Flax, also known as common flax or linseed, is a flowering plant, Linum usitatissimum, in the family Linaceae. It is cultivated as a food and fiber crop in regions of the world with temperate climates. Textiles made from flax are known in Western countries as linen and are traditionally used for bed sheets, underclothes, and table linen. Its oil is known as linseed oil. In addition to referring to the plant, the word "flax" may refer to the unspun fibers of the flax plant. The plant species is known only as a cultivated plant and appears to have been domesticated just once from the wild species Linum bienne, called pale flax. The plants "flax" in New Zealand are, by contrast, members of the genus Phormium.
Linen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant.
The spinning jenny is a multi-spindle spinning frame, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of textile manufacturing during the early Industrial Revolution. It was invented in 1764 or 1765 by James Hargreaves in Stanhill, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in England.
A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system.
Textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution in Britain was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines. In Germany it was concentrated in the Wupper Valley, Ruhr Region and Upper Silesia, in Spain it was concentrated in Catalonia while in the United States it was in New England. The main key drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron founding, steam power, oil drilling, the discovery of electricity and its many industrial applications, the telegraph and many others. Railroads, steam boats, the telegraph and other innovations massively increased worker productivity and raised standards of living by greatly reducing time spent during travel, transportation and communications.
The textile industry is primarily concerned with the design, production and distribution of yarn, cloth and clothing. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry.
Matthew Murray was an English steam engine and machine tool manufacturer, who designed and built the first commercially viable steam locomotive, the twin cylinder Salamanca in 1812. He was an innovative designer in many fields, including steam engines, machine tools and machinery for the textile industry.
John Marshall was a British businessman and politician from Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.
Temple Works is a former flax mill in Holbeck, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was designed by engineer James Coombe a former pupil of John Rennie, David Roberts, architect Joseph Bonomi the Younger and built in the Egyptian Revival style by John Marshall between 1836 and 1840 with a 240 hp double beam engine by Benjamin Hick. Temple Works is the only Grade I listed building in Holbeck.
Marshall's Mill is a former flax spinning mill on Marshall Street in Holbeck, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.
Midland Mills is a former flax mill on Silver Street in Holbeck, Leeds, West Yorkshire, in the Holbeck Urban Village regeneration area. Since the 1980s it has been used for light industrial work.
Douglastown is a hamlet in Kinnettles in Angus, Scotland, three miles south-west of Forfar. It takes its name from the landowner who in about 1789 provided land for James Ivory & Co. to build a flax mill to spin yarn for heavy linen cloth called osnabruks (named from the German town of Osnabruk, where it was originally made. The hamlet of Douglastown was built to house the workers. The mill closed in 1834. It used flax-spinning technology invented by John Kendrew and Thomas Porthouse of Darlington, patented in 1787.
John Kendrew (1748-1800), a Darlington Quaker, is best known for having invented the first effective process for the mechanical spinning of flax. With Thomas Porthouse, a local clockmaker, he built a working machine and together in 1787 they patented the design in both England and Scotland. They licensed the technology to others, and subsequently each built their own mill — Kendrew's being near Haughton le Skerne on the NE outskirts of Darlington. After Kendrew's death, Porthouse took out his own patent, as did others and most flax mills were technological descendants of the Kendrew/Porthouse design.
Ditherington Flax Mill, a flax mill located in Ditherington, a suburb of Shrewsbury, England, is the first iron-framed building in the world, and described as "the grandfather of skyscrapers", despite its five-storey height. Its importance was officially recognised in the 1950s, resulting in it becoming a Grade I listed building. It is also locally known as the "Maltings" from its later use.
James Kay was a British inventor who developed a successful wet spinning process for flax in 1824, helping industrialise linen spinning in the British Isles. Thus allowing it to be a great commercial success and gain a forefront position in the world. His process is still used to spin fine linen yarns, although mainly in Russia and China.
Textile manufacturing is one of the oldest human activities. The oldest known textiles date back to about 5000 B.C. In order to make textiles, the first requirement is a source of fibre from which a yarn can be made, primarily by spinning. The yarn is processed by knitting or weaving to create cloth. The machine used for weaving is the loom. Cloth is finished by what are described as wet process to become fabric. The fabric may be dyed, printed or decorated by embroidering with coloured yarns.
Scutching is a step in the processing of cotton or the dressing of flax or hemp in preparation for spinning. The scutching process separates the impurities from the raw material, such as the seeds from raw cotton or the straw and woody stem from flax fibers. Scutching can be done by hand or by a machine known as a scutcher. Hand scutching of flax is done with a wooden scutching knife and a small iron scraper. The end products of scutching flax are the long finer flax fibers called line, short coarser fibers called tow, and waste woody matter called shives.
Taylor Wordsworth and Co was one of the leading producers of machinery for the flax, wool and worsted industries in Leeds, Yorkshire during the British Industrial Revolution. It was established in 1812 and survived until it was taken over in the 1930s.
Thy Industrial Revolution in Scotland was the transition to new manufacturing processes and economic expansion between the mid-eighteenth century and the late nineteenth century. By the start of the eighteenth century, a political union between Scotland and England became politically and economically attractive, promising to open up the much larger markets of England, as well as those of the growing British Empire, resulting in the Treaty of Union of 1707. There was a conscious attempt among the gentry and nobility to improve agriculture in Scotland. New crops were introduced and enclosures began to displace the run rig system and free pasture. The economic benefits of union were very slow to appear, some progress was visible, such as the sales of linen and cattle to England, the cash flows from military service, and the tobacco trade that was dominated by Glasgow after 1740. Merchants who profited from the American trade began investing in leather, textiles, iron, coal, sugar, rope, sailcloth, glass-works, breweries, and soap-works, setting the foundations for the city's emergence as a leading industrial center after 1815.
The Bocholt textile museum is a museum in Bocholt, a city in the north-west of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, part of the district Borken. It is situated 4 km south of the border with the Netherlands. The museum opened in 1989 as one of the eight locations of the LWL Industrial Museum: it is an Anchor point on the European Route of Industrial Heritage.
