs, and you can picnic by the ruins of Basingwerk Abbey. As you explore the valley, there are many more reminders of Greenfield’s past. The stream which supplied St Winefride's Well (from which Holywell derives its name) provided the power for a thriving industrial community, with lead, brass and copper works, paper mills, cotton mills, and more. Child workers (some were parish apprentices) toiled in the cotton mills, and you’ll be able to find out more about the children’s stories in The Children History Forgot.

Images: Basingwerk Abbey. The remains of the Lower Cotton Mill at Greenfield Valley where children once worked. It was later converted into a flour mill. © Sue Wilkes

More Narrowboat Fun

It was lovely to see Macclesfield's silk museums featured on BBC1's The Boat That Guy Built last night. I was very interested to watch this episode as I explored the story of the silk industry and the growth of Cheshire's canal network in Regency Cheshire.

While Guy has brought Britain's industrial past to life each week while restoring his narrowboat, one aspect of life I don't think he's mentioned is that child workers were used in many of the trades and industries he's explored. Children were used as cheap labour in the silk and cotton industries, and metal industries, and you'll be able to read more about their stories in The Children History Forgot when it's launched later this year.
Image: Macclesfield, early 1900s. Etching by Roger Oldham (1871-1916) for Picturesque Cheshire (Sherratt & Hughes, 1903.)

The Cheshire Luddites

The spring of 1812 was a time of huge industrial unrest in north west England. Families were starving; food prices had risen to unprecedented levels, and wages had fallen. Wheat had reached the famine price of 152s 3d per quarter, and potatoes (the staple food of the working classes) were three times their usual price. Starving handloom weavers blamed the introduction of steam-powered looms for depressing the cost of their labour.
The workers decided on direct action. In February 1812, arsonists attacked Peter Marsland’s steam loom factory at Stockport, and unsuccessfully torched William Radcliffe’s steam loom factory in March. Manufacturers weren’t even safe in their own homes. In early April, Peter Marsland’s house windows were broken, and the homes of mill owners William Radcliffe and Mr Hindley were also attacked. Macclesfield, too, saw riots by angry cotton workers in the same month. The Cheshire Yeomanry had a full-time job keeping public order. You can find out more about the riots and the rioters’ fate in Regency Cheshire.

Image: Harrison’s Improved Powerloom, exhibited by Harrison’s of Blackburn at the Great Exhibition. Illustrated London News, 23 August 1851.

Cottonopolis

I was annoyed to find I’d missed Michael Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys again last night, following in the footsteps of Salford’s George Bradshaw. The programme is on ridiculously early in the evening, just when I am usually cooking tea for the family, and I have only caught the last few minutes of some episodes. There was a programme about the importance of the cotton industry and Cottonopolis (Manchester) which I would like to see again – it is not the same watching it on i-player. Mr Portillo is going to visit the Scottish Borders tonight (one of my favourite places) in tonight’s programme so I must remember to set up the video recorder.
My feature for Discover My Past England this month is about tracing your cotton ancestors. Although the cotton industry is indelibly associated with Manchester and Lancashire, there were cotton mills in Cheshire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and other counties. Your local archives are good places to find company wage books or pension records; check their online catalogues first before making a special journey.

Image: Lancashire Cotton Weaving shed, early 20th C. postcard. Author’s collection.