Robin Longbottom examines how a South Craven firm was a major player in the dress trade

FOR just over 100 years, the Wilson family – manufacturers at Dale End Mill, Lothersdale – made a particular type of fabric known as ‘fancies’.

Fancies were designed largely for the ladies' dress trade, and the finished material was sent as far afield as London and Europe.

The origins of the business lay with John Wilson, a native of Scotland, and a linen draper by trade.

He had served his apprenticeship in the town of Dumfries, some 15 miles from his birthplace in Corsock.

On completion of his indentures, he left Scotland and travelled south, working as a journeyman draper.

He eventually settled in Cross Hills in South Craven in about 1820, where he opened his own linen shop.

In 1822 he married Elizabeth Parker, the daughter of Thomas Parker, who held the lease for Dale End Mill from William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington. Parker was a former cotton spinner, but after 1809 he sublet the mill to a succession of tenants and after the last one left in 1835 he had the mill extensively refurbished. His intention was to put his son Peter into the business of worsted spinning and manufacturing. However Peter showed little interest and therefore he approached his son-in-law, John Wilson, and persuaded him to enter partnership with his son. When Peter finally dropped out and turned to farming, Wilson took over running the mill.

After early success, Wilson refurbished the mill again in the late 1850s and built a large weaving shed. The new single-storey shed had a ‘saw toothed’ roof with northern facing lights to allow maximum light. The shed was powered by a new waterwheel which was 45 feet in diameter. It had elm spokes and wrought iron cross bracings. The cross bracings were adjustable, like the spokes on a bicycle wheel, and could be tightened or slackened to keep the wheel running true. The mill also had a steam engine to power the looms when water was in short supply.

The weaving shed was fitted out with the latest Jacquard power looms. A French invention, this machine had an automatic system that enabled the loom to weave extremely complex patterns. The system used a chain of punched cards strung together to control the design of the cloth. The holes in the cards triggered the operation that lifted each heddle on the loom to produce the pattern in the cloth. The system was one of the early developments that ultimately led to the present world of computer hardware.

Jacquard looms were already being used in Scotland to produce a fancy and popular material originally imported from Kashmir in northern India. It was manufactured in the town of Paisley and used for shawls, and the town eventually gave its name to the material. Wilson therefore turned to Scotland to recruit an expert in the trade, and brought John McDonald Adam, a shawl pattern designer, and his family to Lothersdale in 1860. William Riddiough, whose father was the mill manager, was employed to assist him. Together Adam and young Riddiough designed the fabrics and with the help of a Jaquard card cutter and a card stringer, they transferred the designs for the ‘fancies’ onto the perforated cards that produced the pattern in the material.

Around this time John Wilson went into partnership with his son James and shortly afterwards was joined by his eldest daughter’s husband, John Hall. Hall was a worsted spinner at Wood End Mill near Shipley and later at Hall Lane Mill, Bowling. Together they produced an extensive range of intricately patterned dress materials. Hall left the business in about 1868.

The mill continued to make dress fabrics into the 1970s and passed through five generations of the Wilson family before it finally closed.