cotton and canal - an examination of the impact of canals on the location of the cotton spinning...

7/30/2019 Cotton and Canal - An examination of the impact of canals on the location of the cotton spinning industry in Manc

1/55

COTTON AND CANAL

An examination of the impact of canals on the location

of the cotton spinning industry in Manchester in the

late eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries

Richard Simmons

1974

McConnel & Co.s mills, Ancoats, about 1820, from an old water colour

drawing of the periodFrom J. W. McConnel, A Century of fine Cotton Spinning, 1790-1913, (1913) Wikimedia Commons


2/55

1

Cotton and Canal, 1974

What follows was written in 1974 as an undergraduate dissertation for thedegree of BA (Soc. Sci.) Hons. in the Department of Economic and SocialHistory at the University of Sheffield, UK. The author was supervised by Dr.

Anthony Sutcliffe, who was then Reader in the department. The departmenthas since been merged with the History Department.

The dissertation investigates the relationship between the location of cottonspinning mills in Manchester, Lancashire, UK in the late eighteenth and earlynineteenth centuries, and the development of the canal system in the town.The core question it seeks to answer is whether there was a locational pulltowards the banks of the canals before railway competition emerged from the1830s onwards.

The dissertation concludes that although, over a number of years, some mills

were built with immediate access to the canals, they formed a smallproportion of the total. The majority of mill owners chose to site their factoriesin other parts of the town, often on newly laid out grids of streets at somedistance from the canal main lines, branches, or terminal basins. Somepossible reasons for these decisions are floated.

The dissertation, as an undergraduate project, was necessarily limited inscope. The counter-intuitive findings did, however, interest the authorsufficiently to motivate him undertake a study of the location of the steelindustry in nineteenth century Sheffield for a PhD at the University ofLeicester. That thesis is available online at http://hdl.handle.net/2381/27859.

This version of the Manchester cotton industry dissertation was produced inApril 2013. It was scanned from a typescript produced by the authors mother(whose original efforts with his handwriting were much appreciated!), usingthe optical character recognition (OCR) facility built into the VueScan scannerdriver (www.hamrick.com). The maps were also scanned, the larger onesbeing assembled using Adobe Photoshop and DoubleTake for Mac OS X(echoone.com/doubletake/).

Every effort has been made to iron out any errors introduced through the OCRscan. VueScan is very accurate but one or two may have been missed. The

author has left most of the text as written, but has corrected some of the worstof the grammatical mistakes he made when writing the paper. Enough remainto show the haste with which he wrote when faced with an impendingdeadline. Authenticity has also been preserved by using a typewriter-styletypeface, and preserving the original pagination (top right of page), alongsidenew page numbers for the 2013 edition (bottom of page). Captions andsymbols on the maps have, where necessary, been replaced in Photoshop toimprove legibility.

Dr. Richard Simmons, April 2013.


3/55

2

R. T. SIMMONS Department of Economic History, University of SheffieldUrban History: Special Subject, 1974.

2013 edition, with some typographical corrections

and a small number of updated references.

COTTON AND CANAL

An examination of the impact of canals on the location

of the cotton spinning industry in Manchester in the

late eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries

Introduction pp. 1 4

Manchesters Waterway Network pp. 4 12

The Cotton Industry

Its development in Manchester pp. 12 - 19

The location of the industry pp. 19 - 29

Conclusion pp. 29 - 35

Bibliography

Maps l - 6 Maps 2 and 4 have been scanned and appended to the

2013 edition of this dissertation because they were

modified to show the location of contemporary cotton

mills. Maps 1, 3, 5 and 6 are described in the text but

have not been scanned because they have not been

modified and so are not the authors copyright. It is felt

that the descriptions in the text are clear enough toconvey the authors findings, but copies of the maps

should be available from Manchester City Libraries

if required. A number of other contemporary maps

could, as of April 2013, be found at:

enriqueta.man.ac.uk/luna.

Unfortunately Map 4, a photocopy in two parts,

originally Sellotaped together, has faded and suffered

deterioration of the Sellotape, though it remains

sufficiently legible to fulfill its function here.


4/55

3

1

INTRODUCTION !

The last years of the eighteenth century and the commencement of the

!nineteenth saw an unprecedented growth in the towns of Northern England. The !most

striking growth, certainly in the early part of the period, came in the ! towns of

Lancashire and, of these, it was the expansion of Manchester and ! Liverpool which was

the most spectacular and so caused the greatest comment ! at the time. In the 1850s

and l84Os a number of writers both from England !and from the Continent turned their

attention to Manchester. Some, such as !Engels, raised their hands in horror at the

excesses of capitalist enterprise !and others, such as W. Cooke-Taylor, were full of

praise for the economic ! progress and prosperity which the textile towns had brought

to the country. By then the factory system was the established norm for textile

spinning and !weaving and, indeed, the cotton industry had already passed its first

peak! of prosperity and was in the depths of a major slump. !

Arkwrights first real mill at Cromford, built in 1771 [1] had quickly been

!copied throughout the North [2] and as spinning, weaving and building technology

!improved, so mills became larger and, with the introduction of steam power, ! more

independent in their location decision. One of the chief factors !affecting this decision

must always be the cost of transport and this was ! especially true for a period when

transport was necessarily both difficult! and expensive. The main transport costs

facing a firm during the time of the ! Industrial Revolution, as now, would comprise the

cost of importing raw !materials, the cost of distributing the finished goods and, in the

case of!steam powered mills, the cost of carrying fuel. It is clearly in the interests ! of

the entrepreneur to minimise these costs and this is particularly true of an industry

such as cotton, where raw materials and fuel are both bulky and ! heavy.

1. E. Baines. A History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, London (1835,

1966), p.210. !

2. ibid. p.219.


5/55

4

2

Before the l76Os the only means of transport available to the nascent

!entrepreneurial class were the river navigations and the road network, such as !it was.

The roads of the counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire were, to say! the least,

rudimentary at this time. It is recorded that there were only three major roads [3] of

any importance in Lancashire in the l74Os and the main !carriers were the waggon and

the packhorse. The packhorse was the more !reliable and versatile of the two,

especially suited for the conditions of the !trade between Yorkshire and the cotton

towns of Lancashire. The Mersey and ! Irwell River Navigation which connected

Manchester with the port of Liverpool! had, around the middle of the century, a virtual

monopoly over the carriage of heavy or bulky materials such as cotton and timber. It

was regarded !as unreliable and dangerous by contemporaries and its tolls were seen

as ! excessive.

!It is hardly surprising that the introduction of canals to the area, ! which began

in the 1760s, was greeted with rapturous praise, especially since !the first real canal

contrived to carry vessels oer vessels, water under !water [4] on Brindleys famous

aqueduct over the Irwell. The commercial benefits !brought to Manchester were

obviously considerable and, by the end of the ! century, there were canal links over the

Pennines into Yorkshire, to the cotton !towns of central Lancashire and to the

Midlands and London by a number of! different routes. Manchester was an obvious

point for a junction of canals, !as it had already established a position of importance as

a marketing and !finishing centre for textiles and, latterly, a centre for spinning and

weaving. Thus Manchester developed a considerable infrastructure of canals, albeit

less! extensive than that of Birmingham, which extended for several miles throughout

that city.

3. L. S. Wood and A. Wilmore. The Romance of the Cotton Industry in England,

London (1927), p.l04.

4 !. C. Hadfield and G. Biddle. Canals of North-West England (2 vo1s.), Newton Abbott

(1970), p.26.


6/55

5

3

At the time it was quite usual for factories to locate on the banks of the canals

and also for the canals to divert slightly from their course, as happened in

Birmingham, or to build branches in order to take in the premises of firms who might

provide business. Many companies had wharves or loading bays, either into company

warehouses or into their factories. On the Sankey Brook Navigation, for example,

Robert Daglishs factory was situated adjacent to the canal [5] as was the Parr Colliery

where, according to the advertisement in a local newspaper, The waggon road and

other conveniences are fixed in such a manner that flatts may be laden in a few hours.

[6] Particularly in country areas, therefore, it was quite usual for factories, especially

those involved with bulk commodities, to locate immediately beside a canal. This was a

logical decision since they formed the cheapest and, to use a word popular with

contemporary advocates of the canal system, the most commodious form of

transportation available. Two questions arise from this point.

The first of these is the extent to which canals exerted a demand pull

influence over the entrepreneurs location decision, and the second is the extent to

which any such demand pull idea is applicable to the situation in a major town such

as Manchester. It has been a longstanding belief with many historians that factories in

towns, and particularly in Manchester, were located next to the canals as a matter of

course and accounts of the city, dating from the 1830s and later, tend to back this up.

There is no doubt that by the 1870s the banks of Manchesters waterways were

crowded with factories and warehouses, to the extent that if one walks along the

towpaths today [6a] one is left with the impression of having passed through a sort of

industrial canyon with a vista of severe mill walls and tall factory chimneys. It is the

intention of this essay, however, to endeavour to show

5. ibid. p.68

6. Williamsons Liverpool Advertiser, 23 Nov. 1757. Quoted in Hadfield and

Biddle, p.45

6a. That is, in 1974 when the dissertation was written.


7/55

6

4

that such locational decisions result from factors other than the attraction! of the

canals.!

The example of the cotton spinning industry has been taken for a number!of

reasons. Firstly, it is an industry which requires bulky raw materials - raw! cotton

bales and coal for steam power - and which has a fairly bulky end-product. !It was thus

an industry which, more than most others, would require easy and cheap transport of

a large volume of goods. Cotton also formed the staple !industry of Lancashire at the

time and Manchester was the market and distribution ! centre for cotton goods. It was

situated in a relatively rich coal producing!area and would thus seem a natural choice

for the location of cotton production. It was hoped, therefore, that cotton spinning

would prove to be better documented than other industries in the town (a hope which

proved to be largely !unfounded in fact). However, in the contemporary works which do

exist it is !generally the cotton spinning industry which is taken as the chief of

Manchesters! industries after the marketing and brokerage function. For these

reasons,! it seemed that the cotton industry would provide a representative example of!

the patterns of development of Manchesters industrial infrastructure.

MANCHESTERS WATERWAY NETWORK.

Before examining the consequences of canal construction on factory! building

in Manchester, it is necessary to examine in closer detail the ! development of the

towns waterways, and of its cotton industry, and their !relationship to the general

growth of the town. The recent revival in ! interest in canals has meant that a good deal

of research has been done into their history, particularly the exhaustive canal

histories by Charles Hadfield. [7] The cotton industry remains less well documented,

particularly in the Manchester area.

!7. See bibliography.


8/55

7

5

The first navigation to serve Manchester was the Mersey and Irwell ! River

Navigation. An act of 1720 empowered the undertakers to make the ! rivers Mersey

and Irwell navigable, from Manchester to Liverpool, in the county palatine of

Lancaster [8] with a maximum toll of 5s.4d. (l6p) per ton on all goods. [9] The

navigation was undoubtedly meeting a local demand. !A contemporary stated that: the

land-carriage betwixt Manchester and Liverpool ! doth amount to about Fifteen

hundred Pounds per annum. [1O] There was a! considerable trade from Liverpool to

Hull in which the route from Liverpool to !Manchester was a vital link [11] - indeed,

Manchester formed a collecting point ! for the export trade from Yorkshire throughout

the century. Dr. Aikin, for ! instance, writing in 1795, tells of the extent and importance

of the packhorse ! trade between Manchester and the West Riding of Yorkshire as well

as the towns ! of Lancashire. He says this trade was at its height between 1730 and

1770, ! when chapmen would ride out to carry wool to outlying domestic weavers, the

!finished worsted being brought back and sent to Liverpool for export. A similar !trade

was carried on with towns such as Saddleworth, Rochdale and Oldham and ! already a

crude division of labour between the towns was developing, with one !town

concentrating on spinning, while others concentrated on dyeing or weaving. [12 !]

Manchester was already developing its traditional role as a collecting and marketing

centre for the textile areas of the North even at this early stage, before factory

production had begun on any recognizable basis.

By 1734, the Mersey and Irwell was navigable [13] and in l740 a quay was

opened at the end of Quay Street, [14] clearly discernible on Map 1 [15] as an

isolated street some distance from the centre of the town. This represented

8. J. Priestley Navigable Rivers and Canals, London (1831), reprinted Newton Abbot

(1969), p.448-

9. ibid. !

10. Quoted in Hadfield and Biddle, p.15.

!11. ibid. !

12- Dr. J.- Aikin- A description of the country from 30-40 miles around Manchester,!

London (1795), pp. 183 - 191. !

13. Hadfield and Biddle, p. 17.

!14. ibid. p. 18.

!15. Map 1 : A plan of the town of Manchester and Salford in the County Palatine,of Lancaster by R. Casson and J. Berry. Reprinted by Manchester Libraries !Committee

(1969).


9/55

8

6

the upper limit of navigation until l84O [16] and this probably explains !its rather

isolated site, together with the need to have land available for ! further expansion of

warehousing. The navigation began to prosper as the trade of the town grew. In 1753 a

local paper announced the launching at ! our Key (of) a new vessel called the Smith.

Tis said, the proprietors !intend to build some more, as the Navigation is considerably

increased within !these late years. [17] At the same time there was growing

competition from the turnpike roads and tolls were now standing at 6s.8d. (}3p) per

ton. [18]

Meanwhile, the demand for coal in Manchester appears to have been ! growing.

One of the chief arguments used by the promoters of the Sankey! Brook Navigation

(which connected with the Mersey and Irwell) in promoting! their Bill was that the

town consumed great quantities of coal and fuel! which had to be carried between

four and ten miles by land [19] - a cumbersome !business since it necessitated the use

of carts, often over unmade and ! difficult roads. This coal must largely have been for

domestic use and for ! the large number of dyeing and bleaching works in the town, [20]

which would ! use the coal for heating water. Steam engines had not yet come into use

in !the town. In 1759 the Salford Quay Company had been formed to carry goods ! on the

river, in order to try to break the Old Quay Companys monopoly !(the Mersey and

Irwell proprietors coming to be known by this name after 1760). [21] Even so, the

Duke of Bridgewaters collieries could not, it seems, gain a low! enough toll for the

product of their mines at Worsley. As it was, the Duke was paying 9/- (45p) to 10/-

(50p) per ton for the carriage of coal by! road. [22]

16. Hadfield and Biddle, p.18. !

l7. Manchester Mercury, 17 April 1753, quoted in Hadfield and Biddle p.19.

i8. Hadfield and Biddle, p. 19. !

19. ibid. !

20. E. Raffald. The Manchester Directory for 1772. This book shows very large!

numbers of people engaged in these activities in the town throughout the list of

inhabitants.!

21. Hadfield and Biddle p.20.

22. ibid.


10/55

9

7 !

Obviously this did not represent a price competitive with coal carried on !the Mersey

and Irwell direct from collieries adjacent to the river (or on the ! Sankey Brook after its

opening in l757) [23] or from the collieries situated ! nearer Manchester, such as those

at Bradford, (Lancs.) [24] It was, therefore, !largely to tap the expanding Manchester

coal market that the Duke of Bridgewater !set about the construction of his canal from

Worsley. Although originally! planned to terminate in Salford, the route was changed

by the engineer, ! James Brindley, so as to cross the Irwell at Barton by an aqueduct

and thus, !the canal finally terminated in Manchester on the south-western outskirts of!

the town at Castlefield Hill where a basin was built [25] (marked On Map 2) . [26 !] The

first wharf was opened in l765, although the canal had effectively been! supplying coal

to the town since 1765, when its first terminus at Cornbrook! had given easy road

access to the town. [27] Warehouses were built by the Duke !and by Henshall and Co.,

and Gilbert, Worthington and Co. (later the Grocers! Company), and these facilities

were extended in the l78Os and l79Os. [28 !] Traffic was quite heavy, even in l766, as

Hadfield and Biddle quote a! contemporary letter writer who compared Castlefield

wharves to a sort of! Maratime Town or Dutch Seaport with traffic consisting mainly

of coal, ! timber and corn barges. [29] The geological structure of the site being such ! as

to place the basin well below the level of the town, a shaft was driven ! down to a tunnel

at the level of the canal. From here, containers of coal! brought straight from the

underground canals in the Dukes mines were hauled !up to street level by a water-

powered crane where they were unloaded, presumably!

23. T.C. Barker and J.R. Harris. A Merseyside town in the Industrial Revolution, StHelens, 1750-1900, Liverpool (1954, reprinted with corrections, 1959), p.21. !

24. Aikin. Description of Manchester, p.43.

25, Hadfield and Biddle, pp. 20-27.

26. Map 2: A topographical plan of the towns of Manchester and Salford and

the adjacent parts shewing also the different allotments of land proposed !to be built on,

as communicated to the surveyor by the respective proprietors; by Charles Laurent

Engineer (l793). Reprinted, Manchester Libraries Committee (1969). !

27. Hadfield and Biddle, p.26. !

28. ibid. pp. 26-27.

!29. ibid. p.27.


11/55

10

7A

into carts for delivery. Each of these containers carried 8 cwt. of coal ! but there were

also more conventional wharfage facilities, which could handle !barges of up to 50 tons

at an open quay. [3O] This difference in the level of! the canal may prove to be of some

significance later in the argument. An examination of Map 2 will show the nature of

the land to be uneven and !hilly, and the prevailing slopes to be rather steep.

The immediate consequence of the opening of the canal seems to have been !the

reduction in the price of his coal for which the Duke had hoped. Indeed, !it would

appear that he was able to offer coals at half the previous price. Priestley, for example,

says that the coal proved of great advantage to ...the ! town of Manchester and the

surrounding country, from the facilities (it has)! afforded for the transit of

merchandise, and in reducing the price of minerals, ! which before the execution of

these works, could only be obtained at nearly !double their present value. [31] Indeed,

all his contemporaries seem to have !been full of praise for the noble Duke. Even his

opponents in 1825, the !proposers of the first Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill,

who strongly !criticised the proprietors of the Mersey and Irwell, went out of their way

to !laud the Egerton family, and the late Duke in particular. [32] Obviously, even in!

death the influence of the old Duke was such that it was unwise to antagonise !his

relatives. In fact it seems likely that, although the canal was ! undoubtedly a great

commercial success, its importance for the town of Manchester !has been at least

slightly exaggerated. Its success as a financial undertaking !is not in doubt. Priestley

estimated that capital outlay had been around! 220,000 and that annual income was

somewhere in the region of 130,000 in the late eighteenth century, while the

Marquis of Stafford, its proprietor in 1830, was said to receive 260,000 per annum

in revenue from the undertaking. [33]

30. ibid. !

31. Priestleys Canals and Rivers, p.93.

32. Proceedings of the Committee of the House of Commons on the Liverpool and

Manchester Railroad Bill, Parliamentary Papers, Sessions, 1825. p.2.

(afterwards referred to as Liverpool and Manchester Railroad Bill, 1825).

33. Priestleys Canals and Rivers, pp. 92-93.


12/55


13/55

12

9

of fierce conflict between different groups of proprietors [44] and this too may have

some bearing on later arguments.!

The Dukes halving of the price of his coal in Manchester was, as has been ! said,

recognized as a great triumph for his ingenuity, or rather that of Brindley. Even so, it

seems that the Duke by no means captured the market for coal in Manchester. Dr.

Aikin, while giving the same figures as Priestley for the ! price reductions, gives further

information regarding the supply of coal in ! the 1790s. He states that The supply of

coals in Manchester is chiefly !derived from the pits of Oldham, Ashton, Dukinfield,

Hyde, Denton etc... while the supply from the Duke of Bridgewaters Pits at Worsley

is less considerable, although a very useful addition for the poor. [45] In 1836, the

Dukes canal carried only 20% of the coal brought to the town. [46] As the Bridgewater

companys own fleet of boats numbered over 500 vessels, [47] however, it seems that

a brisk trade in general merchandise must have been carried on, as the figures given

earlier for coal tonnage as a proportion of total cargoes !suggest. In 1825, the

Bridgewater and the Mersey and Irwell were together ! carrying around 1,200 tons of

goods a day. [48] Both navigations, then, managed !to maintain a healthy financial

situation throughout the period covered, ! and both carried large quantities of cotton.

[49] !Considering the success of the Dukes canal, it was hardly surprising!that others

rushed to copy the idea in the hopes of connecting all the major ! towns of England, thus

facilitating internal trade. Still, Manchester had to wait thirty years for the completion

of her other two major canals the Rochdale

44. The Ashton and Rochdale Canals delayed their junction for a number of! years due

to a similar dispute over tolls.

45. Aikin. A Description of Manchester.

46. Mather. After the Canal Duke, p.2.

47. ibid.

!48. Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill, 1825.

49. ibid. p.4. and p.568.


14/55


15/55

13

10 !

and the Ashton-Under-Lyne. [50] Both these canals had transpennine connections, -

the Rochdale connecting with the Calder and Hebble Navigation near Halifax,! the

Ashton with the Huddersfield Narrow Canal in Ashton-Under-Lyne. In addition, the

Ashton joined the Peak Forest Canal and so had access to High Peak limestone. !From

the 1830s onwards, the canal was connected to the Midlands and London !by the

Macclesfield canal. A branch was also built to Stockport to meet the ! needs of that town.

(See map opposite).

Proposals to build a canal via Rochdale into Yorkshire had first been mooted !in

1766. [51] The idea was dropped but was revived in the 1790s when canal! mania

swept the country. [52] In 1798, the canal was opened as far as Todmorden and it was

finally completed in 18O4. [53] Like the Bridgewater, the Rochdale was built to carry

full-sized barges of 74 x l4 2, although !its connection in Yorkshire, the Calder and

Hebble had a length restriction of 57 6. [54] Trade from Yorkshire could, therefore,

travel straight through to !Liverpool, whereas Lancashire traffic into Yorkshire had to

be transshipped !at Sowerby Bridge. A wharf was opened in Liverpool to encourage

through traffic from Hull and Hadfield and Biddle quote traffic figures as follows: [55]

50. The Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal, completed in 1808, and carrying coal

from Bolton and Bury to the Irwell has been more or less excluded from this !study

since it in fact lies in Salford. Although Salford was usually !included as part of

Manchester, at least until 1830, by commentators, it actually remained separate

administratively. Study of the maps through !the years will show, however, that the

M.B. and B. does not conflict ! significantly with the thesis, since there is very little

building of any !sort along its line. See Hadfield and Biddle, chapter IX, for further

details. of this canal. !

51. Hadfield and Biddle, p. 263. !

52. C. Hadfield. British Canals, Newton Abbott (l950, 5l, 62, 66, 69) see chapter Vl !

53. Hadfield and Biddle, p.274.

54. ibid. p.275.55. ibid. p.279.

All figures in tons 1812 1819

CORN 20,375 40,553

STONE 26,033 45,255

LIME 11,735 13,458

WOOL 3,070 4,452

TIMBER 3,186 6,270

SALT 4,127 2,820

MERCHANDISE 5,793 21,122

SUNDRIES 82,795 87,650

COAL 42,509 95,470

TOTAL 199,623 317,050


16/55

14

11 !

Once again, we get the picture of a canal with a healthy traffic situation, and one

particularly strong in the field of carrying coal and textile goods. ! There was

presumably also some cotton carried, as sundries represent a high !proportion of total

tonnage.!

Manchesters third canal, the Ashton, arrived at Ancoats before the Rochdale,

!in 1796, [56] though its line to Piccadilly was not completed until 1799 and its ! basin

was not connected to the Rochdale for another year. [57] The canal had a good ! supply

of coal, running through the areas which, as Aikin pointed out (q.v.), ! contained most of

Manchesters collieries. A branch was built to Oldham under !the Colour of the Clause

for taking Water into their canal [58] and thus additional! supplies of coal were

ensured to supplement those from Ashton and Dukinfield.! There was also a less illicit

branch to Stockport, a thriving spinning and ! weaving town, and the connections

already mentioned to the Peak Forest and ! Huddersfield Narrow Canals. Following the

pattern of Midlands canals, the ! Ashton was only narrow gauge, taking boats 70 0 x 7

0 - which once again !meant that while goods did not have to be transshipped before

boats connected ! with the Rochdale and Bridgewater Canals, cargoes in the opposite

direction! had to be unloaded at Piccadilly. The Ashton seems to have carried mostly

!coal, and limestone from the High Peak, and a number of new collieries were! opened

along its line, such as that at Doveholes. [59]

The Rochdale canal had, from its inception, been planned to run from the !

Bridgewater canal, thus, it was hoped, encouraging through trade from Hull to

!Liverpool. In 1799 the section from Piccadilly to Castlefield was opened [6O]

and so, by 1800, Manchester had a complete system of artificial waterways (though

56. ibid. p.295.

57. ibid. p.298.!

58. Rochdale Canal Co., minute book quoted in Hadfield and Biddle, p.295. !

59. E. Keaveney. The Missing Link. The author kindly lent me the manuscript! of this

book which is due to be published in Marple in June, l974. It ! concerns the history of

the Ashton canal and its restoration, completed in March 1974. Chapters 6 and 7 are

the ones quoted from in this paper.

60. Hadfield and Biddle, p.272.


17/55


18/55

15

12

!not connected to the Irwell). The Bridgewater basins at Castlefield and those ! of the

Rochdale and Ashton canals at Piccadilly were enlarged and extended !throughout the

period, and arms were cut from the canals to serve various ! warehouses and works.

The full extent of the system by 1830 is shown on Map A! and it will be seen that there

was a large number of branches, which are ! identified more fully on the supplementary

map taken from Hadfield and Biddle [61 !] and reproduced opposite. The canal

companies took care to pave the streets ! around their wharves to ensure good road

access, and their minute books contain several references to the cost of laying

limestone blocks or rubble in Ducie !Street and on Shooters Brow. [62] This, then, is

the situation in which the canal system stood in Manchester at the end of the period

covered by this paper, around 1850. !

THE COTTON INDUSTRY

ITS DEVELOPMENT IN MANCHESTER

Having given a brief history of the canals, we must now try to gain some !

understanding of the complex role which the cotton industry played in the !Mancunian

economy at the time. Manchester had been the centre of a textile !industry of one sort

or another for many years. Aikins description of the !putting out system has already

been mentioned. Even after waggons replaced !packhorses, chapmen still rode out with

pattern-books for the isolated ! producers. [63] Manchesters primary function in the

early eighteenth century !was as a market centre for raw textile commodities and

finished products,! and as a centre for finishing cloth and later also for dyeing it.

Brokerage! remained the towns chief industry throughout the period. There were a

large number of merchants and brokers in the town. In Raffalds Directory of l772

[64] - the towns first directory - over 1,000 establishments are recorded as being

occupied by either merchants or cotton manufacturers. The term cotton

61. ibid. pp. 276-277. !

62. Keaveney, The Missing Link. !

63. Aikin. pp. 183-191. !

64. E. Raffald. Directory of Manchester and Salford, (1772).


19/55

16

13

!manufacturer seems to have been applied ubiquitously to anyone connected with !the

trade, and it is impossible to determine how many of these manufacturers !were

themselves directly engaged in manufacturing. It seems more likely that the ! eighty or

so described as cotton spinners were those who actually produced! goods. Certainly,

it is they who are recorded in the later directories as having!premises in this or that

mill. [65] This point will be discussed in more detail ! later. The function of these

manufacturers is explained in the 1825 Railroad !Bills Minutes of Evidence, which

say that these people were used by the !producers of cotton goods to provide capital for

the purchase of fresh supplies of raw materials, payment being by a series of Bills of

Exchange. [66] This avoided the necessity for the producer to have large amounts of

floating capital before he ! could start production. They were used not only by the

manufacturers of the town, but also by the country manufacturers of Lancashire.

Thus Manchester was the ! centre of the cotton trade. Faucher gives some idea of the

trade system in 1844, which was probably similar to that of the late eighteenth

century, though, of! course, the speed of the process would be somewhat reduced by the

need to use ! waterways instead of railways. An order sent from Liverpool in the

morning! is discussed by the merchants in the Manchester Exchange at noon, and in

the ! evening is distributed among the manufacturers of the environs. In less than eight !

days the cotton spun at Manchester, Bolton, Oldham or Ashton is woven in the ! sheds

of Bolton, Stalybridge or Stockport, dyed and printed at Blackburn, Chorley! or Preston

and finished, measured and packed in Manchester. By this division of !labour amongst

the operatives in the manufactories, the water, coal and machinery! work incessantly.

[67 !]

This division of labour was increasingly noticeable during the latter !half of the

eighteenth century. Cotton had superseded wool as the chief raw material around the

middle of the century, [68] and one can see from Fauchers

65. e.g. Scholes Manchester and Salford Directory, Manchester, (1797).!

66. Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill, 1825, p. 579. !

67. L. Faucher. Manchester in 1844, London and Manchester, (l844),

Reprinted, London, (1969). pp. 15-16. !68. D. Read. Press and People, 1790-1850, London, (1961). pp. 4 - 9.


20/55

17

14

!example that the brokerage and finishing functions remain important in Manchesters

!economic structure throughout the century. Calico printing became increasingly

!important, and improved processes in the 1780s led to larger establishments !being

erected. [69] The pages of the Manchester directories show an increasing! number of

calico printers with each edition. Faucher tells us that these ! establishments were

situated on the banks of Manchesters rivers - the Irk ! supplying the tanneries and dye

works, and the Medlock supplying the calico printing! works and the machine shops

and foundries. [70] The high demand for water which these !works produced was

probably one of the factors in delaying the growth of actual ! cotton spinning in the

township.

It has just been shown that by l844, Manchester spinning formed an integral!

part of the manufacturing process. It is noticeable, however, that before the turn ! of the

century, spinning was not so significant. It is difficult to establish an ! exact estimate of

the number of mills in the town prior to 1800. Read, in his !book Press and People

quotes a contemporary writer who remains nameless. According to him, In 1786,

only one chimney, that of Arkwrights spinning mill! rose above Manchester. 15 years

later (1801) the town had about fifty spinning! mills, most of them steam, [71] On the

other hand, Faucher says that before 1800 , ! Manufacturers at Manchester were

limited to dyeing and dressing, and beyond this,! the capitalist was nothing more than

the Lyons capitalist of the present day, viz a taker in of goods from the weavers, and a

merchant in the disposal of them. [72] Could it be that Faucher was confusing the era

immediately before 1800 with an !earlier period in the development of the cotton

industry - that of the putting out system? At another point he also says, At the

commencement of the present ! century, Manchester was a town of little dealers and

manufacturers who bought

69. P. Mantoux . The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, London, ! (1928,

1970). p. 245.

70. Faucher. p. l7.

!7l. Read. Press and People, p.6. !

72. Faucher. p. ll.


21/55

18

15 !

unbleached fabrics in Bolton, dyed them, and then hawked them upon horseback !from

market to market. Commerce being but little, capital was necessarily !limited in its

operations. The manufacturers lived with extreme economy !and laboured and fared in

the company of their servants. A brick house was ! considered quite a luxury.

Manufacture was, strictly speaking, scattered in !the cottages of the peasants. [73]

This rather medieval picture is surely in !conflict with Dr. Aikins bustling

manufacturing town. Certainly, Arkwright !at least had a mill in Manchester, built in

1783 and using a steam engine to !raise water from the Irwell for its reservoir, [74]

and the Bridgewater canal ! was importing up to 600 tons of coal per day, [75] which

merely provided a useful ! addition for the poor. Faucher would seem to be

exaggerating the backwardness !of the town somewhat, probably in order to make the

rapid growth which Manchester !had experienced up to l840 seem all the more

spectacular. In fact, the !population of the town doubled between 1774 and 1801 and,

in the twenty years !up to 1821, it more than doubled again. [76] Faucher gives a

population !of 50,000 for 1780 and the sudden leap of 30,000 people before l80l is

probably! significant in indicating a similar leap in the advancement of the cotton

textile !industry.

While it was reliant on water power, the factory system pioneered by

Arkwright and others was confined to areas where there was flowing water available.

That is, its location was decided by the availability of an immobile ! source of power. The

obvious choice for siting factories was, therefore,! in the valleys of the Lancashire and

Derbyshire hills. With its close access to the marketing centre of cotton and cotton

goods, Manchester would appear to be

73. ibid. !

74. E. Baines. A History of the Cotton Manufacture, p.226.!

75. Raffalds 1772 directory states that between 3 and 15 boats each laden !with

5x8cwt. containers arrived in Manchester each day - i.e. 600 tons maximum.

76. Baines, in his Lancashire Directory for 1828 quotes the population of!Manchester

and its adjacent townships in 1774 as 4l,032 (p.115). Census !figures record that this

had increased to over 86,000 by 1801. [Comparative account of the population of

Great Britain, l80l, l8ll, 1821 and. 1831. Parliamentary Papers. Reprinted by the Irish

University Press, (1970). Population Vol. 1. p.134]


22/55

19

16

!the obvious place to site a mill. It should be remembered, however, that the! banks of

the rivers of Manchester were already pretty well crowded with the ! works of the dyers

and printers, and purchasing such land would probably have !proved expensive. It

seems unlikely, therefore, that there was much cotton ! spinning on a large scale in

Manchester before the 1780s. In 1783, however, Arkwright and Simpson built their

mill on Hunts Bank. They used steam power !to replenish a reservoir on the premises,

which supplied water turning a water- !wheel which drove the machinery. The

application of steam power would obviously! give the cotton industry the opportunity

to move down from the valleys onto !the plains, and would allow it a greater choice of

locations, especially with ! a view to obtaining a better supply of labour. One of the banes

of the industry !had been the need to import a good supply of labour in order to ensure

the ! continuation of production. Samuel Gregg at his mill in Styal, for instance, ! had

constructed a village for his workers, and used pauper apprentices who lived !on the

premises. [77] There would also be the added advantage of being able to move! closer to

markets, thus reducing transport costs, and the opportunity to locate !nearer the

canals in order to reduce these costs still further and improve the ! reliability of supply.

That canals would exert this sort of pull over industry! seems to be borne out by the

work of H.H. Segal, whose article appears in the !book Canals and American Economic

Development by Goodrich et. al. Segals model ! postulates structural changes in the

economies of areas contiguous to ! successful canals, prominent among which are the

shifts from agricultural to ! non-agricultural activities. His comparison of the

industrial structure of! the counties close to the Erie canal with those further away

shows that, on ! the whole, firms were drawn to the canal counties - i.e. that canals

would tend ! to attract industry to the areas which they served, given that industry had

an otherwise free choice of location. [78]

77. Act for the regulation of Mills and Factories, Select Committee Report,

First Report with minutes of evidence and appendices (184O), Vol. X. ! Command No.

203. !

78. H.H. Segal. Canals and Economic Development in Ed. C. Goodrich et. al.

Canals and American Economic Development , New York and London (1971) ! pp.235-

238-


23/55

20

17

The cotton industry seems to have been something of a reluctant bride where

its marriage to the steam engine was concerned. As we have seen, Manchester had

only 32 steam engines by 1800. This is almost certainly due to the fact that it was not

until 1789 or 1790 that steam power was applied directly to driving machinery in a

mill. [79] A large proportion of the engines in use before 1800 were probably pumping

engines. There were a number of obstacles to using mechanical forms of motive power,

the chief ones being the unreliability of the first engines, the unwillingness of Watt to

release his patents, and the hostility which he showed to developing forms of rotary

motion. [8O] In 1795 there were probably not more than 150 steam engines in the

country, most of which were used by mines and canals to drive pumps. [81]

(Manchester obviously had quite a high proportion of the total horsepower available

from steam engines, even though it only amounted to 430 horses power). [82]

Despite these problems, it seems that many of the manufacturers adopted a pioneering

spirit in the use of this revolutionary power source. If a contemporary folk song is to

be believed, the first weaving mill to be established in Manchester was to be powered

by steam, hopefully to be supplied with coal by the Duke of Bridgewater:

For coal to work his factory he went to the Duke, sir

begins the second verse. According to the song, however, it seems that Aikin

was not the only one to see Worsley coal as being a useful addition for the poor for it

goes on:

He [the Duke] thought all in the town would be stifled by the smoke, sir,

The Duke sent him an answer, it came so speedily.

The poor should take the coal and tDevil tMachinery.

The Dukes benevolence seems rather out of character, since he was usually

on the lookout for opportunities to expand his commercial interests and was

79. Liverpool and Manchester .Railway Bill, 1825, p.4. and

according to Baines History of the Cotton Manufacture (p.226) the first steam !engine

to directly power a cotton mill was erected by Boulton and Watt in 1789. !

80. Mathias, P. The First Industrial Nation. London (1969, 1971) p.136.

81. ibid. p.135.!

82. Faucher. p.11.

18


24/55

21

very definitely a man of business. Perhaps the reference to the town being! stifled by

smoke is part of an attempt to keep factories on the north-western ! side of the town, so

that the prevailing south-westerly winds would blow smoke ! away from the inhabited

area. Anyway, the song [83] goes on to reveal another major !obstacle to the use of

steam power - the fears of the workforce, since the !unfortunate owners, Messrs.

Grimshaw, lose their factory in a fire started by! machine breakers and the song ends

with the triumphant chorus: !

Then hey, the looms of Doncaster that lately have come down,

They never have been carried into Manchester town.

By the late 1820s, however, the situation had changed radically and !the

cotton manufacture was firmly established as part of Manchesters economic!

base.

Improved technology created better steam engines and bigger mills, holding! more

efficient machinery and more spindles, while steam powered weaving was ! coming to

be accepted. According to S.D. Chapman, In 1822 the representative ! size of the

Manchester cotton mill was still 100-200 hands, [84] but around this ! time, mills of

40,000 spindles began to take over from 4,500 spindle mills. [85] !In l842, W. Cooke-

Taylor, touring the Lancashire cotton belt, stepped from !his train and ..looked upon

the town [Manchester] for the first time from! the eminence of the terminus of the

Liverpool railways and saw the forest of! chimneys pouring forth volumes of steam and

smoke forming an inky canopy which !seemed to embrace and involve the entire place.

[86] Faucher tells of a spinning! mill in Manchester which employs 1,500 hands, and,

it has been asserted, that !another house in the same town exports annually 30,000

bales of yarn and woolen !stuffs weighing 1,500 tons. [87] He goes on to say that At

the present day,

83. The song Grimshaws Factory Fire probably dates from the 1790s. It refers !to the

burning of Messrs. Grimshaws weaving factory at Knott Mill in 1790. The mill was not

a success. Whether it was destroyed by machine- !breakers, or the owners for the

insurance money is uncertain. Reference !to the factory can be found in Baines History

of the Cotton Manufacture (p.229). !The song appears on the album King Cotton

(1972) by folk group Horden Raikes. At 25 April 2013 the lyrics and details of the fire

could be found at www.grimshaworigin.org/RobertGwMill.htm.

84. S. D. Chapman. The Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution, London (1973) !,

p.22.

85. ibid. p.26.

86. W. Cooke-Taylor. Notes on a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire.

London, (1842), Reprinted, (1968), p.2.87. Faucher. p.10.


25/55

22

19 !

Lancashire possesses three-fifths of the establishments devoted to the spinning! and

weaving of cotton; and there are more than 100 factories in the town of! Manchester

alone. [88] The proposers of the Manchester to Liverpool Railway in!1825 tell of 200

steam engines in use in the town in 1824, while the number of !steam powered looms

had risen from none in 1814 to 30,000 in l824. [89] Even so, !water power continued

to exert a strong pull until the late 1830s. In 1831, half of Britains cotton mills were

still on the banks of the Goyt and the! Etherow. [90] Not until the l840s did these mills

become uneconomical. [91]

LOCATION OF THE INDUSTRY.

The course of the growth of cotton spinning in Manchester has been traced! as

far as possible, taking into account the conflicting nature of the evidence, particularly

that for the period before l800, a time for which the records! available are confusing

and incomplete. It is now possible to examine in greater !detail the question of whether

the cotton spinning mills, freed from the burden of! having to site themselves by rivers,

would site themselves by the canals, which !provided the cheapest and easiest form of

transport available. It is assumed that ! by the late 1790s a fair proportion of mills in

Manchester had this freedom of! location - even when engines were not used to power

the mill directly, they! could be used (as in the case of Arkwrights mill) to replenish a

reservoir. !The canals could have provided a convenient water source, since water

could be ! returned after use. Many firms today [91a] use water from canals in their

processes [92 !] and revenue from this source forms a large proportion of the British

Waterways ! Boards revenue. It is assumed, then, that steam power had given many

mills! relative mobility. This seems to be borne out by the evidence to be presented.! As

was stated in the introduction, a large number of contemporary !and modern writers

have assumed that the obvious choice for a company faced with !high transport costs

for land carriage is to move adjacent to an alternative !

88. ibid. p.15.

89. Manchester and Liverpool Railway Bill, 1825, p.4.

90. C. Hadfield. British Canals, p.151.

91. S. D. Chapman. The Cotton Industry, p.35.

91a. That is, in 1974.92. E. Keaveney. The Missing Link.


26/55

23

20

form of transport. The point has already been raised, in quoting from Segals !article,

that firms tend to gravitate towards the waterways. Examples were! given in the

introduction of firms establishing beside canals in country areas !, where land carriage

was obviously very expensive given the poor roads available !at the time. No less a

writer than Adam Smith, speaking before the canal era! began, stated that by means

of water carriage a more extensive market is opened ! to every sort of industry ... so it

is ... along the banks of the navigable rivers! that industry naturally begins to subdivide

and improve itself. [93] Here, then, is !the father of classical economics stating that it

is by waterways that industry !must settle if it is to prosper. Faucher, in 1844, wrote

that in Lancashire a! factory may now be established close to a coal mine or by a canal,

which shall ! convey to it its fuel ... [94] He described the waterways system in

Manchester thus: !The canals pass under the streets, and thread their sinuous way in

every! direction, conveying boat loads of coal to the doors of the manufactories, and !

even to the very mouths of the furnaces. [95] This is the classical picture which! has

built up over the years - that of factories on the banks of the canals, with !their own

wharves, where boats would deliver to each factory its individual !cargo. Another

commentator of the l840s was Engels, whose Conditions of the !English Working Class

was published in England in l845. Based on a description ! of the industrial working

population of Manchester, it includes a terse ! description of the factories of Ancoats:

In ... Ancoats are to be found the !majority, and the largest, of Manchesters factories.

They are situated on ! canals, and are colossal ... [96] It is commentators such as these

who have ! led modern writers to think that this location occurred as a matter of

course.! Read, for example in his book Press and People, discussing the cotton

industry!in Manchester, says round the commercial nucleus lay many of the cotton !

factories of Manchester, chiefly along the rivers and canals. [97] There is general !

93. Adam Smith. Quoted in Mathias, p.108.

94. Faucher. p.93.

95. ibid. p.18.

96. F. Engels. Conditions of the English Working Class, London (l845), Oxford (1971).

[Translated by W. O. Henderson and W. H. Chaloner] p. 68.

97. Read. Press and People, p.8.


27/55

24

21

support from these writers then, for the theory that cotton manufacturers! would

follow the logical course of action, once freed from the need to use ! water-wheels to

provide motive power, and construct their establishments beside the waterways of the

town.

Remembering that all these writers (except Smith) were writing some !fifty

years or more after the original introduction of steam power, however, it does not

automatically follow that their testimony can be taken to indicate! an immediate rush

by cotton firms to gain direct access to water transport. ! It is necessary to examine

earlier evidence to verify whether this trend was, in !fact, a later phenomenon, if not

one greatly exaggerated. It is really to the!period before 1830 that one must look to get

a clear picture of the effects of! canal building, since it was in this year that the

Manchester and Liverpool ! Railway was finally opened [98] and, in the following years,

it was joined by the !Manchester and Birmingham, the Manchester and Leeds, the

Manchester, Sheffield !and Lincolnshire and the Bolton and Bury railways (this latter

being built by a! foresighted canal company along the line of their navigation). The

significance of! the event is made clear by Kellett: The opening of stations in the

Central !Business Districts of the provincial cities, and on the immediate periphery! of

the central areas in London, produced both a redistribution of land uses and a re-

alignment and stimulation of internal traffic routes. [99] Robbins adds that they

... would reduce the duration and the cost of the transport of !goods, so that the

manufacturer could almost at once begin to ignore the distance !that his products had

to be hauled over land as a serious element in the cost of! manufacturing and selling.

[l0O] In addition to the complication of the railways !, which affected land distribution

at about this time, it appears that the town ! entered a period of slump in cotton

manufacturing. Cooke-Taylors observation !that Until the present fearful shock

checked the natural course of manufacturing

98. M. Robbins, The Railway Age, London, (1962, 1965, 1970), p.21.

99. J. R. Kellett. The Impact of Railways on Victorian Cities, London, (l969) p.l5.

100. M. Robbins. The Railway Age, p.15.


28/55

25

22 !

development, Manchester was becoming daily more and more a commercial depot and

losing its manufacturing character [lO1] is useful in showing the depression in! cotton

production in the late 1830s and the early 1840s, though one would suspect ! that the

towns loss of its manufacturing character was a result of the! depression, since we

have seen that, at least until 1830, actual production of! cotton thread and cloth was

increasing in the town. !

There are a number of maps surviving from this period which give a fairly

!detailed outline of the town. Generally speaking, the town grew up from ! a centre on

the river Irwell (the map of 1650 inset on Map 1 shows the basic! core of the town). By

l746, the date of Map 1 itself, the town already possessed! the Exchange around which

the textile dealings of the area centred (illustrated! on the bottom right hand corner of

the map), and the isolated quay on the ! Irwell, connected to the town somewhat

indirectly along Kay (Quay) Street (its !relationship to the town can be judged from the

South-West Prospect at the ! bottom of the map). Study of some of the houses

illustrated around the map !would tend to indicate that a number of them probably

shared the functions of! living accommodation, offices and warehousing (note the

archways on Mr. Touchets ! house in Deansgate and on Mr. Floyds house near St.

Anns Square - Deansgate in !particular was a centre for merchants warehouses). [lO2]

The town in l745 does !not show any great change over its counterpart in 1650,

however, though the ! tendency to develop land to the south and east near Deansgate

and Market Street ! Lane is noticeable. There is very little development shown along the

banks of! the Irwell, however, and the Old Quay Companys warehouse and boat-

building yard, ! where the Smith (q.v.) was launched ten years later, are the only

signs of! interest in the river. It is also clear from the South-West Prospect that the

!banks of the river are quite high further into the town near the bridges. This !then, is

the nucleus of the later town, though there remains a good deal of the rural market-

town about it at this stage (Manchester was originally the site of

101. W; CookeTaylor. Notes on a tour etc., p.19.

102. Raffalds directory lists a number of merchants on this street and the 1797directory lists a larger number still.


29/55

26

23 !

the Roman camp of Mancunium and later developed into a market-town, being

!situated on a river crossing. The old market place was at the bottom of! Market Street

Lane). [lO3]

!Map 2 is Laurents famous map of 1793. It shows not only the development !of

the town since l740, but is also useful in showing land which it was proposed !to

develop at this time. Great expansion is the first noticeable feature of this !map,

especially along the banks of the Irwell, but also to the south-east of the town. A good

deal of warehousing has been erected along the edge of the !Irwell, [104] so that the Old

Quay Companys yard no longer stands isolated but forms! part of the town. To the

south-west can be seen the basin of the Duke of! Bridgewaters Canal with a number of

warehouses established. The Dukes own !quay is situated on the Medlock in Knott Mill,

the coal hoist probably being! situated in the warehouse at the end of the arm leading

from the main basin. ! Two other arms can be seen leading from the terminus but, apart

from this, there ! does not appear to be much development here. [lO5] A number of

streets have been !laid out on the Dukes land in Hulme but, as yet, they do not appear

to be ! built on to any great extent. The land formation around the canal can clearly! be

discerned from this map. The basin stands at the foot of Castlefield Hill !(site of the

original Roman fort), and this separates it from the town proper. Though streets have

been proposed (but not laid out) right down to the ! canalside, it does not appear that

anyone has taken up the option to build on !them. The canal is separated from the

Irwell by an area of uneven ground, and !the land on which the proposed streets are to

be laid out, being on the edge !of the Medlock valley, appears to slope steeply down to

the canal. It can also !

103. See Manchester and its Region - a survey for the British Association for the

Advancement of Science, Manchester, (1962), Chapters l-6.

104. Scholes Manchester and Salford Directory, Manchester, (l794, 1797).

105. Though Hadfield and Biddle on their map (p. 91) of the basin show the! area at the

foot of Castlefield Hill as a coal wharf.


30/55

27

24

be seen that a number of streets by the Irwell, off Water Street, remain unused. ! The

main areas of expansion in the town seem to be in Ancoats and, to a lesser ! extent, in

Ardwick. Note that the banks of the Medlock and (to a smaller degree) ! the Irk, do not

appear to be particularly crowded with any sort of building. At !this stage the Irwell

seems to have been the most popular source of water supply, with Traviss cotton mill

on the Irk taking quite a large amount of water from! that river to drive its wheel. The

number of new streets which have been laid! out clearly indicates that some local land

owners saw a good deal of potential! growth in the town.

By 1797 the Bridgewater canal had been open for nearly thirty-five years, a

period which, as has been shown, saw a great increase in cotton spinning in ! the town.

It is in this year that Scho1es second directory was published [1O6 !] (the first having

come out in l794). This directory is the first produced in! Manchester which makes any

clear distinction between the places of residence! and the business premises of the

population of the town. The earlier directories! produced by Elizabeth Raffald in 1772,

1775 and 1781, [107] and that of E. Holme in !1788 [108] give only lists of names,

followed by occupation and address. One ! concludes that either there was not much

separation of workplace and residence! before the 1790s, or else that the residents of

Manchester had no need of !such information. The 1797 directory, however, while not

departing from the !format of listing the population in alphabetical order, does make

this distinction, !so that it is possible for the first time to establish more or less exactly!

whereabouts in Manchester the cotton spinners were located, though not always as !

accurately as might be hoped. [1O9] Although the Ashton and Rochdale canals could

hardly have been expected to have had much impact on the location of factories

106. Scholes Manchester and Salford Directory, Manchester, (l794, 1797). !

107. E. Raffald. Manchester and 5alford Directory, Manchester,! (1772, 1773, 1781).

Reprinted 1881. !

108. E. Holme. Manchester and Salford Directory, Manchester, (1788).

109. Unfortunately, it is still difficult to establish the size of the spinning!

establishments and to sort out the factories from the shops of !individual spinners

producing specialized yarns. The directory (1797) ! makes no distinction. Those

connected with cotton fall into three basic !categories; merchants, manufacturers

and spinners. As has been stated !over 1,000 people were included in the first two

categories while the latter ! contained some 80 persons. The latter figure wouldtherefore seem to be a !more realistic estimate of the number actually engaged in

cotton manufacture.


31/55

28

25

in 1797, it would seem reasonable to assume that, as this was a period of !factory

building, any attraction which the Dukes canal or the Irwell navigation !could exert

would have been shown by a clustering of mills around the Hulme and !Knott Mill areas

or on the vacant banks of the river. Although we have seen that the ! Dukes coal was

not greatly used by industry in the l790s, it was on the waterways !that the raw cotton

reached Manchester and the finished goods were exported. Coupled with the coal

available, this fact might have been expected to induce !a demand for sites adjacent to

the canal. The map shows that the majority of!cotton Spinning establishments

(marked by red dots) were not in a position to! gain direct access to flowing water from

the rivers, and water-powered mills, with the exception of those on Long-Mill Gate and

Traviss mill, must have !used some form of steam power to replenish their reservoirs.

(Arkwright and !Simpsons factory was, of course, one such establishment and is

marked, with its

Footnote 109 (continued).! The figure of 80 may not be completely accurate, since in

order to establish the number of spinners in the town it was necessary to read through

an !entire list of the notable population of Manchester containing several ! thousand

names, because the directories before 1820 do not categorise by!occupation. It ispossible, therefore, that some names may have been ! overlooked, though not a

significant number. Again, some actual producers !might be listed as manufacturers.

Despite the attribution of premises ! to various individuals it is possible that some firms

may have been !overlooked through another cause - viz. that mentioned by Leonard

Horner,! a factory inspector in l840. In reply to the question, How many mills! are

there in your district? (the North-West), he replied, Before I ! answer that question it

may be right to explain to the committee what !I mean by a mill. I have between 1,700

and 1,800 distinct mills to look ! after; but that does not mean 1,700 to 1,800 distinct

mill owners, ! because some mill owners have several detached buildings; nor does it

mean !1,700 or 1,800 distinct buildings, because in one building there are! sometimes as

many as a dozen tenants; so that I feel a difficulty in ! defining exactly what that 1,800

applies to.* He goes on to say that in !1840, McConnells of Manchester, for example,

had three distinct mills. ! While every effort has been made to ensure that such oaseshave not been ! overlooked, it is possible that the directories might not have been

informed !of sub-letting, or might only have noted the address of a companys !

registered office. Other problems arise from streets which no longer exist ! and cannot

be traced on the 1793 map, such as Velvet Street (and this has led ! to the exclusion of

two premises) and the problem that street numbering! has changed since l797. Mills

have, therefore, been attributed to either ! the largest, or what seemed the most likely

premises on any street. As ! will be seen by reference to the map, this does not make

much difference ! to the argument and, despite these drawbacks, it is felt that the

pattern! of distribution of mills is so distinct that the premises cited give an !accurate

representation of the location of Manchesters mills.

*Factory Act Select Committee Report, 1840, loc. cit. p.1. Question 8.


32/55

29

26

!reservoir, off Shude Hill). Assuming Baines figure to be correct, there !must have been

somewhere between 25 and 30 steam powered or assisted cotton! spinning firms and a

number of water powered ones. (Reads figure of 50 mills !now begins to look quite

realistic). It is interesting to note, therefore, that despite the advantages which would

seem to accrue from the opposite decision,! most of the mills have chosen to establish

themselves on the other side of the ! town from the land vacant by the Irwell and the

Bridgewater canal. Only six or !seven cotton spinners are to be found in Hulme and

Knott Mill, while the rest !are concentrated in a belt round the north-eastern side of the

town in Ancoats, ! with a few choosing Ardwick. They have obviously chosen to site

themselves on !the new streets which have been laid out in these areas. Remembering

that the ! Rochdale and Ashton canals had either not opened, or had only been present

for !about a year, it does not seem that they would have been able to exert any great!

influence over the factory owners decisions. Although it is hard to verify the !situation

in 1794, for reasons already defined, the directory for that year would! seem to

indicate that this pattern was already established before these two canals were

conceived in any hard and fast form. [11O]

Map 3 dates from 1820 [111] and is on a smaller scale, showing the Ashton

and Rochdale canals in their completed form, connecting with the Bridgewater canal!

at Castlefield and passing beneath some of Manchesters main streets. A good !length of

the two canals is also visible extending out of the town to the ! north-east. [112] The

first thing which is noticeable from the map is the way in !which so many of the streets

in Ancoats and Ardwick in 1794 have now been built ! on, and more streets are planned,

particularly in Hulme. Faucher quotes a Mr. Howard, !making a Report on the

Sanatory Condition of Manchester in the l84Os, which ! describes this ongoing process

as follows: As (the) more central streets have

110. Scholes Directory, 1794. !

111. Plan of the Parish of Manchester in the County of Lancaster from a survey

made in the years 1818 and 1812: by William Johnson. Manchester, (1820) Reprinted,

Manchester Libraries Committee, (1969).

112. Note that from now on the axes of the maps are reversed.


33/55

30

27 !

been completed, others have been laid out in the outskirts, equally without !pavement

or drains, and into which, all the refuse, slops and filth from the houses are

unceremoniously thrown. [113] The canals have extended a number of! arms into the

town (more clearly shown on Map 4), but there does not seem to !be much development

on their immediate banks, even in the more central areas. Of course, the canal was

necessarily narrow and there are nine locks between ! Piccadilly and Castlefield, so that

the provision of unloading facilities! would not have been easy, but even the arms seem

to serve only one building! and Hadfield and Biddles map (q.v.) tends to suggest that

these were largely! independent warehouses. Outside the town itself, the canals seem

totally!bare of any building, passing through quiet rural surroundings. The Dukes

!

proposed streets in Hulme, beside the canal basin, are not even shown on this !map and

the land around the Irwell-Medlock confluence remains unused. This is !at a time when

there were over 200 steam engines in the town and the spinners! would seem to have

had maximum choice of locations.

A more detailed analysis has been made of the situation in 1830, when !the last

contemporary map which does not include the railway was made (Map 4). ! In this case,

Baines Lancashire Directory for 1828 has been used to locate !a sample of the cotton

spinning mills in the town. [114] The ten years since !1820 have shown a marked

expansion of the town into Chorlton and Ardwick, while Hulme is expanding steadily.

Despite this expansion, the banks of the !canals still seem relatively empty -

particularly the Bridgewater. The area! around the Rochdale Canal basin was already

fairly well built up in the 1790s ! and the mills along Union Street were mostly

established by 1797. Though !these buildings appear to have expanded a good deal

beyond their state in !1820, a large new mill has, however, appeared by the canal (near

the figure 28).

115. Quoted in Faucher, p.67. !

ll4. E. Baines. History; Directory and Gazetteer of the County Palatine

of Lancaster, Vol. II, Liverpool, (1825). Reprinted, Newton Abbott, (l968).


34/55

31

28

!There also appears to be some building on the Ashton canal, though nothing!very large

scale, but there is a mill on Hallsworth Street. Baines 1828! directory is not much less

confusing than that for 1797 (q.v. note 109). Once again cotton spinners [115] are

distinct from cotton manufacturers, [116] !and there are about a 100 listed as cotton

spinners. However, Baines adds !that About l0O cotton spinners will be found

incorporated with cotton ! manufacturers and, since some of those entered as spinners

are, in fact, ! agents for country manufacturers, [117] it was decided to choose a

sample! of 40 from those who were described as having premises in mills. Once !again,

these are indicated by red dots on the map. The mills will be seen ! to show a pattern of

distribution similar to that of 1797, being concentrated!in a belt around the town.

There is, however, a greater tendency to build ! mills further out, in Chorlton, Ardwick

and Hulme. A large number of branches !are defined by the map, but the only branch

which can be definitely deemed ! to be serving a mill is the Caledon Mill Wharf (labelled,

on the Ashton Canal). [118] !There does seem to be a number of mills along the line of

the Rochdale Canal. ! Nevertheless, the main tendency is for mills to locate on the new

grid-pattern ! streets being laid out on the outskirts of the town. The banks of the Irk

and !the Medlock are now much more crowded and there is a number of print works

!(also marked on Map 5) by the Irwell in Salford. Reference to Map 5 ! (1833), [119]

however, will show that, further up, the canals still remained ! undisturbed. Since it was

only about three miles from the centre of the !town according to Pigots map (Map 4),

and considering that new housing for the rapidly increasing population was being built

near to the factories all

115. Baines 1828 Directory, p. 312.116. ibid. p.505.

117. ibid. p.312.

118. Hadfield and Biddles map of the Manchester Canal System. (see opp. p.12).

!ll9. Manchester, Salford and their Environs; B. R. Davies. In History !of the County

Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster by E. Baines, (1836). !(Map dated 1833). Reprinted

by Manchester Libraries Committee, (1969).


35/55

32

29 !

the time, [12O] it seems unlikely that this was due to problems such as a! difficulty in

getting labour further out. Below the Medlock, the Irwell! still seems relatively

uncrowded: in fact almost barren. Map 6 [121] for !l848 shows surprisingly little

change - there still remains a good deal of! vacant land around the canals, despite the

descriptions of the various !contemporary observers. The main difference here, though,

is the arrival of! the railways, which Kellett argues would tend to disperse industry

from ! the central area and replace it with warehousing: Those heavy industries! whose

bulk requirements called for special rail facilities tended to falter at the central land

prices, and seek riverside or suburban accommodation. [122]

CONCLUSION!

It would seem, then, that rather than being eager to locate by the canals, !the cotton

industry in Manchester was reluctant to do so. Why should an !industry so heavily

dependant on heavy and bulky raw materials fail to make !what appears to be a

rational choice of site? The consequence of this ! decision seems to have been that

reliance was placed on carting services !which carried the goods from the canal

warehouses or wharves to the warehouses !and furnaces of the mills. Although not

much is known about the internal ! goods transport system in Manchester at this date,

it probably followed the ! general pattern of the nineteenth century and relied on the

horse and cart. ! The only reference available for this period is from the Liverpool and

!Manchester Railroad Bill of 1825s Minutes of Evidence. James Ramsbottom, ! a cotton

broker and merchant, told the enquiry that The Old Quay Companys ! servants usually

call at the warehouse to know whether we have any goods, and ! what time they will be

ready, and their carts call for them at the time we !request them to call, and they take

them down to ship them on board their !vessels. [123] Whether this service was

provided free of charge by the carriers

120. Engels. Condition of the Working Class, p.67.

121. A new plan of Manchester and Salford taken from actual survey in 1848; I. Slater.

Reprinted, Manchester Libraries Committee, (1969).

122. Kellett. Impact of Railways on Victorian Cities, p.16. !

125. Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill, 1825, p.577. paragraph l5.


36/55


37/55


38/55


39/55

33

30

as an incentive to use their waterway is not made clear, and no reference is made to it

elsewhere, nor to the other carrying companies having a similar !system. If it were a

widespread practice, it would obviously negate the need ! to locate by the canal, since

land transport to the factory premises was already !provided. In the absence of further

evidence, however, this must remain a! tentative suggestion. This firm might be an

exception - after all there were ! plenty of others prepared to give evidence that the

Mersey and Irwell was !an inefficient company. [124] It is quite likely that the cotton

firms would !provide their own land transport over short distances, or hire local

carriers, !in which case this must have formed an additional transport cost, albeit

!cheaper than a similar service in a country district.!

A number of other explanations might be offered as contributory factors ! in

deciding the issue. One which has been mentioned a number of times ! already is the

topographical nonconformity of areas of the town. Certainly!in the case of the

Bridgewater canal, no further reference can be found !before l848 to the streets

proposed in 1794 leading down to the canalside !in Hulme; and the rough, uneven

ground surrounding the canals entrance to the !city could probably provide a

satisfactory explanation in itself for the ! reluctance of manufacturers to build there. In

the case of the Irwell, too, !this is a possible cause. The land between the canal and the

river was ! eventually used for constructing the viaducts which took the Manchester

and !South Junction Railway into the city, and which still straddle the canal ! basin

today. On the other hand, the land on the other side of the canal, to ! which we have just

referred, is now [124a] built up with late nineteenth century! factories and warehouses

- the land was clearly not too difficult for later ! developers. By the Irwell too, one might

have expected difficulties, either ! from the high banks or from flooding. This, again,

does not seem to have daunted ! later builders; as the photographs opposite show, there

remain [124a] a number of! mid and late nineteenth century warehouses by the river.

(Though perhaps later !, with greater pressure on land, it became more economical to

build on land

124. ibid. evidence for the petitioners.

124a That is, in 1974 - many had been converted to other uses or redeveloped by 2013.


40/55

34

31 !

considered unsuitable earlier). In the case of the Rochdale and Ashton canals, !the

difficulties seem to have been less acute. The 1790 map shows that the ! right bank of

the Ashton abutted the rise of Shooters Brow, yet it is here !that buildings first appear

along the banks. The Rochdale canal does not appear !to have anything like the same

topographical complications yet, once through ! Ancoats, its banks are deserted. This

theory seems to hold water as far as ! the Bridgewater canal is concerned then, but

perhaps less so for the other ! waterways. Could it be, then, that it was pressure for land

from other functions such ! as warehousing which drove the factories from the

navigations? Looking at the ! case of the Ashton canal, this idea is backed up by the

example of the Peak ! Forest Canal Company who, in 1802, rented land amounting to

21,264 sq. yds. along the Ashton canal as far as Ancoats Lane and Beswick Street in

order to ! meet their immediate needs and future plans for expansion. [125] If canal

and carrying! companies forced up the price of land in this way, then it would be likely

!that factory owners would be indifferent between paying extra rent and ! additional

transport costs. It would also account for the later increase in ! canalside building in the

l840s, since the value of land for warehousing would!fall near canals as the railway

termini began to draw this function to their !locality. Canalside land would then

probably offer a cheaper alternative as the !pressure on land in the central districts

increased - price differentials would be !reversed, and so factories would move to the

canals. We have seen that! Manchesters chief function lay in merchant warehousing

and brokerage, so !it would seem logical if warehousing accommodation could

command higher land ! prices than factories. A slight drawback is offered to this

argument, however, by the evidence given to the committee on the 1825 Railways Bill.

Mr. Earle,! for the Old Quay Company, refuted the statement that there was a shortage!

of building land by the Irwell, saying Now there is land to be had there. ! The New

(Salford) Quay Company purchased very lately in that neighbourhood

125. Keaveney. The Missing Link, Chapter 7.


41/55

35

32

land which any other company might have had. [126] In other words, land ! was

available by the river for anyone who wanted it - there was no reason !stated why it

should have been kept specifically for warehousing.

At this point, our earlier examination of the structure of the industry !and

market processes becomes relevant, since it would appear to be a very !strong negative

factor, which, while not discouraging factories from situating! themselves with access

to waterborne transport, would at least undermine !the necessity to do so. We have

seen that, because of the lack of floating! capital, the individual cotton owners had to

purchase their raw cotton from ! middlemen, using Bills of Exchange to discount

payment. At the same time, !until the 1820s, the industry on average consisted of

factories employing!100 to 200 hands. Steam engines at the time were low powered

and were often !used only as a pump. In the first place, then, it would be natural for

middlemen such as Ramsbottcm (q.v.) to import cargoes in bulk from Liverpool! and

break them down into smaller lots to be disposed of on the Exchange. !As the factories

were small, it is unlikely that they could consume an entire!50 ton boatload of cotton

at one time, let alo

cotton and canal - an examination of the impact of canals on the location of the cotton spinning...

Documents