Kidderminster manufacturing history

Kidderminster is of course known for carpets, along with Wilton and Axminister and a number of Yorkshire wool towns including Halifax. With the suffix 'minster', it was quite possibly established as a minster church as early as the arrival of St Augustine in 597 AD. Oddly, or perhaps not, Axminster is a similar name.

The town was well placed being near to Wales and the hard wearing wool of hill sheep and the growing population of the Black Country. Wool weavers turned their attention to floor covering. Wilton was a clear rival and Kidderminster man, John Broom determined not to let them get ahead, visited Belgium to learn the latest techniques. These he brought back together with a Belgian weaver and the town went from strength to strength. By 1800 there were 1,000 looms in the town with most weavers working from their own dwelling. The arrival of the canals in the 1770s gave the town vital access both to more distant markets and to fuel.

The progression of carpet making was a mix of the technical and economic. The raw material was wool but a carpet that made best use of the least material has an economic attraction. Then came the speed of weaving and effective mechanisation even in the small dwellings where most carpets were still made. Lastly came design and colour. Here we have the science of dyeing and the Jacquard technique which enabled the weaving of complex patterns by machine.

In time weavers were collected together in manufactories with machines powered by steam engines. Kidderminster was making half of the carpets made in England. The town’s businesses led the field. Brintons, which remains a major employer in the town, began in the late eighteenth century and were best known for the invention of the Brinton Jacquard gripper Axminster loom. There were then the companies that would join with Halifax carpet makers to form Carpets International which fell into receivership in 2003. A third company, Brockways, only set up in the 1930s, is still trading. Kidderminster has now lost most of its carpet industry to foreign competition.

In time cheaper materials were sought to make the less visible parts of the carpet. Jute was used to back certain carpets. I write in Vehicles to Vaccines how manmade fibres were brought into carpet making.

Now it is jute that is made into a variety of products by Jute Products Ltd some of which are still used in carpet making. Jute, as a natural sustainable material is seen to have great potential in a post plastics world.

In the Second World War, the Rover company managed a shadow factory in Drakelow Tunnels manufacturing aircraft parts. The tunnels later became a cold war bunker. In my auditing days, I recall visiting a hot water bottle manufacturing business in the town.

Further reading:

Ken Tomkinson and George Hall, Kidderminster since 1800 (Kidderminster: Kenneth Tomlinson, 1975)

 

Halifax Manufacturing History

 Halifax was known as a town of an hundred trades, yet its origins were similar to many other Yorkshire wool towns; it was the place that weavers from the large parish of Halifax and beyond would bring their work for sale. The urban area of Halifax was but a small part of a large rural parish in the West Riding. It was in hilly country which offered the advantage of fast running water to power machines but also the disadvantage of making the town less accessible than others by canal and railway.

In 1779 the wool traders built the beautiful Piece Hall which had the capacity to house a significant trade in woollen goods. With accessible water power the new inventions in spinning and weaving could readily be applied in a small but growing number of factories in the town. Coal was expensive to transport and so steam was late in coming to Halifax by which time Bradford had secured a lead in worsted production. Nonetheless the worsted trade prospered in the town as growing urban areas in Britain and abroad sought woollen goods. The Akroyd family stood out in the first part of the nineteenth century. John Holdsworth were noted as providing khaki and navy cloth for the armed forces.

A distinctive trade in the town was the manufacture of carpets. The Crossley family took a lease on Dean Clough Mill in 1801. The business was successful, with many thousands of employees over the years, and continued through to 1987 having joined with two Kidderminster companies to form Carpets International. Production of fine Brussels Wilton carpets continued into the 21st century.

Wool factories needed engineers and Hailfax produced a rather special breed of engineer, the maker of machine tools. I write of machine tools elsewhere in relation to London, Manchester and Coventry. Halifax and Keighley became another centre of the industry. William Asquith was founded in 1865 and became famous for their revolutionary radial drilling machine which replaced the practice of punching in constructional engineering. James Butler, a former apprentice as Crossleys, developed specialist planing machines. Butlers were instrumental in the formation of the British Tool Manufacturers Association in 1917. Cornelius Redman formed another machine tool firm which was bought by the London tool maker Charles Churchill in 1935 to form Churchill Redman.

The fine skills required for machine tool making were equally applicable to jewellery and the firm of Charles Horner became well known. Working with metal extended to boiler making and and heating apparatus. James Royston produced tons of charcoal wire for the first transatlantic cable in 1856.

John Mackintosh left Bowman's cotton mill in 1890 to open a pastrycook business with his popular product, a blend of butterscotch and American caramel. The business grew and soon employed hundreds of women wrapping toffee. Halifax became known as 'toffee town'. In the mid 1920s Mackintosh acquired A.J. Caley chocolate manufacturing business in Norwich, a marriage which produced 'Quality Street'. A fire destroyed the Norwich premises and the whole business moved to Halifax. Mackinstosh joined with Rowntree of York in 1969.

Halifax is perhaps best known now for mortgages. The building society movement began in the nineteenth century and in Halifax two main societies emerged, the Halifax Permanent and the Halifax Equitable which merged in the 1920s. The societies and indeed the local banks which were founded to finance local business attracted to their boards the great and the good of the town and wider parish.

Halifax contributed to the national effort in both world wars. Machine tool companies made all manner of war materiel and textile manufacturers were busy clothing the forces. In the interwar years, Percy Shaw invented 'cats eyes' and founded Reflecting Roadstuds Ltd to manufacture them, enjoying particularly strong demand in the blackout of the war years. In the Second World War Harold Mackinstosh became much involved in National Savings raising money to pay the cost of war. My father was invited by Sir Harold to speak in Halifax in Salute the Soldier Week in June 1944. Here is a link to what he said. The image was taken when he was being introduced.

In the years following the war, textiles enjoyed strong demand for fabric for buses and railway carriage seats. This continues within the Camira Group. Marshalls manufactured paving, but machine tools suffered the decline I described elsewhere with fierce foreign competition which also later decimated the textile industry. Nestle now manufacture Quality Street in Halifax.

Further reading:

John A. Hargreaves, Halifax (Lancaster: Carnegie, 2003)