37 Facts About Cotton mills

The development of viable steam engines by Boulton and Watt from 1781 led to the growth of larger, steam-powered Cotton mills allowing them to be concentrated in urban mill towns, like Manchester, which with neighbouring Salford had more than 50 Cotton mills by 1802.

Many Cotton mills were built after Arkwright's patent expired in 1783 and by 1788, there were about 210 Cotton mills in Great Britain.

The development of cotton mills was linked to the development of the machinery they contained.

Handloom weaving lingered into the mid-19th century but cotton spinning in mills relying on water power and subsequently steam power using fuel from the Lancashire Coalfield began to develop before 1800.

The Paul-Wyatt mills spun cotton for several decades but were not very profitable, becoming the ancestors of the cotton mills that followed.

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Arkwright recruited large, highly disciplined workforces for his Cotton mills, managed credit and supplies and cultivated mass consumer markets for his products.

Cotton mills 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.

Boulton and Watt's engines enabled Cotton 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.

The Cotton mills are distinguished from warehouses in that warehouses had taking-in doors on each storey with an external hoist beam.

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.

The Cotton mills were usually combination Cotton mills, that were water powered and used a slow burn design technique.

The Cotton mills were mainly in open country and mill towns were formed to support them.

New England Cotton mills found it increasingly difficult to compete, and as in Lancashire, went into gradual decline until bankrupted during the Great Depression.

Cotton mills industry was subject to cycles of boom and slump, which caused waves of mill building.

In Germany, Flanders and Brazil, Cotton mills were built to the designs of the Oldham architects.

The only new Cotton mills were very large to benefit from the economies of scale.

Older Cotton mills were re-equipped with rings, and machines were powered by individual electric motors.

Lancashire Cotton mills Corporation was a company set up by the Bank of England in 1929, to rescue the Lancashire spinning industry by means of consolidation.

Later Cotton mills were on the fringe of the spinning area in Wigan and Stockport, Availability of labour was cited as a reason.

The last Cotton mills were completed in 1927, these were Holden Mill and Elk Mill.

The most efficient Cotton mills had abandoned their steam engines, and were working the frames with individual electric motors.

The reduction of capacity led to a legacy of redundant Cotton mills, which were readily reused for other industrial purposes.

Cotton mills were not confined to Lancashire but were built in northeast Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottingham, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bristol, Durham and the west of Scotland.

North of Bury, ten Cotton mills occupied a mile long stretch of a stream in the Shuttleworth Valley.

Not all water-powered Cotton mills were in rural areas, after 1780 Cotton mills were built in Blackburn and Burnley.

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In Scotland, four cotton mills were built in Rothsay on the Isle of Bute using labour that had experience of the linen industry.

Cotton mills were huge fire risks, cotton fibres in the air could form an explosive mixture in their gas-lit interiors.

In some Cotton mills timber was eliminated from the roof structure which was supported by cast or wrought iron trusses.

Water was extracted from rivers and canals, then later Cotton mills requiring ever more water, built and maintained their own reservoirs.

Later Cotton mills used individual electric motors to power the machinery.

Early Cotton mills had a vertical shaft to take the power from the flywheel.

Cotton mills never employed children under the age of ten, and opposed physical punishment in schools and factories.

Cotton mills lobbied for parliamentary action, resulting in The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802.

Regulation was ineffective until the Cotton mills were subject to inspection in 1833 with the establishment of a factory inspectorate consisting of four factory inspectors who had the power of magistrates.

Carolinas Cotton mills developed from 1880, and would employ children in preference to adults.

Cotton mills put out work to small weavers, in effect, employing them.

Spinners union, the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton mills Spinners had a federal structure with strong central leadership where control was in the hands of a small group of paid officials.