The Cotton Industry in Whittle-le-Woods

By the end of the 19^th century, three quarters of the world’s cotton textiles were being produced in Lancashire. The majority of those textiles were manufactured in the south-east corner of Lancashire, in a triangle roughly bounded by Manchester, Preston and Burnley. There were several reasons why this little area became so dominant. It had easy access to the port of Liverpool, where most raw cotton was imported from North America. It had a moist, cool climate which was ideal for working cotton. There were fast-flowing streams and rivers that in the early days powered waterwheels and plentiful supplies of coal that later fuelled the ubiquitous factory steam engines. Perhaps most importantly, there was a long history of textile production in the area. The predominant form of agriculture was pastoral, which was not labour intensive. Farming families had the time and motivation to boost their income by making cloth from wool, linen and fustian (which had linen warp and cotton weft). The work was done at home, with the children preparing the fibres; the wife spinning thread and the husband weaving the cloth on a handloom. When mechanisation massively boosted production, Lancashire people had the skills and tradition to make cotton manufacturing their way of life.

The ancient township of Whittle-le-Woods lay within the cotton manufacturing triangle and had the attributes needed for the establishment of a cotton industry. Indeed, Whittle-le-Woods village largely owes its existence to cotton. Cotton textile production had three main components: spinning cotton into thread; weaving the thread into cloth and “finishing” the cloth by bleaching, dyeing and printing. All these stages were represented in Whittle-le-Woods from the late 18^th century and I will address each in turn. In a companion aticle I will focus on the role of water power in the early days of the cotton industry in the area. I must confess, however, to a measure of cheating. While the large majority of people who worked in the local cotton industry lived in Whittle-le-Woods, some of the factories mentioned were just outside the borders of the township. Lower Kem Print Works, Swansea Weaving Mill and St. Helen’s Chemical Works were in Clayton-le-Woods and Denham Springs Print Works was in Brindle. I have however included them in this account as they were clearly part of Whittle-le-Woods’s “economic area”.

Spinning

Thread had been spun by hand since time immemorial, but the invention of spinning machines in the second half of the 18^th Century revolutionised textile production. They massively increased productivity, led to the dominance of factories over home working and because they produced a stronger thread than hand spinning, suitable for warp, they enabled cloth to be made from cotton alone. Spinning mills were established across southern Lancashire from the late 18^th century.

Whittle-le-Woods had a spinning mill at Kem Mill, in the valley of the river Lostock. It was sited on the western side of Kem Mill Lane. Its origins are obscure, but it was originally water powered from the Lostock, so it will have been established in the late 18^th or early 19^th century. The origins of its name are also obscure, but some early sources have it as Kemp Mill and it may have been on the site of an earlier corn mill, so perhaps it commemorates a former miller.

By the 1840s Kem Mill was owned by Edward Leece. He was born in Preston in 1802, the son of a coach builder, and his early business career was in partnership with his father. By the time he owned Kem Mill he was a pillar of the local community, being a leading member of the Wesleyan Church and a magistrate. In the 1840s he lived in a house adjacent to his mill but by 1850 he had moved to Waterloo Lodge, the good-sized Regency house near Hartwood Green on the modern A6 road to Chorley.

The best description of Kem spinning mill comes from the advertisement of its sale in 1858. The mill was described as being four storeys high; 81’ long and 69’ wide. It still had its waterwheel but there was also a steam engine and its own gasworks to provide lighting. Its spinning machines included hand-mules and self-acting mules. The spinning mule, invented by Samuel Crompton in 1779 replaced Richard Arkwright’s water frame as the spinning machine of choice in the 19^th century. Hand-mules were so called because the spinner had to physically pull the carriage out to draw out the thread. Because this required physical strength as well as dexterity, mule spinners were male and regarded themselves as the elite of the cotton industry. In 1825, Richard Roberts invented the self-acting mule, whose carriage was power-driven. It was held to be more productive and reliable than the hand-mule so it is interesting that thirty years after its invention Kem Mill (like many other spinning mills) used both types. Kem Mill also contained a number of “throstles”, an adaptation of Arkwright’s water frame, which were used to spin strong, coarse yarns. The name derives from the noise that the machines made, which resembled the song of a thrush. Unlike mules, throstles were operated by women and a number of female throstle spinners were employed at Kem Mill. The mill had around 15,000 spindles in total, meaning that it was medium sized by contemporary standards  and there were probably no more than 20 spinners employed there at any time.

The reason why Kem Mill was put up for sale was that in 1856 Edward Leece had been declared bankrupt. Bankruptcy was an occupational hazard for mill owners. While overall the cotton industry thrived and expanded throughout the 19^th century, it was still an uncertain business, especially for small firms. Regular fluctuations in the business cycle, national and international events (such as war or the late 1850s “cotton famine”), changes in fashion and local mishaps and mismanagement could drive a firm to insolvency. While fortunes were made, there was a regular cull of those described by Anthony Hope as “the improvident, the immoral and the unlucky”. As we will see, Whittle’s print works were especially prone to failure.

We do not know the exact reasons for Edward Leece’s downfall, but a few years before he had expanded his business to establish Whittle’s first mechanised weaving shed, on the other side of Kem Mill Lane. Perhaps his ambition got the better of him. His bankruptcy was annulled in 1859, but he did not return to business. His wife had died a few years previously and he sold Waterloo Lodge and went to live with his brother-in-law James Gudgeon, a tea merchant in Preston, dying in 1864.

Kem Mill was bought by Henry Ward, who already owned mills in Blackburn and Cuerden Green. He had been born in Clayton-le-Dale in 1813 and had begun his working life as an apprentice barber. His main business was Swallow Street Spinning Mill (off Brookhouse Lane in the north of Blackburn, now demolished) and he lived in a grand house in Wilpshire. Ward continued spinning at Kem Mill until the 1880s, when he closed and sold off the spinning mill to concentrate on the adjacent weaving mill. We will consider weaving at Kem Mill further in the next section. The spinning mill was demolished and its “lodge” (reservoir) was filled in. The site is now the car park for Cheeky Monkeys play centre and there are few reminders of when Whittle-le-Woods boasted a cotton spinning industry.

Believe it or not, this was the site of the lodge that powered Kem spinning mill's waterwheel. It was filled in and returned to farmland in the 1880s

It is possible that Whittle had another spinning mill in the early years of the 19th century. A mysterious building known in later years as the Old Factory was situated on Town Lane, just above the current entrance to Lady Crosse Drive and at the foot of the incline that leads to Lowe Farm. It is depicted on the 1840s tithe and ordnance survey maps as a longish building set at right angles to Town Lane, with a row of cottages below it, that still exist. It apparently originally had water power, as a small brook runs through the site and there is evidence of a lodge above the building. By the 1840s it was known as the Old Factory on maps and census returns and it provided accommodation for handloom weavers and workers at Low and Kem Mills. The lodge had evidently been drained. A newspaper article of 1872 mentions "an old, decayed building, now known as the Size-houses and about 70 years ago used for spinning purposes by Miles Rodgett esq. of Higher Walton" - this is probably the Old Factory; one of the surviving houses on the site is named "Calico Cottage". Many such small independent mills were established near rural waterways in the early years of the industrial revolution, but struggled to compete with later, larger and better equipped firms. The Old Factory building was demolished in the 1880s and in the 1960s the site of the lodge was used as a landfill tip, now covered over.

Behind this bank (viewed from Town Lane, looking towards Waterhouse Green) once loomed the Old Factory, set at right angles to the road. The roofs beyond belong to cottages associated with the Old Factory; one is still named "Calico Cottage"

Weaving

The massive increase in productivity that resulted from the mechanisation of cotton spinning led to a corresponding increased demand for weaving. However, although a mechanical loom had been invented by Edward Cartwright in the 1780s, it was somewhat crude and unreliable and it took until the 1840s before powerlooms were efficient enough for mass production. This meant that the ancient craft of handloom weaving carried out in weavers’ homes did not just survive, it grew throughout the early years of the 19^th century. By 1825, 250,000 people in Britain earned their living as handloom weavers, the large majority in Lancashire. Handloom weaving became extensive in Whittle-le-Woods and while it was not the only means of employment in the township, it was by far the most common right up to mid-century.

The growth of handloom weaving led inevitably to the construction of cottages with attached loomshops to accommodate the weavers. As cotton preferred a damp climate, loomshops were generally situated in basements. The most familiar design was a terraced house with a basement loomshop half below ground level and with a long window to let in as much light as possible. The rest of the house was raised up above ground level, with steps up to the front door, leading to a parlour and scullery and two bedrooms on the upper floor. Later, when improvements were made in the use of size to strengthen thread, cottages were sometimes built with loomshops on the ground floor, next to the living area.

A handloom weaver's cottage on Chorley Old Road. The basement loomshop's windows (partly hidden behind the wheely bins) have been bricked up

Handloom weavers’ cottages could be built anywhere there was spare land and an enterprising landlord, but they were often constructed as streets of terraced houses, forming a “colony” of weavers. At least three such colonies can be identified in Whittle-le-Woods. One was in the area then known as Rip Row, near the basin of the Lancaster Canal. Another smaller colony was on Town Lane, above the Leeds-Liverpool canal and below Copthurst Lane. The third and largest included terraces along Chorley Old Road north of Dolphin Brow, the area around Union Street and the modern recreation ground and the small streets further up the hillside towards Carrwood Lane. This became the centre of the village of Whittle-le-Woods and as well as the inevitable public houses acquired other amenities including shops, a police station and the village stocks. There were no handloom weavers’ cottages on the current A6 Preston Road in Whittle as it was not constructed until 1825, when the growth of handloom weaving had peaked.

19^th century street names within this “colony” are evocative. Club Street (now part of Chorley Old Road) and Union Street betray their origin in “terminating” building societies. These early local societies allowed individuals of relatively modest means, often local tradesmen, to club together to pay a regular subscription that went towards building a row of houses, which were shared out among the subscribers. When the houses were completed, the society was wound up, or “terminated”. Other names, such as Paradise Street or Mount Pleasant, sound ironic to modern ears, but when new they included state-of-the-art dwellings, and handloom weavers had relatively easy and prosperous lives. A late 19^th century historian, Andrew Hewitson (cited by Nigel Morgan), wrote the following rather cynical account of Preston’s handloom weavers of the 1820s:

“…at that time it was a paying affair. Weavers could afford to play two or three days a week, earn excellent wages, afterwards wear top boots, and then thrash their wives without the interference of policemen…Cock-fighting, badger-baiting, poaching, drinking and dog-worrying formed their sovereign delights; and they were so amazingly rude and dangerous that even tax-collectors durst not, at times, go among them”.

If this was also the case in Whittle, its stocks were perhaps both necessary and underused!

This row of handloom weavers' cottages off Carrwood Lane is the only survival of the "colony" that once dominated the Union Street area of Whittle-le-Woods

Handloom weaving was co-ordinated by “manufacturers”, who supplied thread to the weavers and paid them for the finished cloth. Sometimes manufacturers were also merchants, but in rural areas they were more likely to be middlemen, acting on behalf of merchants based in “Cottonopolis” – Manchester. One such was Thomas Brindle, who in the 1840s combined small-scale farming with acting as manufacturer to the colony around Town Lane.

By the 1840s, powerlooms were becoming commonplace and the era of handloom weaving in the cotton industry was coming to a close. However, it did not die out straight away and for some years handloom weaving complemented factory-based powerloom weaving. Handlooms could weave finer, better quality cloth and could make up production shortfalls in the factories during busy times. Also, many handloom weavers were reluctant to give up their relatively free and easy lives for the long hours and constant supervision of the mills. Handloom weaving continued in Whittle-le-Woods until at least the 1870s, two decades after the first weaving mill began production in the township.

As we have seen, that first weaving shed in Whittle was opened by Edward Leece at Kem Mill in around 1850. At the same time, he also built a new street of houses, Rock Villa Road, to accommodate workers at the new mill and a fine house, also named Rock Villa, for the mill’s manager. Whether this expansion led to Leece’s bankruptcy we do not know. Rock Villa road was also bought by Henry Ward when he purchased Kem Mill. He set up his son Joseph in Rock Villa house as manager of his newly acquired mill. Many early occupants of Rock Villa Road came from Blackburn, presumably tempted away from Ward’s other mills.

Rock Villa Road has been restored in recent years to something close to its 19th century appearance. Rock Villa house (now Highcliffe Care Home) is in the background

When purchased by Henry Ward in 1858 the mill contained 231 looms. By 1891 this had grown to 642 looms. Its products included, "jaconettes, mulls, checks, lenos, satteens, fine shirtings, etc" (no, me neither). By this time, Henry Ward had died (his son Joseph pre-deceased him). He had sold Kem Mill in the 1880s and in 1891 it was operating as Kem Mills Manufacturing Co. Ltd. By the 1930s it was owned by F.W. Brindle (along with Greenfield Mill, Chorley) and in the 1950s it became part of the group owned and managed by Cyril Lord, a well-known textiles and carpet manufacturer, who ran it until its closure in 1962.

As a footnote, the closure of Kem Mill contributed indirectly to the collapse of Cyril Lord’s organisation. After Kem Mill shut down, its machinery was shipped to Transkei, a so-called independent homeland established by the South African government under the apartheid regime. Along with equipment from two other Cyril Lord mills, it was used to establish a factory to manufacture poplins. A number of Kem Mill’s staff emigrated to work for the new business. Unfortunately, Cyril Lord was more enthusiastic for enterprise and (self) publicity than for market research and financial control (or for a moral compass) and the venture quickly failed. Along with other equally quixotic schemes, the Transkei poplin factory debacle contributed to the Cyril Lord group going into receivership in 1968.

Returning to the 19^th century, in 1891 a new weaving mill was built in Whittle-le-Woods (or strictly speaking just over the border in Clayton-le-Woods). Swansey Mill was named after the nearby ancient Swansey Farm. It was established and owned by James Nuttall Boothman, another self-made man who had begun as a two-loom weaver and had risen to become owner of Hollin Bank Mill, Blackburn, Mayor of Blackburn and Chairman of Blackburn Rovers football club. Boothman purchased the Clayton Green estate (which included land from Radburn Brow up to Swansey Lane) and as well as constructing the mill he built terraces of workers’ cottages along Swansey Lane and Preston Road and a grand house for himself – the Pines, a mile or so away at Clayton Green.

Swansey Mill is the only remaining cotton mill in the area. It now houses small businesses

Swansey Mill was steam powered from the outset, taking water from Carr Brook, which was culverted under the factory. When it opened it had 1,200 looms. Following Boothman’s death in 1909, the mill was taken over by his nephew, the aptly named Laurence Cotton and the firm continued to be known as Boothman & Cotton’s until its closure in 1958, a few years before Kem Mill met its demise.

Bleaching, Dyeing and Printing

Following weaving, cotton cloth is “grey” and must be bleached to remove stains and impurities from the manufacturing process. Prior to the 19^th century, bleaching was a lengthy business that involved soaking cloth in sour milk (or later in sulphuric acid) and hanging it outdoors on frames to be bleached by the sun – a process that could take up to eight months. In the tithe apportionment survey of the 1840s, over 60 fields in Whittle-le-Woods included the name “croft”, suggesting that they had once been used as bleaching grounds. By the end of the 18^th century, the invention of bleaching powder reduced the time required to complete the process to one day. Bleaching became factory based, with waterwheels or steam engines being used to power machines that washed and dried the cloth during the bleaching process.

After bleaching, cloth was sometimes dyed, a process that also used powered machinery to crush and prepare pigments. After this, the prepared cloth was ready to be printed with a wide range of designs and colours (it was an advantage of cotton over other cloths that it could reliably hold printed patterns despite repeated laundering).

Traditionally, cloth manufactured in Lancashire was sent to London, which was then the centre of the textile printing trade. The first print works in Lancashire was opened in Bamber Bridge in the 1750s and by the 1840s, 95 print works were listed in north-west England. Calico printing was originally done by hand (calico was the name given to printed cotton cloth), with the pattern etched onto wooden blocks, which were painted with pigment and the pattern printed onto the cloth by the printer systematically moving the block along the fabric. In the 1780s a printing machine was invented and first used in a works at Walton-le-Dale. This had the pattern on copper rollers and water or steam power was used to pass the cloth through the rollers while the pattern was printed onto it. As with weaving, however, the advent of printing machines did not immediately lead to the demise of block printing done by hand. For many years, intricate patterns were better printed by hand and block printing was also used to try out new patterns. The print works in Whittle-le-Woods combined machine and block printing until the second half of the 19^th century.

No fewer than three calico print works operated in the Whittle-le-Woods area from the late 18^th century, all originally water powered and using the river Lostock as their power source and for process water. We know quite a lot about the early history of these works, thanks to a remarkable hand-written document entitled “Chemistry of Calico Printing 1790-1835 and History ofPrintworks in the Manchester District 1760-1846”, written by John Graham in the 1840s and available online from Manchester archives. As well as listing the recipes for a bewildering number of printing pigments, Graham gives a brief description of each of the 95 printworks operating at the time and some entertainingly idiosyncratic comments regarding their history and value. He is uncomplimentary about Whittle’s printworks, which were indeed small and in sometimes unfavourable rural settings and which experienced multiple bankruptcies during the 19^th century.

According to Graham, all three works began operating within a few years of each other. Denham Springs mill (actually in Brindle parish, off Copthurst Lane) opened in 1783. It had a succession of owners, all of whom ended up bankrupt. As Graham remarked,

“It seems strange that men could be induced to carry on in these old premises for 50 or 60 years, being a great way from market, not capable of expansion and never profitable, only a few small old buildings and very little water and altogether appears a very unlikely place for carrying on the printing business successfully”.

At the time of his writing, the mill had only one printing machine, 19 short tables for block printing and a 24 hp steam engine. A small community of cottages along Copthurst Lane provided accommodation for workers and there was also the inevitable beerhouse. Despite Graham’s gloomy assessment, the mill continued to attract hopefuls for another 20 years or so before its final closure in the 1860s.

The chimney at Denham Springs Print Works looms above the trees that now largely hide the ruins of the mill. It is the only factory chimney still standing in the area. It was detached from the engine house and sited on a bank, in order to maximise the updraft

Lower Kem Mill was opened in 1784, a quarter of a mile downstream from Kem spinning mill (and strictly in Clayton-le-Woods township). Although the mills shared a name, they were never part of the same business – while a single firm may have carried out spinning and weaving, the finishing trades were invariably carried out by seperate firms. Kem printing works had as chequered an early career as Denham Springs. By the 1840s, Graham dolefully described it as “doing a low style of furnitures. Have only two machines and 30 tables, a poor place”. By the 1850s the mill was owned by Samuel Farrar, a native of Halifax in Yorkshire, who employed 20 men and lived on Chorley Old Road, near to Dolphin Brow. He ran the business for over twenty years and then it passed to Joseph Cunliffe, who combined calico printing with farming and also lived on Chorley Road, at the top of Cow Well Lane, before moving to Rookwood House (now part of Chorley & South Ribble District General Hospital). The business passed to his son, Albert Joseph Cunliffe, who in 1891 was living in Whinfield House, next to the works. The business thrived during this time and Cunliffe junior was able to move to a large new house, Claytonfields, on the hill overlooking the works, with the mill manager, George Whalley moving into Whinfield house. However, the good times did not last. In 1910, Cunliffe tried to sell Lower Kem Mill by auction but apparently did not attract any bidders. Then in 1914, the mill was destroyed in a huge fire and was never rebuilt.

The foundations of the buildings at Lower Kem Mill have been restored by Cuerden Valley Park Trust. These were the main bleaching and printing shops

The third print works in Whittle-le-Woods (and the only one actually within the township) was Lowe Mill, built on the site of a corn mill near to Waterhouse Green and deriving its name from the Lowe family, who owned the land. It began operating in 1791 and was owned by John Gill and after his death by his nephew, also named John Gill, until the business failed in 1840. John Graham was characteristically Eeyorish about the mill, describing it as “a very unfortunate place”. After a few further changes of ownership it was taken on by the Aitken brothers, who had moved down from Scotland when the Scottish textile industry began to falter. Like previous owners, they lived in a house next to the works. For a time, the Aitkens also owned Denham Springs Mill. By the 1880s the owners were the Low Mill Bleaching and Printing Co. Ltd. John Wareing was manager and the firm had a Manchester warehouse to store and display its wares. In the early 20^th century it became part of the Calico Printers Association Ltd., an amalgamation of 46 printing firms carried out as a defensive measure against rising competition from foreign manufacturers. The move could not halt the decline of the British calico printing trade and while it was the longest-lived of Whittle’s print works, Low Mill closed in the mid-1930s.

The date of 1925 on this building at Low Mill indicates that it was built towards the end of the mill's working life, though it is hard to work out the building's function

Low Mill was originally a small set of buildings, tucked away from the road near to its “lodge”. It gradually expanded as the 19^th century progressed to fill the rest of the site between Town Lane and Dolphin Brow. Relations between Low Mill and Lower Kem Mill, half a mile downstream, were not always cordial. In 1895, Joseph Cunliffe initiated a court action against the Low Mill Bleaching and Printing Co., accusing them of breaching a previous agreement not to hog and pollute the water of the river Lostock, thereby compromising Kem Mill’s business. The matter was eventually settled out of court. Originally, waste water from the bleaching and printing processes would have been discharged back into the river untreated, but later in the 19^th century both Low and Kem Mills constructed filter beds and settling tanks to purify the water before it was returned to the river.

The attractive lodge that once powered Low Mill is now a haven for anglers

Some Other Aspects of the Cotton Industry in Whittle-le-Woods

Cotton Industry Occupations: We have concentrated so far on the main cotton manufacturing occupations of spinning, weaving and printing, along with the mill owners and managers. As well as the ever-present overlookers, supervising the workers throughout their shifts, there were many other workers at the various factories, preparing cotton for spinning, thread for weaving and cloth for printing; assisting the spinners, weavers and printers; maintaining the machinery and so on. There would also have been many children carrying out simpler tasks that were not set down in census returns. A (non-exhaustive) trawl through Whittle’s 1871 census (when all three components of the cotton industry were being carried out in the township) has come up with the following list of cotton factory occupations represented among residents:

Beamer, carder, colour mixer, creeler, drawer, engine tenter, frame tenter, hooker, labourer, mechanic, night watchman, piecer, oiler, reed maker, roller coverer, self-actor minder, stitcher, stoker, stripper and grinder, twister, warehouseman, warper, winder.

Some of these are self-explanatory, but for definitions of less familiar terms, readers are referred to the very helpful lists of cotton industry jobs posted online by Andy Alston and by the W.R.Mitchell Archive.

St. Helen’s Chemical Works: This works was situated beside the Lancaster canal, off Birchin Lane, between Rip Row and Whittle Hills quarry. It was established in the early 1800s by Thomas Coupe, born in 1786, who described himself in 1851 as a “farmer of 120 acres and chemist employing 20 men”. Coupe lived at Oak Vale, a double-fronted house on Preston Road, at the foot of Swansey Lane (now Swansey garage). His works manufactured a range of chemicals for the cotton industry, but particularly mordants, which were combined with dyes and fixed the dye to the cloth. By 1871, Thomas, now 86, was retired (though that year’s census enumerator impolitely referred to the works as “Mr Coupe’s stewyard”) and the business was run by his daughters Ellen and Mary, employing 6 men. An 1882 directory lists the firm’s products as mordant, acetic acid, naptha and wood charcoal. The works were still in existence in the 1960s, though by the 1970s they were disused and the site is now a housing estate.

The Legacy of Whittle’s Cotton Industry Today

I have lived in Whittle-le-Woods for over thirty years. Many times I have walked down Kem Mill Lane past the fine weaving shed at Kem Mill, admiring its classic saw-toothed roof with north-facing windows, which allowed clear but not scorching sunlight to bathe the lines of powerlooms. Then last year, the shed was demolished to make way for an estate of luxury houses and I realised to my chagrin that I had never taken a photograph of it. How easily is our local history lost, if we take it for granted.

Of course, the weaving shed had long lost its original function. Whittle-le-Woods was not immune from the competition from cheap foreign imports that decimated the Lancashire cotton industry in the first half of the twentieth century. As we have seen, by the early 1960s (over 55 years ago now) there was no cotton manufacturing left in the old township.

So what remains of the industry that gave Whittle-le-Woods its raison d’etre? We have seen that cycles of growth and decay in the industry had been ongoing since the early 19^th century. The Old Factory and Kem spinning mill had been demolished by the 1890s. Many handloom weavers’ cottages also did not last the century; as a mark of progress the handloom weavers’ cottages of Rip Row were replaced in the 1890s by new cottages for the powerloom weavers of Swansey Mill.

Few handloom weavers’ cottages now remain in Whittle. The colony around Union Street was largely demolished in the 1960s to make way for new council housing. One terrace can still be seen, tucked away near the top of the hill off Carrwood Lane. Occasional cottages survive elsewhere, such as one on Chorley Old Road that was part of a small cluster rather than a terrace. Others may exist in apparently random places, many barely recognisable due to later alterations.

The buildings of Kem weaving mill have been demolished piecemeal over the years and none now exist. The site now houses Cheeky Monkeys play centre and some other small businesses in newer buildings, while the weaving shed, as we have seen, is giving way to housing. Swansey Mill is still standing, squashed among more recent housing estates and accommodates small businesses. The terraces of workers’ cottages built by J.N. Boothman still stand along Preston Road and elsewhere, neat and well-constructed.

Remains of the township’s three print works can still be seen. Denham Springs mill, closed since the 1860s, is a ruin, sited on private land but visible from Copthurst Lane. Its sturdy chimney looms above the river Lostock, the only factory chimney still standing in the area and its lodge is intact, though inaccessible. Lower Kem mill was demolished following the 1914 fire. In the 1960s the site was a sewage treatment works, but it is now part of Cuerden Valley Park and its foundations have been tastefully restored, with interesting information boards to explain the buildings and their functions. Its lodge has also been restored as a water feature for the park. Low Mill is now an industrial estate housing a maze of small businesses. A few of the mill buildings remain, though it is hard to work out their original function. The lodge is a well-kept amenity for local fishermen and walkers.

The information boards explaining the restored remains of Lower Kem Mill are the only attempts to commemorate the history of the cotton industry in Whittle-le-Woods

Finally, what of the mill owners’ houses? Some of the smaller houses that owners such as Samuel Farrar and Joseph Cunliffe senior occupied in the early days are likely to still exist on Chorley Old Road and elsewhere, their current occupants possibly unaware of their history. Oak Vale, Thomas Coupe’s house on Preston Road is now a garage and car sales business. Of the grander houses mentioned in this story, Waterloo Lodge was bought from Edward Leece by a well-to-do solicitor. In the twentieth century it was part of the offices of the Royal Ordnance Factory and it is now a private school. Rock Villa, once the dwelling of Kem Mill’s manager Joseph Ward was renamed Highcliffe, became an orphanage and is now a care home. Claytonfields, Albert Joseph Cunliffe’s house overlooking Lower Kem Mill is still a private dwelling, screened behind a plantation of trees (likely planted by Cunlife). Cunliffe’s previous dwelling, Whinfield House, adjacent to the mill, was demolished along with the mill, though a few stones can still be seen in a copse of trees.

J.N. Boothman's country house The Pines (latterly the Pines hotel) in the process of demolition to make way for a supermaket

Perhaps most evocative, however, is the fate of the Pines, J.N. Boothman’s grand house on Preston Road, Clayton Green. For many years it was a privately-owned hotel, but a year or so ago the owners sold up and inevitably, the site is to become a cut-pice supermarket. What would Boothman make of the fate of his business and his country seat? Come to that, what would he make of the fate of his beloved Blackburn Rovers, chaotically owned by an Indian chicken company and consigned to the third tier of English football?

Sources Used

Newspaper articles available at The British Newspaper Archive

Census returns available at UK Census Online 

Tithe maps available at Lancashire Archive, Preston.

Historic Ordnance Survey maps available at Old Maps
Trades Directories available at Lancashire Libraries and Historical Directories of England & Wales - Special Collections Online
Freethy R (2011) The story of Lancashire cotton. Newbury: Countryside Books.
Hodgkinson K (1991) Whittle & Clayton-le-Woods: A Pictorial Record of Bygone Days. Chorley: CKD Publications.
Morgan N (1990) Vanished dwellings: Early industrial housing in a Lancashire cotton town - Preston. Preston: Mullion Books 
Ollerenshaw P (2006) Innovation and corporate failure: Cyril Lord in UK textiles, 1945-1968
Rose M (ed) (1996) The Lancashire cotton industry: a history since 1700. Preston: Lancashire County Books
Timmins G (1977) Handloom wavers' cottages in central Lancashire. University of Lancaster

Timmins G (1996) Four centuries of Lancashire cotton. Preston: Lancashire County Books