King Cotton

By 1802 a shortage of workers led to the erection of the Apprentice House on Factory St by Mr. Part a factory owner. Over 100 orphans were brought from Liverpool to work in his mills as factory hands.

In 1827 a boiler explosion at Resolution Mill killed 11 workers

Cotton Mills opened in Tyldesley

1760 horse powered mill built for carding

1772 Johnson's 'Little Factory' for carding and spinning

1784 water powered carding factory erected next to Hindsford Brook

1791 carding and spinning factory in Well St., the first evidence of a steam powered spinning mill in Tyldesley

1792 Thomas Johnson builds The Great Leviathan, a large steam driven mill, firstly for woollen spinning but soon converted to cotton. On Factory St.

1794 Burgess and Cawley open another spinning factory near to Castle St.

1800 Part and Gregory open mill in Factory St.

1818 Tyldesley New Mill opened on Castle St. Built by the Jones Brothers. They also buy some of the older mills around Castle St. and Factory St.

1823 Resolution Mill. First of three mills built by Thomas Kearsley on Shuttle St. The mill employed 200 hands and cost £5000.

1824 second of Kearsley's mills erected on Shuttle St.

1826 Kearsley's third mill ( built during a trade depression and stood empty of machinery for 20 years)

1838 Hope Mill on Charles St. erected by Joseph Wilson

1839 Atherton Mill built by James Burton and Sons on Castle St.

1844 Barnfield Mill No1 erected in Union St. by Caleb Wright and Mr. Barton his partner.

1853 Lodge Mill built by Burton and Sons in Hindsford

1856 Field Mill built by Burton and Sons in Hindsford

1860 Westfield Mill built by Burton and Sons in Hindsford

1865 Barnfield Mill No2 built by Caleb Wright, Union St.

1870 Barnfield Mill No3 built by Caleb Wright, Union St.

1872 Barnfield Mill No4 built by Caleb Wright, Union St.

1891 The destruction by fire of Resolution Mills.

1894 Barnfield Mill No6 built by Caleb Wright, Union St. The last cotton mill in Tyldesley.

Tyldesley was a cotton town. Its spinning mills dominated the skyline. The aerial photograph below is dominated by the Barnfield Mill complex in the centre of the picture. Caleb Wright's No 6 mill , built in 1894 was the largest mill established in the town. Other mills, older and smaller, can be seen to its left.

In the 18th century and before the 1820's many people in Tyldesley were handloom weavers. They wove cotton cloth, usually muslins, in their own homes.A Description of Tyldesley in 1795

" The Banks of Tildesley, in the Parish of Leigh, are about one mile and a half in length, and command a most beautiful prospect into seven counties : the springs remarkably clear and most excellently adapted to the purposes of bleaching. The land is rich, but mostly in meadow and pastures, for milk butter, and the noted Leigh cheese. The estate had, in the year 1780 , only two farm houses and eight or nine cottages, but now contains 162 houses, a neat chapel, and 976 inhabitants, who employ 325 looms in the cotton Manufactories…………………"

(J. Aikin : A Description of the Countryside from 30 to 40 Miles around Manchester , 1795)

The first mills were erected to provide a local supply of carded and spun cotton. Tyldesley became a cotton spinning town. At its height 12 cotton mills have been identified in the town.

For a discussion of the bitter Tyldesley spinners strike of 1823 click here

Tyldesley was ideally situated. It benefited from an abundant supply of coal which powered the steam driven mills and a proximity to the great commercial centre of the cotton industry, Manchester , and the port of Liverpool. To both cities it was connected, first by the canal at Astley, a branch of the Bridgewater Canal opened in 1800, and later by a branch of the London and North Western Railway. Hindsford Brook and numerous springs supplied sufficient water to fill the lodges and feed the Lancashire boilers. Most the mills huddled together at the west end of town, close to both coal and water.

Although the industry had been in decline since the 1920's the last of the towns great spinning mills was not demolished until 1993.

Caleb Wright's Barnfield Mill No6 from Union St. Tyldesley.