Textile Manufacture During The Industrial Revolution - A Representative Early Spinning Mill 1790-1825

A Representative Early Spinning Mill 1790-1825

Cromford Mill was an early Arkwright mill and was the model for future mills The site at Cromford had year-round supply of warm water from the sough which drained water from nearby lead mines, together with another brook. It was a five storey mill. Starting in 1772,the mills ran day and night with two 12 hour shifts.

It started with 200 workers, more than the locality could provide so Arkwright built housing for them nearby, one of the first manufacturers to do so. Most of the employees were women and children, the youngest being only 7 years old. Later, the minimum age was raised to 10 and the children were given 6 hours of education a week, so that they could do the record keeping their illiterate parents could not. Initially the first stage of the process was hand carding, but in 1775 he took out a second patent for a water-powered carding machine and this led to increased output. He was soon building further mills on this site and eventually employed 1,000 workers at Cromford. By the time of his death in 1792, he was the wealthiest untitled person in Britain.

The gate to Cromford Mill was shut at precisely 6am and 6pm every day and any worker who failed to get through it not only lost a day's pay but was fined another day's pay. In 1779, Arkwright installed a cannon, loaded with grapeshot, just inside the factory gate, as a warning to would-be rioting textile workers, who had burned down another of his mills in Birkacre, Lancashire. The cannon was never used.