Neglected stories ........ handloom weaving in Chorlton

Now if you have been on one of those history walks around town chances are that at some point the guide will enthusiastically point to a building with long windows on the upper floor which were “to give the maximum amount of natural light for a handloom weaver.”

And then there might follow an impassioned lecture on the noble life of the handloom weavers who were to be squeezed by the coming of the factory system.  

All of which is true up to a point.  Some weaving families could command a very good standard of living into the 19th century and there is something quite attractive about a life where all the family were collectively engaged in all the processes of carding, spinning and weaving, working at their own pace and free to pursue other interests.  As Marx said “to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner.”

But there is also a lot of romantic tosh written about handloom weaving.  It was by the 19th century an increasingly unprofitable way of earning where the majority of weavers were competing against the industrialization of the different processes, were at the mercy of the middlemen and had to foot the cost of maintaining a workshop.

I doubt that many have seriously researched the extent to which the townships around the south of the city had their own weavers.  But there is evidence for them in Stretford, Urmston, Withington and Burnage and here in our own village.

In some places the records are fairly slim but in others the stories are rich and detailed.  Now I want you to read the book so I shall be outrageously selfish and limit myself to stating that the evidence is there in the census records in newspapers and in the oral testimony recorded just thirty years after the last remaining weavers were plying their trade in some of our townships.

In the June of 1832 20 cottages with their loom houses  at Barlow Moor, came up for auction, while just 25 years earlier here in Chorlton, George Jones who had described his occupation as weaver baptised his two children at the Methodist chapel on the Row*.  

Nor was he alone, because during the same period he was joined by another two weavers who had walked over from Stretford and another from Withington to baptise their children in the same chapel.

*The Row is today Beech Road

Pictures; Liverpool Road, circa late 18th century from the collection of Andrew Simpson, advert from the Manchester Guardian June 9th 1832

The Fallowfield handloom weavers

There is much of the history of south Manchester which has sunk without trace.

In the way these things work we have rather been eclipsed by the story of Manchester just a few miles to the north.

And yet there was much going on in these small rural communities.

A little of this can be gleamed from the accounts written at the end of the 19th century which tried to recreate what life had been like in the early 1800s.*

And of all the lost stories I think it is hand loom weaving that has completely become ignored.

Now don’t get me wrong there are excellent accounts of the trade and in particular its decline but all are centred on Manchester and the townships to the north and east with no reference to what went on here in Chorlton, Didsbury, Fallowfield and Burnage.

There is not one handloom weaver recorded in the 1841 census for Chorlton, but dig a little further back and we have a name and names for those across south Manchester.  Not that this should surprise us.  If it was going on north and east of Manchester it should be here, and it is.

All of which I have written** about along with the speculation that just as there were people from Urmston at Peterloo there must have been some from other parts of south Manchester.  It is just that they have yet to surface. All of which brings me to my Fallowfield and Burnage weavers.

I first came across them in Mrs Williamson’s book, Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present published in 1888.

“Returning to the village  we find opposite Back Lane the footpath leading through fields to Chorlton, which had been Lover’s Walk of so many centuries.  On this footpath which is the present Sherwood Street, two of the oldest existing Fallowfield houses were built by Mr Langford, of Withington, for Mr Burrows, father of the man to whom we are indebted for the greater part of these reminiscences.

These cottages were specially arranged for handloom weaving; not only the Burrows family, but all the inhabitants of Fallowfield, except a few coachman or gardeners, and some agricultural labourers, gained their livelihood by weaving checked handkerchiefs and ginghams, an occupation which gave to the village its pleasant click-click, an association with old weaving villages, never lost to those who have once known it.

The woman carried the produce of their looms on foot to Manchester on market day, disposed of it, and with the money bought at Smithy Door or in the Apple Market, food and clothes for the family use during the following week; these necessaries they carried home also on foot.”

In most cases weaving was the main economic activity but in some households it seems to have been a secondary one undertaken by the wife or adult children, and there is much evidence that many weavers combined working at the loom with other occupations of which farming was the most common but not the only one.

And this may explain why there were only 19 listed in the Fallowfield area in 1841.  This census had been undertaken in June when there would have been work again in the fields and some who might have described themselves as weavers in the slack months of the agricultural year were now minded to call themselves agricultural labourers.

And there were some families in both Lady Barn and near the Sherwood Inn where both husband and wife and even children worked a loom.

But it was an ageing workforce and of the 19 weavers twelve were 40 years or older.

And like everywhere in south Manchester the numbers were falling away and so by 1851 there were only three weavers left in Fallowfield of whom only one was still active and he was fifty.

All of which meant that by the time Mrs Williamson was writing it was a trade of the past.

Pictures; detail of Fallowfield from the OS for Lancashire 1841-54, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Hymns Cottages © Barri Sparshot
* Williamson, Mrs W.C. Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present, 1888.
** http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Handloom%20weaving

Of rush carts and "the sodden mass of intemperance," Fallowfield in 1830

I have been re-reading Sketches of Fallowfield by Mrs C. Williamson which she published in 1888.

It began as a series of lectures about the Fallowfield that was almost beyond living memory.

It is a wonderful description of the immediate rural past and like all good local history books is not afraid to stray into the neighbouring townships.

Above; Old Hall Lane , 1926

It is one of a number of accounts which tried to capture what life had been like fifty years earlier.  In the same way our own Thomas Ellwood had set about at almost the same time to record the Chorlton of the early 19th century, while his near neighbour J.T. Slugg had done much the same for Manchester.**

What all had in common was that they drew on the recollections of people who had grown up in the first half of the century and in turn could pull on the collective memories of friends and families stretching back into the late 18th century.

So for Thomas Ellwood “the greater portion of the information I have obtained [was] from that interesting individual ‘the oldest inhabitant’ and many  pleasant evenings have been spent in gathering facts from this source.”  While for Annie Williamson it was her husband and his “own picturesque reminiscences [who] knew whom to ask for all else and how to ask them.” As well as “Mr Burrows, the oldest living man in the village, whose clear recitals of what has been were invaluable.”

Her account like so many of the period starts with the “great and good” and there are chapters on Barlow Hall and the Barlow’s, Hough End, Platt Hall and Birch Hall. But there is also much here about the life of the farmers, labourers, and weavers, and much that might dispel that over nostalgic view of rural life.
In an age before piped water, it was the lot of many to collect their water from a well, pump or pond, so the women of Lady Barn visited the nearby hay field which “had a pool at its lowest end, where the village folk came with buckets of water to clean their houses, this being as yet the only supply of any but rain and spring water.”

And there are the local traditions like the rush cart which carried rushes which would be spread on the floor of the church and was at the core of the Wakes festivities.  “Rush bearing originally took place when the rushes were ripe, and in this part of England was accompanied by such processions, dances and decoration.”

The rushes would be “built on a farmer’s flat cart, decorated with garlands, branches of oak, ribbons, flags, tinsel, everything that ingenuity and bad taste could devise, and often completed by a Robin Good and Maid Marian, who, more grotesque than all else seated on the top of the rushes.  This rush cart, which had been built on a piece of spare ground near Burton Road, Withington was drawn by twenty or thirty young men, also festooned and garlanded and harnessed in pairs.  These youths were the heroes of the day, and as they passed were quick enough to catch the eyes of the prettiest girls.”

And there was a carnival atmosphere as befitted one of the high points of the year, and so, “the cart was accompanied by men also carrying banners, sometimes of enormous size, by pipers and drummers and bell ringers.  The noise was deafening as the motley crowd slowly entered the village.  Pipers played the well-known Rush Dance, clogs, which then everyone wore, beat time; children’s penny whistles accompanied; and the shouts of all the people drowned or tried to do so the medley of sound.”

It is a vivid description whose strength comes from the fact that it was a firsthand account, but amidst all the detail I sense a slight hint of disapproval, as if there was too much shouting and “medley of sound” and too many “young heroes” catching the eyes of the prettiest girls”

All of which is given a way a little later when Mrs Williams records the arrival in turn  of “a Wesleyan Chapel and Sunday School, a Church Sunday and Day School, and a Working Men’s Club, combined to lighten the sodden mass of intemperance this place had become , and, the leaven once introduced must spread.”

Ah well in the midst of factual reporting creeps moral opinion.

Later; the weavers of Burnage, and the punishments awaiting apple stealers.

Pictures; Old Hall Lane Fallowfield, November 1924, City Engineers, m77453, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, and map of Fallowfield in 1818 from Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present

* Williamson Mrs C., Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present 1888
**Ellwood, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1885-86, South Manchester Gazette, Slugg, J.T., Reminiscences of Manchester, 1881

You can find out more about Rusholme and Fallowfield’s history at http://www.rfcf.org.uk/archives/directory/rusholme-and-fallowfield-civic-society

Looking to clues for our own Radical handlloom weavers ......... Chorlton, Withington, Burnage and Stretford

The connection between radical politics and handloom weavers is well known, and so as you do I went looking for our handloom weavers.

Looking out towards Chorlton Green, circa 1880s

So far I have only come across one Chorlton weaver.
In 1817, George Jones had described his occupation as weaver when he baptised his two children at the Methodist chapel on the Row.

Nor was he alone, because during the same period he was joined by another two weavers who had walked over from Stretford and another from Withington to baptise their children in the same chapel.*

And in all likelihood there would have been more.  Handloom weaving was conducted in a wide arc both north and south of Manchester and in the areas bordering on northern Cheshire, Derbyshire and the West Riding of Yorkshire.

By the mid 18th century cotton had replaced wool as the main textile material and across the county areas specialized in such things as cambrics, muslins and ginghams.  Just over 5 miles to the east near Gatley they had been growing flax and weaving linen from at least the mid 17th century.

The old parish church with the Bowling Green beyond, circa 1870s

But exactly what and how it was produced in the township is unclear.  It may be that George and his family delivered each of the processes from carding and spinning to weaving but it is more likely with the mechanization of spinning and its concentration in the factories of Manchester that he may have been involved just in weaving.

At one stage our weavers may also have been involved in dyeing, because there are large numbers of crocuses that grow locally.  In the past they were used for dyeing clothes alongside their culinary and medical uses.

How many weavers we had is not recorded.  In Stretford in 1826 there were 302 looms providing employment for 780 workers supporting 151 families,  and as late as the 1840s there were still seven, while in Withington there were nineteen cotton weavers, mostly concentrated in Lady Barn and Fallowfield where they specialized in “weaving checked handkerchiefs and ginghams.”  **

Further west there are a few handloom weavers recorded in the 1851 census in Flixton and Urmston.

Nationally weavers had been the largest single group of industrial workers, and at any one time during 1820s, 30s and 40s, they came third in the list of occupations after agricultural labourers and domestic servants.

Chorlton Row, circa 1880s

The estimate of the Select Committee of 1834-5 reckoned that 800,000 to 840,000 were wholly dependent on one of the branches of weaving.***

So, we may yet uncover our own handloom weavers, but as to their politics that might prove more difficult to discover.

Location; south Manchester

Pictures; Looking out towards Chorlton Green, Higginbotham's farm, circa 1880s, from the collection of Marjory Holmes, the old parish Church, circa 1870, and Chorlton Row, now Beech Road circa 1880s, from the collection of Tony Walker

* Thomas Jones of Stretford and his wife Mary baptised three children in the Chapel on the Row between 1809 and 1816, John and Sarah Thorley also of Stretford in 1807 and William and Mary Taylor from Withington in 1820 and 1823. William Taylor was still working aged 65 in 1841

** Leach, Sir Bosdin, Old Stretford, Privately Printed, 1910, page 23

***Williamson, C, Sketches of Fallowfield, John Heywood, Manchester, 1888 page 34

**** Thompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working Class, Pelican Books edition 1968 page 344

Handloom weaving in Didsbury

Now my old botanist friend, Dave Bishop and I have often speculated on there being handloom weavers in Didsbury and looking at the 1841 census there they were.

Which I suppose shouldn’t be too surprising. There is evidence that they were here in Chorlton and in Fallowfield, Withington Burnage, Stretford, Northenden and on out to Urmston.*

In 1800 George Jones who lived in Chorlton had described his occupation as weaver when he baptised his two children at the Methodist chapel on the Row.  And he was joined by another two weavers who had walked over from Stretford and another from Withington to baptise their children in the same chapel.    

So in all likelihood there would have been more.  Handloom weaving was conducted in a wide arc both north and south of Manchester and in the areas bordering on northern Cheshire, Derbyshire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. By the mid 18th century cotton had replaced wool as the main textile material and across the county areas specialized in such things as cambric’s, muslins and ginghams.  Just over 5 miles to the east near Gatley they had been growing flax and weaving linen from at least the mid 17th century.

In all there were 43 of them which it is true is not many.  Some were part of families where three or four were engaged in the trade.  In other cases it is just father and son and sometimes just the male householder.

But there are also single women working the loom as well as children.  The age range ran from an 80 year old woman to a boy of 12.  They were mainly concentrated on the east of the township up towards Burnage and further south near Parrs Wood with a cluster at Spring Hill north of the parish church.  Where they give a more detailed description they are mostly weaving cotton but there is also a lace weaver.

Some no doubt may also have worked the land but others were operating as a commercial family business.  Now there is a lot more to do, but it is a start and fills in a gap.

But 1841 was near the end.  Across the townships to the east and west of our own the industry struggled on into the 1840s and 50s.  In Fallowfield there were still fourteen weavers in 1841, but this had fallen to just one by 1851. Further south and west in that part of Withington running from Hough End Hall down to the village, the number fell from five to just one during the same decade.     In Stretford this dismal picture was repeated.  By 1841 there were just seven weavers which had shrunk to four at the following census.All of which means the search is on in Didsbury.

Picture; Hyms Cottages & Sutton's cottage, © Barri Sparshot, 2011, from original photographs of cottages in Chorlton-cum-Hardy

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/neglected-stories-handloom-weaving-in.html

Later; who they were, where in Didsbury they lived and something of their daily routine