Upcoming Talk - January 2025
7.30pm at Harwood Methodist Church
Thursday 23rd January 2025
Speaker: Richard Horrocks
The Textile Mills of Turton and Edgworth (1774-2000)
The 200 plus years of the growth and eventual decline of the cotton industry in the Turton and Edgworth areas mirrored the history of the wider Lancashire cotton industry as a whole and as such could be considered as a miniature version or snapshot of that industry. All stages of cotton manufacture were included – spinning, weaving, bleaching & finishing, dyeing and printing. The way in which each stage developed was defined by local geography (e.g. availability of water for processing and power and of coal for energy) as well as national (e.g. the repeal of the Calico Acts of 1700 and 1721 in 1774) and international (e.g. French wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, World Wars 1 and 2 and the not unrelated development and decline of overseas markets) events.
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| Vale Mill, Turton Bottoms (by the late W. M.Williams) |
Together Turton and Edgworth hosted at least 14 mills, a concentration which demonstrated not only the importance of the area economically, but also a favourable geography and geology in which a variety of different textile industries could develop. The first, a printing works on the site of the Lord of the Manor's corn mill in 1774 coincided with the repeal of the Calico Acts. Since that time the mills involved cotton spinning, weaving, bleaching, dyeing, finishing and printing - in fact the whole range of the cotton industrial processes. The last mill closed in 2000, coinciding with the closure of the last spinning mill in Bolton, Swan Lane Mill.
While there are hardly any remains of these former mills, their presence shaped the local society of the two villages over 200 year period and also have left imprints in terms of local geography, although these are difficult to spot by the casual visitor.
The talk will outline their history in terms of growth, evolution and death.
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| The fourteen mills of Turton and Edgworth superimposed on the 6 inch OS map. |
