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Wire |
Of all the metal-working industries which developed in Warrington in the late 18th centuries, none was more important than wire-drawing. The industry came to dominate the town's employment in the late 19th and 20th centuries. The origins of wire manufacture were in small-scale production in backyard workshops and foundries. |
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Wire-drawers at work in one of Warrington's great wire workshops |
| The growth of the wire industry in Warrington was aided by the demand for wire products in many other industries and in agriculture. For example in the 1880s and 1890s barbed wire was adopted in agriculture across the globe, particualrly in big farming areas of North America, Australia and South Africa. Wire-working was already established in Warrington in the 1770s. The well-known firms that came to dominate the trade appeared towards the end of the 18th century. William Houghton had a wireworks in Tanners Lane by 1775 and in 1799 Nathaniel Greening came to the town and set up a small factory. In 1805 Greening was joined by a new partner, John Rylands, and in 1817 the partners moved to a new site at the end of Church Street. By the late 1830s the Church Street works was one of the largest industrial concerns in Warrington. |
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| One of the many products made using wire were these spring mattresses made by mainly women at Monks Hall in the 1950s and 1960s. |
Thomas Locker started his business in Market Street in Warrington in 1879, moving to a new site in Church Street and Ellesmere Street within 5 years. Lockers innovated and experimented with new uses of wire and became world-renowned for their meshes and sieves. Frederick Monks opened the great Whitecross works in 1864. He had been an apprenctice at Rylands, but soon became a fierce rival of his former masters. By 1905 Whitecross was employing 1,100 workers in the town in wire manufacture. As the wire industry became the most important employment sector in the town the Rugby League team even adopted the nickname 'the Wire'. |
| The 'wire-drawers', as the men who worked in this industry were known, became the elite of Warrington's working-class community. Their work was highly skilled and they earned higher wages than other workers. It was said that they were proud of their superior status and demonstrated contempt for 'inferior' workers. They frequented their own pubs where the prices were too high for the lower ranks to drink there. |
| Read about some of the dangers of working in the wire industry |
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