Wigan manufacturing history

Wigan wears the triple manufacturing crown: coal, cotton and iron.

In the South Lancashire Coalfield, which covered 217 square miles, Wigan stood out for its 'cannel' coal which burned 'as bright as a candle' and so was perfect for gas production. The town also had access to seams of Wigan, Arley and Ince coal suitable for domestic use and Pemberton and Haigh which were used in steam engines. These coals had a big market with supplies going by canal to Liverpool, Manchester and the Cheshire salt towns as well as Preston, Blackburn and other cotton towns. In the early days pits were sunk all around the countryside surrounding Wigan. They were based on the landowner and pit villages would spring up to accommodate the miners: men, women and children. The landscape was punctuated with winding gear and in the town soot was everywhere.

In 1858 the coal field had 380 collieries and this increased to 588 by 1874. In his book, The Making of Wigan, Mike Fletcher adds that Wigan's fifty pits were thriving, producing four million tons of coal a year. As demand grew, pits were dug deeper and bigger and the individual colliery enterprises combined. As was the case in many places, alongside coal, iron ore was extracted and smelted. The two largest Wigan coal businesses were Wigan Iron & Coal formed in 1865 including the Kirkless Hall Iron works, and Pearson & Knowles which joined with the Warrington Dallam Forge and Warrington Wire. These were big businesses.

The massive growth in coal production was enabled by the canals. Improvements in communication had begun with the turnpikes and then work on the Douglas navigation linking to the river Ribble. Wigan was served first by the Leeds Liverpool canal which ran from Liverpool and terminated in Wigan at No 1 Wigan Pier allowing 'cotton and coal to flow smoothly between the two.' I am grateful again to Mike Fletcher for unravelling both canal building and the later Lancashire railway mania. In terms of canals, a project to link Lancaster to the south Lancashire coalfields benefitted Wigan and linked Lancaster to Kirkless. This canal linked to the Leeds Liverpool by means of the Wigan flight of 21 locks. The last piece of the jigsaw was to link the bottom of the Wigan flight to the older Bridgewater canal. Now Wigan could ship its coal to parts of Lancashire without their own coal reserves such as Liverpool and Preston and the Wigan cotton mills could receive a ready supply of their raw material.

Later, the railways began to arrive. The first was a branch line linking to the Liverpool & Manchester railway at Newton le Willows. The second linked to Preston with a number of stations including at Boar's Head at Standish. Through a sequence of mergers these two lines became part of the London & North Western Railway firmly linking Wigan north and south. The railway mania of the 1840s saw a line linking Wigan to the seaside town of Southport providing much needed recreation for Wigan's hard-working population. The 1860s saw two further lines of greater industrial significance linking Wigan to Blackburn and St Helens. These and further lines resulted in Wigan being the centre of a complex web of railways lines rationalised a century later by the closures under Dr Beeching. Wigan still has two railway stations almost side by side.

Cotton was Wigan's second industry where it followed the lead of so much of Lancashire. Fast running water was limited and so Wigan's expansion was built round steam powered by locally dug coal. By 1834, Wigan had 115 steam engines working in its mills. I explore the development of steam power in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World.

The expansion of the town into industry may have been positive for the land and mill owners, but for the population as a whole it meant child labour both in the pits and the mills; working hours were long and conditions dreadful. Wigan men weren't ones to lay down and they frequently fought for better pay and conditions. Groups of Luddites opposed the mechanisation of cotton production. The cotton famine following the American civil war led to hunger for many leading to starvation for some. Towards the end of the nineteenth century matters did improve.

Thomas Beecham began his chemists business in Wigan in 1858 before moving to St Helens.

I first discovered the Kirkless iron works on my way up the Wigan flight and all that was visible were undulations of land where buildings, furnaces and crucibles used to be; the Wigan Archaeological Society is doing great work unearthing its history. Founded in 1858, Kirkless merged with Haigh collieries ten years later and produced pig iron for the next fifty years. Steel making came in 1890. During the First World War the company manufactured railway wagons amongst its general steel production. With the slump in the twenties much production was moved to Irlam with its access to the Manchester Ship Canal. All production ceased in 1965.

In the Second World War the Wigan Royal Ordnance factory produced five and half million 25lb shells. After the war HJ Heinz set up production on the site of a former mill. It has become a major employer in the town. Wigan is also home to AB World Foods part of Associated British Foods of which I write in Vehicles to Vaccines.

Further reading

Mike Fletcher, The Making of Wigan