Poverty and protest: the dark side of the industry that enriched Bradford
Rosie MacGregor discusses the events and themes that inspired her latest book: Remnants and Yarns Poverty and protest in the woollen industry in Bradford on Avon.
The inspiration for Remnants and Yarns came from a talk about Thomas Helliker given by Adrian Randall, Emeritus Professor, Birmingham University History Department. Dr Randall grew up in Bratton and attended school in Trowbridge, where he first heard the tragic story. It became his starting point for a career in history.
Thomas Helliker, for those who don't know, was born in 1783 to a family of cloth workers in Trowbridge. It was the custom in such families to share the same trade and Thomas, the second youngest of eight sons born to Thomas and Elizabeth Helliker, was apprenticed to clothier Thomas Naish as a shearman at the age of 14.
Shearmen didn't shear the sheep, as the name might imply, but dressed the finished cloth to produce a fine, even sheen - the most skilled of all wool trades.
Naish's workshops were in the run-down Conigre, an area of tightly packed industrial buildings and poor quality and poorly maintained terraced housing - of which little remains today apart from the fine buildings of the former Conigre Parsonage and Westcroft House. This part of Trowbridge was largely demolished in slum clearances. Unlike Bradford on Avon, the county town did not have a Preservation Trust to fight the wholesale demolition of some of its historic buildings.
Thomas was hanged on his 19th birthday - 22 March 1803 - at Fisherton Gaol in Salisbury, for allegedly burning down Littleton Mill at Semington. Unlikely to have been guilty, he nevertheless steadfastly refused to name those who set fire to the mill. His body lies in the churchyard of St James, Trowbridge.
This was a period of great industrial unrest over the introduction of machinery - in this instance the shearing frame, which could do the work of 10 skilled shearmen. After hearing the talk I thought there must be similar stories of unrest in Bradford on Avon, other than the only one of which I was aware, the riot at Westbury House in 1791. This occurred when some 500 angry workers assembled at the home of wealthy clothier Joseph Phelps and were fired on, killing three people, including a child. The so-called 'mob' then burnt the hated scribbling frame on the town bridge. The coroner's verdict after this incident was to award Phelps £250 and record the deaths as 'justifiable homicide.
I had just retired and began to research whether there had been other incidents of disputes, clashes, violence and death in our town. It took years of reading relevant books, visiting libraries and museums, and making copious notes. I filed these and set them to one side, half forgotten.
Then along came Covid and lockdown - at which point I decided to look at the notes and assemble them into book form. It proved to be a harder task than first imagined but finally, thanks to advice from numerous sources, it was ready for publication.
I discovered that the production of woollen cloth - from the shearing of the sheep to the finished product - was highly labour intensive. There was an unlimited source of water and labour to produce the finest broadcloth in Bradford on Avon, but reliance was placed on a workforce paid poverty wages while the clothiers grew rich on the profits. The Bradford on Avon we know has become a desirable place to live and work, but it wasn't always the case.
It was not uncommon for angry disputes to arise between the cloth workers for whom life was a constant struggle and the clothiers who employed them. Matters came to a head when machinery was introduced, along with the realisation that one machine could carry out the work of 10 or more labouring men and women. In the book, I expose the gaps between those who produced the cloth, who lived impoverished lives, and those who gained wealth and power as a result.
I dedicated Remnants and Yarns to my history teacher, Godfrey Curry, at the former Ernest Bailey Grammar School in Matlock, Derbyshire. He made history accessible with an unerring energy and enthusiasm, which inspired my life-long love of history and the historic environment. His teaching of the A-level syllabus, including British political history 1815 - 1914, was so vivid and memorable that even after half a century it served me well in the background to compiling the account.
Matlock, where I grew up, was surrounded then by working wool and cotton mills as well as the ruins of Cromford Mills, widely acknowledged as one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution, the source of the factory system and home to Sir Richard Arkwright, inventor of the mechanised spinning frame. The mill complex built in 1771 is now a UNESCO World Heritage site and was the world's first successful water powered spinning mill.
The book also reveals the scant regard paid by employers to the wages and conditions of their employees. The first documented riot in Bradford on Avon did not take place until November 1726, in a dispute over increased work for reduced pay. There were at least two further major riots in Bradford on Avon in the 18th century, the first in 1787 over weavers' wages. It seems almost inconceivable that the clothiers promised not to erect further, even larger, loom shops - provided that the weavers would accept a reduction in rates of pay. The introduction of machinery at Staverton Mill resulted in a prolonged campaign of harassment against Jones, a wealthy clothier and quarry owner from Bradford on Avon who was shot and suffered a facial injury in 1808 as he rode home from Staverton to Bradford.
Although the early clothiers flourished and made huge profits, this was not the case in later years. There had been greater resistance to the introduction of machinery in the west country in comparison to Yorkshire. By the mid-19th century Bradford in West Yorkshire was known as the 'wool capital of the world', with more than 300 textile mills in operation, while Bradford on Avon and the woollen towns of West Wiltshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire were in decline.
This decline was not helped by the failure of the Hobhouse, Phillott & Lowder Bank, which occupied prestigious offices in Church Street. The failure had far reaching effects, with clothiers going bankrupt and many workers left destitute. There was a brief revival of the industry in the middle of the 19th century: Abbey Mill was the last wool mill to be built, in 1875, but production of cloth ceased in 1902. Greenland Upper Mill, which closed in 1906, was the last factory to manufacture woollen cloth.
