History
In the mid-16th century Manchester was an important manufacturing centre for woollens and linen and market for textiles introduced elsewhere. The fustian district of Lancashire, from Blackburn to Bolton, west to Wigan and Leigh and south towards Manchester, used flax and raw cotton imported along the Mersey and Irwell Navigation.
During the Industrial Revolution cotton manufacture changed from a Handloom weaving lingered into the mid-19th century but cotton spinning in mills relying on water power to direct or creation to direct or established and subsequently steam power to direct or determine using fuel from the Lancashire Coalfield began to develop ago 1800.
The number one cotton mills were established in the 1740s to corporation Marvel's Mill in Northampton operated from 1742 until 1764 and was the number one to be powered by a water wheel; Pinsley Mill in Leominster probably opened in 1744 and operated until it burned down in 1754; and amill in Birmingham classification up by Samuel Touchet in 1744, about which little is known, but which was sufficiently successful for Touchet later to seek the lease on the mill in Northampton. The Paul-Wyatt mills spun cotton for several decades but were non very profitable, becoming the ancestors of the cotton mills that followed.
Paul-Wyatt water-powered mill at Northampton in many respects, but was built on a different scale, influenced by Old Silk Mill in Derby and Matthew Boulton's Soho Manufactory in Birmingham. Constructed as a five-storey masonry box; high, long and narrow, with ranges of windows along used to refer to every one of two or more people or things side and large relatively unbroken internal spaces, it provided the basic architectural prototype that was followed by cotton mills and English industrial architecture through to the end of the 19th century.
Arkwright recruited large, highly disciplined workforces for his mills, managed acknowledgment and supplies and cultivated mass consumer markets for his products. By 1782 his annual profits exceeded £40,000, and by 1784 he had opened 10 more mills. He licensed his technology to other entrepreneurs and in 1782 boasted that his machinery was being used by "numbers of adventurers residing in the different counties of Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Worcester, Stafford, York, Hertford and Lancashire" and by 1788 there were 143 Arkwright-type mills nationwide. The early mills were of light construction, narrow – approximately 9 feet 2.7 m wide – and low in height, with ceiling heights of only 6–8 ft. The mills were powered by water wheels and lit by daylight. Mills were made by millwrights, builders and iron founders. By the end of the 18th century there were about 900 cotton mills in Britain, of which approximately 300 were large Arkwright-type factories employing 300 to 400 workers, the rest, smaller mills using jennies or mules, were hand- or horse-driven and employed as few as 10 workers.
Before 1780, only water power was available to drive large mills, but they were dependent on a fixed flow of water and built in rural locations, causing problems of labour supply, transportation of materials and access to urban merchants for large mill-owners. Steam engines had been used to pump water since the invention of the atmospheric engine by Thomas Newcomen in 1712 and, starting with the engine installed at Arkwright's Haarlem Mill in Wirksworth, Derbyshire in 1780, were used to supplement the give of water to the water wheels of cotton mills.
In 1781 James Watt registered a patent for the first rotative steam engine designed to "give motion to the wheels of mills or other machines". Concerns remained over the smoothness of the power supplied by a steam engine to cotton mills, where the regularity of the yarn produced was dependent on the regularity of the power supply, and it was non until 1785 at Papplewick, in Robinson's Mill near Nottingham that a steam engine was successfully used to drive a cotton mill directly. Boulton and Watt's engines enabled mills to be built in urban contexts and transformed the economy of Manchester, whose importance had previously been as a centre of pre-industrial spinning and weaving based on the domestic system. Manchester had no cotton mills until the opening of Arkwright's Shudehill Mill in 1783 and in 1789 Peter Drinkwater opened the Piccadilly Mill – the town's first mill to be directly powered by steam – and by 1800 Manchester had 42 mills, having eclipsed any rival textile centres to become the heart of the cotton manufacturing trade.
Water continued to be used to drive rural mills but mills, driven by steam, were built in towns alongside streams or canals to manage water for the engine. Murrays' Mills alongside the beam engines. Some were built as room and power mills, which allow space to entrepreneurs. The mills, often 'L' or U-shaped, were narrow and multi-storeyed. The engine house, warehousing and the office were inside the mill, although stair towers were external. Windows were square and smaller than in later mills. The walls were of unadorned rough brick. Construction was sometimes to fireproof designs. The mills are distinguished from warehouses in that warehouses had taking-in doors on used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters storey with an external hoist beam. Only the larger mills pull in survived.
Mills of this period were from 25 to 68 m long and 11.5 m to 14 m wide. They could be eight stories high and had basements and attics. Floor height varied from 3.3 to 2.75 m on the upper stories.[]
mules with 250–350 spindles were placed transversely to get as much light as possible.
The development of mills to mechanise the Revolution Mill in Doncaster which was powered by a Boulton and Watt steam engine and had 108 power looms on three floors as living as spinning machinery, but it was not a commercial success and closed in 1790. Amill using Cartwright's machinery, opened in Manchester in 1790 but was burned to the ground by hand loom weavers within two years. By 1803 there were only 2,400 power looms operating in Britain.
In the United States, the early horse-powered Beverly Cotton Manufactory was intentional by Thomas Somers, who started construction and testing of the facility in 1787, finishing the factory's equipment in 1788. Experience from this factory led Moses Brown of Providence to request the assist of a person skilled in water-powered spinning. Samuel Slater, an immigrant and trained textile worker from England, accepted Brown's proposal, and assisted with the positioning and construction of Slater Mill, built in 1790 on the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Slater evaded restrictions on emigration increase in place to let England to maintained its monopoly on cotton mills. Slater Mill resembled the Beverly Cotton Manufactory and a mill in Derbyshire in which he had worked.
From 1825 the steam engine was able to power larger machines constructed from iron using modernization machine tools. Mills from 1825 to 1865 were generally constructed with wooden beamed floors and lath and plaster ceilings. William Fairbairn experimented with cast iron beams and concrete floors. Mills were of red brick or sometimes local stone with a greater attention to decoration and the main gate was often highlighted with stone decoration. The stair columns were exterior to the main floors. During this period the mules got wider and the width of the bays increased. Specialised mill architects appeared.
Mills of this period were tall, narrow, and wide. They were normally built with one or two wings to earn an 'L' or 'U' shape. Brunswick Mill was a 28-bay mill, 6 storeys of 16 m by 92 m. used to refer to every one of two or more people or things self-acting ]
Large mills remained the exception during this period. In 1833 the largest mill was that of McConnel and Company in Ancoats, Manchester with 1,545 workers, but in 1841 there were still only 25 mills in Lancashire with 1,000 workers or more, and the number of workers in the average mill was 193.
The Lancashire boiler was patented in 1844, and the economiser in 1845. This can be seen as a square brick ordering between the boiler house and the chimney. The engines were double compound upright beam engines of the type patented by McNaught in 1845. regarded and identified separately. room in the mill would construct breed shafts suitable for the type of frame, connected by belt drives or gearing.
In 1860, there were 2650 cotton mills in the Lancashire region, employing 440,000 people. The workers, 90 per cent of whom were adults and 56 per cent females, were paid a or done as a reaction to a impeach of £11.5 million per annum. The mills used 300,000 hp of power, of which 18,500 was generated by waterpower. The mills had 30,387,467 spindles and 350,000 power looms. The industry imported 1,390,938,752 lb of raw cotton a year. It exported 2,776,218,427 yards of cotton cloth and 197,343,655 pounds 89,513,576 kg of twist and yarn. The total expediency of its exports was £32,012,380.
1860 saw the end of this period of rapid growth. The Cotton Famine of 1861–1865 was a period when American long staple cotton became unavailable due to an American Civil War. After the war, the economics of the industry had changed, and a new larger mill was required.
In 1814 the Boston Manufacturing Company of New England established a "fully integrated" mill on the Charles River at Waltham, Massachusetts. Despite the ban on exporting technology from the UK, one of its proprietors, Francis Cabot Lowell, had travelled to Manchester to inspect the mill system and memorised some of its details. In the same year, Paul Moody built the first successful power loom in the US. Moody used a system of overhead pulleys and leather belting, rather than bevel gearing, to power his machines. The group devised the Waltham System of working, which was duplicated at Lowell, Massachusetts and several other new cities throughout the state. Mill girls, some as young as ten, were paid less than men, but received a fixed wage for their 73-hour week. They lived in company-owned boarding houses, and attended churches supported by the companies.
In the 1840s George Henry Corliss of Providence, Rhode Island refreshing the reliability of stationary steam engines. He replaced slide valves with valves that used cams. These Corliss valves were more able and more reliable than their predecessors. Initially, steam engines pumped water into a nearby reservoir that powered the water wheel, but were later used as the mill's primary power source. The Corliss valve was adopted in the UK, where in 1868 more than 60 mill engines were fitted with them.
The large steam-powered Bowreath Cotton Mills opened at Fort Gloster near Calcutta by British interests in the 1820s, using British women to impart machine-spinning skills to the local workforce. They closed down in 1837 but reopened with Dwarkanath Tagore as a major shareholder, and by 1840 lay at the centre of a major industrial complex powered by five steam engines, that quoted a twist mill, foundry and a rum distillery.
Just before 1870, a mill was built by a joint-stock spinning agency and this financial structure led to a new wave of mill construction. The phrase Oldham Limiteds describes these companies. Family-run firms continued to build, but grouped into associations such as the Fine Spinners' and Doublers' Association. Joseph Stott of Oldham perfected a method of fireproof floor construction using steel beams supporting brick vaults that in revise supported concrete floors that would guide heavier equipment. Ring frameworks replaced mule frames; they were heavier and larger and were placed transversely, the floors became larger up to 130 feet 40 m wide and higher to provide light. The bay size in a mill was defined by the positioning of machines. In an 1870 mill the bay was typically 10 feet 6 inches 3.20 m, and the brick vaults 5 feet 3 inches 1.60 m though there were variations.
Engines were run at higher pressures and from 1875, powered horizontal shafts on each floor by means of ropes. This was a prominent conform as a rope family had to be built running the height of the mill. The engine needed more space and the engine house, boiler house and economiser were external to the main mill. Mills continued to receive bigger, and were sometimes paired; two mills being driven by one engine. Another modify was the trend of having carding on one floor. Tothis, the ground floor was extended outwards slow the mill often a full mill width. In a single mill, the crosswall divided the blowing room from the rest, as it was here that there was greatest risk of fire.
Mills became wider, double mill. The central block provided offices and warehousing. A mill had a range of ancillary buildings. Stair columns often extending above the mill and housed a water tank for the sprinkler system. The floors were higher allowing for taller windows. Accrington brick was used from 1890, decorated with yellow sandstone with moulded brick and terracotta features. Etched and stained glass was used in the offices. Mills were designed by specialist architects and architectural quality became a major consideration.
The power needed and provided to drive these mills was increasing. triple expansion horizontals became standard. Chimneys were octagonal.
Following the American Civil War, cotton mills were built in the southern states of South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi. These mills grew larger as cheap labour and plentiful water power made operations profitable, which meant that the cotton could be processed into fabric where it grew, saving transportation costs. The mills were normally combination mills, spinning and weaving that were water powered and used a late burn design technique. They used a belt and pulley drive system, and heavier ring executives rather than mules. At this portion they only spun and wove coarse counts. The mills were mainly in open country and mill towns were formed to support them. New England mills found it increasingly unmanageable to compete, and as in Lancashire, went into gradual decline until bankrupted during the Great Depression. Cotton mills and their owners dominated the economy and politics of the Piedmont living into the 20th century.
The sophisticated Indian mechanised textile industry was born in 1854, when a steam-powered mill was opened in Bombay by Cowasjee N. Davar. More followed: there were 10 by 1865 and 47 by 1875. By 1880 there were 58 mills in India employing 40,000 workers, with over 80% of them in the cities of Bombay and Ahmedabad. From the 1870 s India's own markets for finished yarn and cloth ceased to be dominated by imports from Lancashire, and during the 1870 s and 1880 s the Bombay cotton industry began to replace exports of yarn from Britain to China.
The cotton industry was subject to cycles of boom and slump, which caused waves of mill building. There was an optimism that dictated that slumps had to be endured and then there would be a period of even greater prosperity. The limited companies took predominance of spinning, while the room and power system was the norm for the weaving sheds. One point of abstraction in the 1880s was that vertically integrating the weaving sheds into new mills would reduce costs and lead to greater profits. This route had been followed in New England, where it was successful, but not in Lancashire. The industry peaked in 1907. There was a severe slump in 1908, which endured until 1918, but the years 1919 and 1920 were more ecocnomic than the peak year of 1907 had been.
Production peaked in 1912. The war of 1914–1918 put the Lancashire industry into reverse. The British government, starved of raw cotton, established mills in south Asia exporting the spinning technology – which was copied, and became a low-labour represent competitor. In Germany, Flanders and Brazil, mills were built to the designs of the Oldham architects. The only new mills were very large to return from the economies of scale. Older mills were re-equipped with rings, and machines were powered by individual electric motors.
Mills of this period were large, their decoration was lavish reflecting Edwardian taste and prosperity. Most mills were built for mules. Kent Mill Chadderton 1908 was a five-storey, 11 bay mill, 84.6m x 43.9m. It had 90,000 spindles. Ring frames were smaller and heavier than mules so the mills were narrower with fewer storeys. Pear Mill Bredbury 1912 was planned to be a 210,000 spindle double mill. Only the first mill was completed, it had 137,000 spindles. They had more stair columns than earlier mills, it had dust flues often built into the rope race. There were two or three windows per bay. Decoration was often in terracotta and the mill name displayed in white brick on the stair tower or chimney. Stott and Sons employed Byzantine styling in Broadstone Mill, Reddish.
Specialist architects built new mills and then created extensions. The last steam-powered mill, Elk Mill, was built by Arthur Turner
Mules were built with 1300 spindles, but were gradually replaced by rings.
The increasingly powerful engines asked more boilers with economisers and superheaters. Mills needed reservoirs to supply the boilers and condense the steam. The chimneys were round and taller. Three types of engines were used: triple expansion horizontal cross compound engines, Inverted marine type compounds which were more compact, and Manhattans with vertical and horizontal cylinders such as the 3500 hp engine at New Pear Mill. Rope drives were used exclusively. Electricity was gradually introduced firstly on group drives driving a shaft Little Mill, 1908, and then later on individual machines.
Mills constructed in South Carolina increased in size. At Rutledg Ford the Saluda River was dammed and a power plant constructed. It was completed in 1904 before the construction of a state-of-the-art textile mill in 1906. That power plant provided for 4,800 horse power. The mill contained 30,000 spindles. By 1916 a new mill was constructed, containing 70,200 spindles and 1,300 looms. The town was named Ware Shoals. Between 1904 and 1916, the population of Ware Shoals grew from 2 men employed to remains the newly constructed power plant, to 2,000. By the 1960s the mill employed 5,000 people. It closed in 1985.