Keighley was once home to thriving wool comb trade

BURLINGTON Shed was a large industrial complex that once occupied the site of the Asda supermarket in Keighley.

Until the 1970s it was the location of Prince Smith & Stell, textile machine makers. Much of the business was divided into different workshops, known simply as shops. On the top floor of a three-storey building that overlooked the railway line and the old goods yard (now Sainsbury’s) was the Faller Shop, where wool combs were made.

From the late 1840s mechanisation gradually overtook the old hand combing industry. Successful wool combing machines were developed by men such as Isaac Holden, Samuel Lister and James Noble and were followed by the introduction of machines known as gill boxes, that further straightened and blended the fibres. All these machines incorporated a variety of combs that were made in the Faller Shop.

The room had eight windows overlooking the railway; they faced south-west and allowed in the maximum amount of light to illuminate a workbench that ran the length of the room. About every four feet along the bench was a work station each with an engineer’s vice and a wooden tray divided into sections. Each section of the tray contained different-sized steel pins, from about two to over three inches in length. In the centre of the room there was a round table, that could seat several workmen. This table also had trays of pins on it.

The men who worked at the bench were known as pin setters and they made up the faller combs for gill boxes. Each man had his own stool, a vice to grip the faller bar and a short-shafted, square-headed hammer. Many of the hammers had the men’s own personal grip, for their fingers and thumb, carved into them to stop it from slipping during the long daily routine of tapping the pins into the combs. The finished faller looked like a large metal hair comb. Multiple combs, side by side, with the pins facing upwards, made up a gill box – giving the impression, it is said, of the gills of a fish, hence the name. A typical box for worsted combing had 14 fallers at any one time combing through the wool. The fallers moved along on a ratchet system as they were drawn through the fibre. The leading comb then dropped and passed back under the row of combs before being returned to begin again, hence the term faller.

The Holden, Lister and Noble combing machines were very different in design to the gill box and had a large circular comb. Often made of brass, the ring was some four feet or so in diameter and was fitted with rows of pins. These comb circles were made up on the round table by men from the faller team.

Pins on the combs were periodically damaged, eventually requiring the fallers and comb circles to be replaced. Small firms began to repair rather than scrap them and they also made replacements. Walker, Mitchell & Company of Victoria Works, Dalton Lane, Keighley, was one of the most successful of these small firms. Robert Walker, the senior partner, employed his three children in the business. In 1901 his eldest daughter, Annie, was a pin setter while his son Joseph and other daughter Ethel were pin hole drillers. Joseph Walker eventually took over the business and later employed his son, Robert, as works manager. The company made combs for the worsted, woollen, flax and silk industries.

Walker, Mitchell & Company closed after the Second World War and the Faller Shop at Prince Smith & Stell’s shut down in the summer of 1970, bringing an end to the trade of wool comb making that was first recorded in the town in 1736.