The Calder Glen Woollen Mill

The mill is described by Elizabeth Anderson thus:-

“Another mill which must be mentioned is the one finally known to us as “Whitton’s Mill”.  It was erected in 1814 by the side of the Cloak Burn just before the confluence of the Calder.  Two Crawford brothers employed 22 workers for carding and spinning.  It was on the third floor, the two other floors being a complete mechanically and efficiently run corn mill.”

And the Scottish Women Rural Institute (SWRI) history of Lochwinnoch provides additional details...

“In 1814, Crawfurd built a carding and spinning mill here, driven by the Cloak Burn.   He bought his raw material in the highlands, Argyll and the Isles, and had it shipped to Port Glasgow, from where it was carted over the hill to Lochwinnoch.  Local carters and farmers helped with the work and their ‘fee’ was paid on Fair O’Hill Day. 

This yarn was sold to the Kilmarnock carpet manufacturers.  When this mill was built, the under part was one of the most complete corn mills in the country.  After the dried oats were put in the hopper, there was machinery for the whole process of shelling, winnowing, grinding, sifting and preparing for bags and market, manual labour only being necessary to supervise machinery.  This mill was later a laundry.”

The source of much of this foregoing information would appear to be the ‘Cairn of Lochwinnoch Matters’ by Andro Crawfurd written between 1827 and 1842.  Crawfurd makes reference to this mill on three occasions.  In Volume VI, pages 348 and 349, he writes;

“The Crawfurds have taken the mill from Col. Harvey – driven by the Cloke burn – near the millhouse.  William goes to collect the raw material, ship it and disembark it at Port Glasgow.  Humphray Barbour, Alan Gilmore, Jamie Storie each frequently bring it with their carts up.  They sell their yarn to the Kilmarnock carpet manufacturers.  They sent their carts every fortnight thither.  One of the partners accompany their carts.  They employ 22 spinners, piecers, carders, etc for by [sic] themselves.  Their mill was erected by Mr. Adam in 1814.  He sold it to Harvey."

The Cairn reference is believed to have been written about June of 1836, based on dates found in adjacent material in the volume. The Crawfurds or Crawfords referred to here were brothers, John and William.  The author of the Cairn makes no link between himself and this family.  John and William were born in Beith (there were a lot of Crawfords in Beith), John being older by five years.    It appears that John died sometime between 1851 and 1861.  John was shown on Calder Street (wool carder, manufacturer) in the 1851 census with his wife Janet and daughter Mary but his wife is shown in the 1861 census as an ‘annuitant’.  The author is actively trying to trace the various Crawford lines represented in Lochwinnoch and would welcome any input.

William Crawford’s grandson, James Thomas Orr Hepburn, tells us more about the mill and the family in his unpublished autobiography “A Story from Memory” written about 1950. The following is an extract covering the Calder Glen Woollen mill. 

“My mother’s name was Jessie Brodie Crawford before marriage in 1871 at the age of twenty-two to my father. She was born and raised at Lochwinnoch in Renfrewshire which is about twenty miles southwest of Glasgow. Her father was William Crawford, the owner of a wool mill in that town, who employed at one time about one hundred and fifty employees. The three-story mill was on the banks of the River Calder in what is now called Calder Glen where the ruins of the stone walls are still standing in places. It was one of the first mills in Scotland to employ a water turbine for driving the machinery. Later they had to put in boilers and a steam engine to provide additional power when more machinery for weaving was installed. Blankets were the principal product. I was only six when Grandpa Crawford died in 1881. I remember him well.

My mother had a brother, William Crawford Jnr., who was three years older than herself. He died in 1880 when only 34 years old and unmarried.

He had an office on Buchanan St., Glasgow for the sale of the output from the wool mill. I still have a leaf of the office stationery. It is headed, ‘William Crawford & Son, Woolen Manufacturers”. It was through Uncle Willie that my father was invited out for a weekend to Lochwinnoch where he met my mother. My father was then working as a salesman in the firm of Marne, Byars & Co. in Argyle St., Glasgow just around the corner of the street from the Crawford office. This was before he took up the business of a grain merchant and farm machinery agent.

Grandpa Crawford had been married twice. There was a daughter from the

first marriage; my mother’s step-sister Mary. She was much older than my

mother. She married a Mr. Wright, an Englishman, who had been a clerk in the office at the woolen mill. They left for Manchester when my mother was a girl. I never met any of the Wright family. They never came back to Lochwinnoch as there was a coolness between my grandfather, grandmother and them. I believe my grandfather was not in favour of the marriage. He did not think well of Mr. Wright perhaps because he was English. Their descendants are still in Manchester, I believe. Mr. Wright was present at my Grandfather Crawford’s funeral in 1881. He made himself disagreeable after the reading of the will when he found that the most part of the estate had been willed to Grandma Crawford and my mother.

Uncle Willie got a good education at the local school and in a school in Glasgow. I have forgotten which one. My grandfather took a partner into the business when capital was needed for expansion. Mr. Robert Williamson was from a monied family of the district and he bought a share in the business. It was a bad move. When first built the mill comprised only of the building on the right. Around 1865 William Crawford expanded the business by building the large extension on the left.

Bob Williamson was a man, able enough in himself, with a good head for business but without much moral scruple. He was always surrounded in his spare time by a young crowd of the better class in the town. They frequently met in some back room of a hotel or a Freemason’s haunt. Whiskey and wine were used freely as a binder in the hilarious meetings. Uncle Willie got entangled beyond his depth. He had come in contact with his partner Bob Williamson both in the office and outside. After my mother had married and she had left Lochwinnoch her influence with her brother Willie stopped he became a complete addict. Finally, due to the neglect of his health he contracted a form of consumption or lung trouble and became an invalid.

James Dickie, who had married Maggie Orr of the Kaim, a cousin of my mother offered Uncle Willie a voyage in one of his companies ships to India and back to try to recover his health through the benefit of a sea voyage. I remember a framed picture of the bow of the great ship with Willie standing at the rail with the officers and skipper. It hung on Grandma’s sitting room wall for many years. He came back still an invalid and died soon after. I remember seeing him before he died. My mother came to Lochwinnoch from Biggar for a last look at her brother taking me and my sister Addie with her. He was in what was called a box bed built into the wall of the parlour. He turned his head on the pillow and with a gentle smile on his wasted face he put out his hand to me. I was only five years old then. In a weak voice he said cheerily: “Good bye Tommy. Be a good boy. You will do better than me.” Of course, I didn’t understand then nor could I figure out why grandma and my mother had tears on their faces. Grandpa Crawford was ninety then and did not get up much from his armchair in the kitchen. His only recreation seemed to me to consist of taking snuff in great doses. My mother took us out for a walk to keep the house as quiet as possible. I plucked some wild berries I had never seen before but my mother wouldn’t allow them to be eaten. “Ask Grandpa what they are when we get home,” she said. Grandpa put one in his mouth and then spit it out. “No these are poison. We’ll burn them,” he said. So, they went in the kitchen fire. I think that were only elderberries but they were new to me.

When Uncle Willie died, Grandpa sold his share in the woolen mill to Bob Williamson. He ran it for a while and then turned the whole works into a steam laundry which seemed to pay better than woolen milling. He was never forgiven by Grandma and my mother for his share in Uncle Willie’s downfall. They passed him on the village street with cold and averted faces. He continued to booze until his elderly years but never overdid it that anyone noticed. He never married and boarded with two old maids at Burnfoot a part of the village across the River Calder and carried on the laundry more or less successfully. There was some talk of an affair between him and his office clerk, a florid young lady but she disappeared from the village when things got too hot for her. Eventually the body of Bob Williamson was found in a pool of the River Calder – close to the old wall of the woolen mill. I was a young man then designing parts for a new Daimler car in Coventry, England. I was not much interested in laundries and I never heard how the poor bibber managed to get into the river. It was considered suicide but may have been accidental.”

Can anyone be surprised that my mother was a consistent advocate of temperance? No wine or spirits were allowed in the house except a small bottle of brandy which was kept for emergency as medicine, not to drink as a beverage. The latter idea was abhorrent to us all.

Today virtually all vestiges of the mill are long gone. The photograph below taken in 2021, from approximately the same position as the photograph at the start of the article, shows how mother nature is reclaiming a place that once provided employment for many Lochwinnoch

residents. There were several factories in Lochwinnoch when Grandpa Crawford’s woolen mill was running. A large cotton mill, a silk mill and flax mill had operated for many years. The cotton mill was the last to shut down. Then the town had the benefit of chair and furniture factories; Johnstone’s, Hamilton & Crawford’s and Hunter’s kept things going along with home weaving. There were looms in nearly every second house on the village streets. That is all changed now and the furniture factories are also things from the past.

My mother told me various stories about the Woollen Mill, two stick in my mind. The mill caught on fire one night and the night watchman rushed to the village and roused out his employer and all the hands he could muster. The crowd hurried up the road to the mill everyone carrying a pail or a bucket for water. Grandma Crawford wasn’t the last there either. When she arrived, a line had been formed between the mill lade and the burning building. She saw at once that the man dipping the water out of the mill lade could barely reach down at full arm length and the pails and buckets were only half full. She jumped into the water that was nearly up to her waist and dipped and handed up full pails one after another. They got the fire put out eventually due to the quicker speed of handling the water. Tough, old Agnes Crawford was none the worse for wear for her wetting.

Shortly after that there was an accident in the mill. James Wylie, the engineer in charge of the machinery for driving the looms got his arm caught in a gear wheel mechanism. The arm was chewed to pieces and he was carried home on a stretcher. The old doctor of the town, Dr. Ramsay, was hurriedly called and James Wylie was laid out on his kitchen table for his arm to be amputated. He got a drink of brandy as an anaesthetic. The doctor called for a volunteer to hold the arm until he could get it off. The women who crowded the room backed away but the doctor looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Mrs. Crawford, you are the one for this job.” Grandma summoned up her forces and did as she was told. When it was over the old doctor turned to her and growled, “Mrs. Crawford, I wish I had you as a helper at all these jobs.” The other women asked her how she felt. “Oh, not so badly,” said grandma cheerily, “but I nearly keeled over when he sawed the bone through.”

I remember James Wylie well. He then stayed in a house next door to Grandma and his empty sleeve was always pinned in a side pocket. He was for many years the clerk to the village commissioners. In his old age he married the rich widow of the principal grocer, James Orr, a distant relation.