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The Textile Trades |
Warrington is not usually thought of as a town with a significant textile industry compared to other towns in Lancashire. To illustrate just how important the cotton industry was to the town once, you need only look at the figures for those working in the industry in 1921 when cotton production peaked in Lancashire and Cheshire. At this time 2,163 people in Warrington worked in textiles - this was 6.1% of the employed population and 19.9% of total female employment in the town. |
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This photograph of the interior of the Cockhedge Cotton Works shows how many of the weavers were young women. Note the male bosses on the right hand side of the photo. |
There is little to connect the town today with Armitage & Rigby's cotton mill at Cockhedge, apart from the roof girders which now hold up the roof of the Cockhedge shopping centre and the memories of the last surviving workers who worked there. Cockhedge Mill was large even by Lancashire standards. Warrington was also the focus for the distinctive fustian cutting trade. Fustian-cutting was a traditional occupation in Warrington's outlying villages, notably Lymm. Fustian is an all purpose term for cloths in which two different fibres (from the 18th century cotton or flax or linen) are woven together. It was particularly associated with cloths with a high looped pile, which was cut and trimmed using very long, fine, razor-sharp knives. Fustians, of which velvet and corduroy, are the best-known varieties, were usually high quality cloths fetching a high price and the cutting was a highly delicate and skilled operation. One mistake would destroy the perfect appearance of the finished cloth and destroy its value. |
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Inside a typical velvet-cutting shop before the introduction of machinery. |
In the 1890s over 200 people in Lymm, about 20% of the workforce in the village, were employed in the fustian trade. The women fustian cutters would walk around 20 miles a day as they worked their way up and down the long tables in the cutting rooms. These rooms were often located in the attics of cottages (you can still see evidence of these in the upper storeys of old cottages in Lymm) or in separate workshops. They had large windows to let in maximum light, essential to avoid costly errors. |
| As well as those who worked in the production of cloth in Warrington, many people were employed in clothing manufacture. For example Warrington had several shirtworks. MacArthur Beattie & Co., or "Mac's" as it was nicknamed by those who worked there, opened in 1928. During the war years they produced uniforms for servicemen. In 1945 it proudly proclaimed that it had turned out 1,437,900 shirts and pairs of pyjamas and 606,000 collars for the armed forces. |
| Read one woman's memories of working at "Mac's" shirtworks in Warrington |
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