Researching the history of factories
The industrial revolution began in Britain. Water-power had long been used for some processes. Fulling mills had made England a major cloth-making
country in medieval times. Still spinners and weavers toiled in their own
homes. The invention of machines to do these jobs in the late 18th century
meant that cloth workers could be gathered together in huge factories. Among
the earliest was Quarry
Bank Mill at Styal, Wilmslow, Cheshire, begun in 1784 by textile merchant
Samuel Greg, and now a museum of the industrial revolution.
At first factories used water-power, so they were often called mills, though steam-power soon took over. In a burst of inventiveness, many other industrial processes were mechanised. Factories sprang up close to sources of raw materials and fuel. Industrialisation then drove developments in building. The earliest experiments with iron-frame construction were the great textile mills, the first being a flax-mill at Shrewsbury, built in 1796 by Charles Bage.
Industrial buildings could be starkly
functional, but some were surprisingly splendid. As Britain entered the Victorian era, architects had a wealth of
styles to play with. Classical architecture remained influential, but other
periods in the past were pored over for inspiration. The extraordinary Temple
Mill in Leeds (completed 1843) was built in the Egyptian Revival style, a copy
of the Temple at Edfu. But the Italianate style was a more popular choice for
commercial and industrial buildings. Later in the century the Gothic Revival held sway, but still had
its rivals. In the 1880s the Wills No 1 tobacco factory in Bristol was built in
the Gothic Revival style, while a florid neo-Jacobean was the choice for a hat
factory in Luton.
The sheer size of factory buildings gave them a formidable impact on the urban and rural landscape. Pear Mill in Stockport might be mistaken for a palace, were it not for the industrial chimney beside it. It was built from 1908 to 1912 to the designs of Stott and Sons of Manchester, and completed by Philip Sidney Stott, one of the most prolific mill architects.
Studies
- Barnwell, P. S., Palmer M. and Airs, M. (eds.), The Vernacular Workshop: from craft to industry, 1400-1900 (CBA Research Report 140, 2004). Shows that a large proportion of industrial output before 1900 was produced in workshops rather than factories.
- Calladine, A. and Fricker, J., East Cheshire Textile Mills (1993). From a survey by RCHME.
- Giles, C. and Goodal, I.H., Yorkshire Textile Mills 1770-1930: The buildings of the Yorkshire textile industry (1992). From a survey by RCHME.
- Jones, E., Industrial Architecture in Britain 1750-1939 (1985) has many useful references to primary sources.
- Miller, I. and Wild, C., A & G Murray and the Cotton Mills of Ancoats (2007). Amongst the first cotton mills designed specifically to house steam-powered spinning mules.
- Matthew Bolton Bicentery Celebrations 2009: an illustrated biography of the man who built the great Soho Manufactory in Handsworth, Birmingham.
- Pevsner, N., A History of Building Types (1976), chap.17: Factories.
- Williams, M. with Farnie, D.A., Cotton Mills in Greater Manchester (1992). From a survey by RCHME. The archive of original research is held at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester.
- Industrial Archaeology Review has carried a number of articles on textile mills. See the online subject index.
Primary sources
- Science for Historic Industries: Guidelines for the investigation of 17th- to 19th-century industries (English Heritage, 2006) is primarily intended as a guide to scientific methods of investigating past industrial processes, but section 5 provides a concise guide to documentary sources for industrial buildings.
- Revolutionary Players: digitised material from libraries, museums and archives across the West Midlands region relating to the development of the Industrial Revolution, including images of factories.
- Richardson, R. and Thorne, R., The Builder: Illustrations index 1843-1883 (1994).
- Spinning the Web: some 20,000 items from the libraries, museums and archives of North West England which tell the story of the Lancashire Cotton Industry.
- And see images.
- And see maps, particularly fire insurance plans, which can mention factory use.
- And see business sources.
- And see town ranking for the rise of industrial cities.
