Textile Manufacture in Lochwinnoch

The 18th century saw developments that had a profound effect on Lochwinnoch and the whole world. The first was in 1733 with John Kay’s flying shuttle. This enabled cloth to be woven faster, of a greater width, and the process could be mechanised making the loom even more productive. This led to improvements in thread production in 1738. Throughout the century there were successive improvements in weaving technology.

Weaving was a cottage industry, carried out in individual homes involving the whole family. Local textile manufacturers would have deals with individual families. The manufacturers would provide them with raw materials, such as wool or flax, and the families would produce finished textiles. The families would use a spinning wheel to spin the strands of wool or flax (used to make linen) into fine threads. They then used that thread on a hand-powered loom to weave it into cloth. The manufacturer would then collect and pay for the textiles and send them to local markets. This was known as the domestic system.

Prior to around 1750/60 it was primarily linen that was woven. It was made from the fibres of the flax plant. The fine fibres from the processed plant are called lint and this gave its name to the Linthills above Lochwinnoch. After 1750/60 weavers began to produce silk-based products which had become very fashionable in London and were more profitable. By 1785/90 fashions had changed again and cotton was becoming the material of choice.

In 1755 the village population was around 1530 and by 1791 had increased to 2613. There were 135 weavers and around fifty workshops containing nearly 200 looms for weaving silk and cotton. The 1785 Castle Semple Estate map shows houses only stretched as far as Craw Road from the Old Kirktoun. The last property on the south side, opposite to Pinnimie’s well at the foot of Craw Road, belonged to Mathew Barr. He owned 4 weaving shops and houses to accommodate twenty families.  His shops each had a distinct name, “the front shop," "the back shop," "the end shop," and were all filled with looms, and were generally always busy. The fourth shop was in Church Street (when it was eventually built), along with four or five of the dwelling houses. The Barr’s left the village around 1816/17 due to the decline in trade as a result of the Napoleonic war (Napoleon blockaded European ports significantly impacting British exports of textiles). The impact continued even after the Battle of Waterloo brought hostilities to an end because Europe had begun to establish its own manufacturing.

As far back as the beginning of the 18th century Lochwinnoch was largely engaged in the loom weaving of linen and woollen goods of a plain class. About 1760 there was introduced “cross weaving" on the ordinary hand loom, by which means bird's eye patterns and others of a similarly simple kind could be produced. At this time silk weaving became the mainstay of the town, which was then one of the most thriving and prosperous of the small towns in the West of Scotland. Towards the close of the 18th century the weaving of pure silk began to go down and cotton work was introduced. This consisted of shirtings, backrams, and lawns. There was also no uncertain amount of veinings, a material wrought for embroidering, so that it could be afterwards cut up into stripes. About the year 1820, ‘‘harness” weaving was introduced, and within a few years after this nearly all the old plain looms bad been converted into harness looms. There would be at this period about 350 looms in the town. The introduction of the harness loom gave a great impetus to trade, and the prosperity of the weavers continued in Lochwinnoch to a much later period than in some of the other small towns in the West of Scotland owing to its proximity to Paisley, from which place most of the work was got. About 1850 the supply of webs began to be more irregular. Busy seasons were succeeded by lengthened periods of reduced trade, and many of the looms began to fall into disuse. By 1890 there were only some twenty or thirty weavers at work, and these principally on patterns or such other goods as cannot readily be produced on the power-loom. Ponchos for the South Americas market form about the best class of work that could be got, and, besides those, cotton, woollen, and silk handkerchiefs were occasionally woven.

During the 18th century there had been substantial wealth creation from the sugar trade with the Caribbean and one such trader had purchased Castle Semple Estate in 1737 – William McDowall. As the mechanisation of weaving progressed leading to factory scale production wealthy investors were required to fund the construction of these factories. They also brought the land upon which factories could be built. It was McDowall’s son (also a William) who entered into a partnership with five others to build a small factory on what would be called Factory Close at Braefoot in Lochwinnoch. He had become laird in 1748. His partners were William Brodie, hosier in Mansfield Notts (brother to Hugh Brodie, feuer Calderhaugh); John Auchincloss & Co., merchants, Glasgow; Robert Holms, merchant, Calderhaugh; Robert Orr, merchant, Kirktown; Thomas Orr, merchant in Glasgow; and John Paisley, weaver in Paisley. It was built in either 1750 or 1751, although the feu charter was granted in 1754. This factory produced linen and cambric.

A smaller factory had been built in 1740 for thread production. As part of this operation McDowall feud one and a half acres of land on the west side of the Calder at Calderhaugh for a bleaching works.

Initially it consumed all the available buttermilk in the parish for the bleaching process. There is a separate article on the bleachfields of Lochwinnoch. At one point there had been around 20 thread making factories in the parish however by 1900 they were gone. Whether the 1740 factory was knocked down to make way for the one built in 1750/51 or was incorporated into it is not known. Close to Factory Close is a park called Old Factory park, perhaps it was located here and subsequently abandoned. These two factories were not like the powered mills that were constructed later in the village. These small factories were merely a building where a number of looms were operated in proximity to each other as opposed to “family” looms in individual houses as was previously the norm. Or in the case of thread manufacture mechanization of the spinning wheel required more space than a family home could provide.

Spinning Frame 1730's and Spinning Wheel 750AD

In 1788 a more substantial mill, the Calderpark Mill, was built on the rising ground on the north west side of the village. This was a powered factory for the production of cotton-based textiles. It was built by Messrs G Houston, Burns & Co. George Houston was instrumental in the development of Johnstone. The third William McDowall was also part of this partnership. He had become laird in 1776. As part of this development a dam was created on the river Calder to form a weir channeling water into a lade to supply the mill. This dam is known locally as the Falls. McDowall also purchased the corn mill situated a short distance into the glen sited on the Cloak burn just before it enters the Calder. This was to give him full control of the water flowing to the mill. The factory consisted of five storeys and garrets, lit by 152 windows and 40 skylights. It contained 8140 spindles, and the yarn varied in size from No. 60 to 80, and the water-twist from 24 to 30. It employed altogether 170 workers, old and young, who received about £148 in wages a fortnight.

Shortly thereafter in 1789 another cotton mill was constructed by Messrs Johnston, Pollock, Fultons, Buchanan & Co later to become Fultons & Buchanan. These gentlemen were all silk manufacturers from Paisley. Humphrey Fulton is credited with introducing silk gauze manufacture to Paisley around 1760. This new mill was built near the Lochwinnoch bridge and was called Calderhaugh Mill. It consisted of five storeys with garrets, and was lit by 360 windows and 60 skylights. It contained 25224 spindles, which processed 12,000 lbs. of cotton every fortnight. The yarn varied in size, from No. 36 to 84, averaging 60. It employed 345 workers, who received about £260 in wages a fortnight. It was fed with water via a lade coming from the Calderpark Mill supplemented by an additional weir feeding water into the lade running between the two mills.  

I guess Calderpark and Calderhaugh were too much of a mouthful and so these mills became known as the Old and the New mills.

A third smaller mill was built at Boghead about the same time as the two larger mills and employed about 80 staff. It was built by Messrs William Caldwell & Co. and was three storey’s in height excluding garrets. On the evening of 29th December 1812 the mill was burned down. An advert appeared in the February 21st edition of the 1821 Glasgow Herald for the purchase of ground (not a mill) at Boghead with a good supply of water for a cotton, flax or woollen mill.

The entry for Lochwinnoch dated 1836 in The New Statistical Account states the mill remains in a ruinous state. The mill was eventually rebuilt not as a cotton mill but as a Hair mill as shown in the 1856 map below. The fabric produced is a mix of horse hair and cotton. The horse hair is the weft (horizontal thread) and the cotton is the warp (longitudinal thread).

In 1862 it was reported that about 11pm a small fire was discovered in the store of the hair mill belonging to Mr Robert Clelland at Boghead. Despite around 100 villagers turning out to fight the fire the store was completely destroyed. The 1895 map shows the mill reduced in size and the 1910 map implies the site is disused  with only a ruin remaining.

Two major events provided a backdrop to the Industrial Revolution and the textile industry. The French Revolution which broke out in 1789 and ending after Waterloo in 1815. The second was the American civil war from 1861 to 1865.

After the peace that followed the battle of Waterloo, a great stagnation of trade all over the nation prevailed. Work was not to be had. Tradesmen could not earn wages. Weavers in all parts were idle and suffering sorely. The heritor’s of Lochwinnoch had to look out some kind of employment for those idle hands. Numbers got work on the roads, some about the coal fields, and one large squad of weavers were set to improve a steep and lumpy part of the public highway between "The Mossend Farm" house and the "Roadhead" on the great public road on which the coach between Saltcoats and Glasgow passed daily. In fact it was none other then Mathew Barr mentioned earlier who managed this particular job leading him to pursue a completely different line of business.

The cause of this was Napoleon’s blockade of European ports during the Napoleonic wars to create economic hardship for Britain. At this time a major export for the UK was textiles so this impacted the individual weavers and the mills in Lochwinnoch. The figure below shows the extend of the blockade. The circles represent ship movements between 1802 and 1809.

To show how significant textile production had become in the UK consider that at the start of the French Revolution there were 900 spinning jennies in France and 18000 in the UK. The blockade had a secondary and longer lasting impact. It gave an impetus to the industrialization of France to make up for the lack of UK imports. This can be seen in the figure below where the circles represent the number of spindles in France in 1803 and then in 1812. It took 10 years after Waterloo for things to return to normal.

The following article was printed in the Edinburgh Chronicle Tuesday 22nd May 1827;

“The improvement in trade, which we have repeatedly noticed, is becoming more decided. In all the manufacturing districts, business has considerably revived, and more confidence prevails. In Kilmarnock, which contains about 1,400 weavers, all who wish for work are fully employed at advanced prices. In Renfrewshire and Ayrshire, there is a decided improvement; the cotton works, woollen factories, print-fields, bleachfields, lime-works, &c. are all brisk; and there no scarcity of employment of some sort or other. In Johnstone, there are fourteen cotton mills in full operation, and another new mill is about to commence work, which will furnish further employment. The two cotton works at Lochwinnoch are going full time, and give bread to about 400 of the inhabitants of that village. There are also about 350 individual weavers, all is bustle and activity.”      

Prior to the American Civil war the 1850’s had seen unprecedented growth of the cotton industry. The boom years of cotton textile production were 1859 and 1860 when more textile had been produced than could be sold. The situation was exacerbated by large stocks of raw cotton. The inevitable result was a price collapse and reduction in demand for raw cotton. When the war started it was thought it would be short lived and the cotton stocks would last till the war ended. Initially the South restricted supplies to try and bring Britain in on their side, then the Union side blockaded Southern ports.  By the beginning of 1862, mills were being closed and workers laid off; one-third of the families in one Lancashire cotton town were in receipt of relief. The Greenock Advertiser reported on Thursday 27th November 1862;

“We may gather from the details already submitted that close upon 30,000 persons are destitute, and a large number are subsisting on earnings barely adequate to keep body and soul together. The Renfrewshire sufferers have special claim to our sympathy and assistance. Linwood, Lochwinnoch, and Bridge of Weir have experienced the full force of the crisis; their inhabitants are nearly beggared. Those of the first two were almost entirely dependent on a couple of mills, which gave employment to 800 hands, but have been stopped for some time. Part of the workers have found occupation elsewhere, but 700 individuals have been left in consequence utterly destitute. Bridge of Weir has three cotton mills, previously giving work to 470 persons. 77 of these are known to be unemployed, which with their dependents represents 200 individuals in danger of starvation. Of the 349 on short time, a large number get only one- or two-days’ work per fortnight. If the sufferers in Johnstone and other places are added, it will be found that their number in Renfrewshire is between 2,000 and 3,000. The evil is enhanced by the stoppage of our own cotton mill. Several applications have been made for a portion of the Glasgow Relief Fund without success, that city is sufficiently burdened with its own distress. The natural enquiry is, what has been done beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the poverty-stricken people to ameliorate their condition? Hitherto absolutely nothing.”

Lochwinnoch was in its heyday of prosperity during the early 19th century. The chief industry was cotton spinning. The three large mills gave a stimulus to every other kind of business in the village and led to the doubling of the population between 1791 and 1831, peaking at 4515. However, by the end of the century the population had declined to less than half its peak level primarily due to the destruction of two of the mills by fire and a substantial reduction in size of the third, again due to fire. Lochwinnoch went from weaving linen and wool in the early to mid 1700's as a cottage industry, then to silk gauze production till the late 1700's, to significant production of cotton fabrics from then till around the time of the cotton famine in the 1860’s returning to linen textiles culminating in silk fabrics from the 1890’s till 1985 when all production of textiles ceased.