Marvel's Mill (or Marvell's Mill) on the River Nene in Northampton, England, was the world's second factory for spinning cotton, the first to be operated as a water mill, and the first to be driven by an inanimate power-source. [2] Opened by Edward Cave in 1742, it was one of the Paul-Wyatt cotton mills that used the roller spinning machinery invented by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt, which had first been used in their Upper Priory Cotton Mill in Birmingham in the summer of 1741. [3]
Marvel's Mill had a long history as a water-powered gristmill, being identified as Merewyns mill as early as 1253. [4] Originally owned by Northampton's Priory of St Andrew, its ownership was taken up by the town of Northampton after the dissolution of the monasteries, and it was leased to a succession of tenants. [5]
In 1742 the mill was acquired by Edward Cave, the publisher of The Gentleman's Magazine , who had become involved in the development of Lewis Paul and John Wyatt's newly invented roller-spinning machinery through the mutual acquaintance of the writer Samuel Johnson, and who had acquired a licence to operate five of Paul's machines with a total of 250 spindles at £3 per spindle. [6] Cave purchased Marvell's Mill after being offered other mills in Romsey and Gloucester. After demolishing the existing corn mill, he erected a new building to house the spinning machinery, with outbuildings for boiling lye for bleaching, and a smith's workshop for maintaining the spindles. [7]
Little is known of the operation of the mill, though surviving records indicate the appointment of a millwright Thomas Yeoman as the factory's "operator", in overall charge of the operation, as well as a manager Mr Harrison in charge of its day-to-day functioning, and a foreman Mr Newton, who had been involved in the earlier Birmingham mill. [8] The operation was far from smooth however: records from April 1743 indicate projected annual profits of up to £599 with plans for twelve machines; by October of the same year only 50 of the planned 100 hands were working and the projected annual profit had declined to £113. [9] Wyatt commented at the time that "The Cards and Carding, extremely ill maniged", "The Dirt and Cotton spread ab' the Rooms and the Pathways near the Mill is surprising" and "The Superintendant seems a very indifferent Maniger". [10]
Despite these shortcomings the business survived and an engraving of 1746 shows it functioning and employing a full complement of 100 staff. [11] On the death of Cave in 1754 the mill passed to his brother and nephew, and at this stage had the involvement of Samuel Touchet, one of the major merchants of the pre-industrial Lancashire cotton industry, who had also held licences to operate Paul's machinery since 1742 and had set up a second Birmingham mill, possibly in Fazeley Street, in 1744. [12] Touchet made no profit, however, and in 1756 the mill and its machinery was advertised for sale. [13] Eventually re-let to Lewis Paul, who resumed direct control, it was seized by the Caves for non-payment of rent in 1761 after Paul's death in 1759, and there is no evidence of cotton-spinning on the site beyond this date. [14] By 1768 the mill was in the possession of "William Faulkner and Thomas Harris, millers" and by 1774 the yard was occupied by a shoemaker. [15] The fate of the mill's spinning machinery is not known, but there are indications that it was acquired or at least seen by Richard Arkwright, whose 1769 patent was based on very similar principles. [16]
Spinning is the twisting technique where the fiber is drawn out, twisted, and wound onto a bobbin.
Carding is a mechanical process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibres to produce a continuous web or sliver suitable for subsequent processing. This is achieved by passing the fibres between differentially moving surfaces covered with card clothing. It breaks up locks and unorganised clumps of fibre and then aligns the individual fibres to be parallel with each other. In preparing wool fibre for spinning, carding is the step that comes after teasing.
John Kay was an English inventor whose most important creation was the flying shuttle, which was a key contribution to the Industrial Revolution. He is often confused with his namesake, who built the first "spinning frame".
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.
Edward Cave was an English printer, editor and publisher. He coined the term "magazine" for a periodical, founding The Gentleman's Magazine in 1731, and was the first publisher to successfully fashion a wide-ranging publication.
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 spinning mule is a machine used to spin cotton and other fibres. They were used extensively from the late 18th to the early 20th century in the mills of Lancashire and elsewhere. Mules were worked in pairs by a minder, with the help of two boys: the little piecer and the big or side piecer. The carriage carried up to 1,320 spindles and could be 150 feet (46 m) long, and would move forward and back a distance of 5 feet (1.5 m) four times a minute. It was invented between 1775 and 1779 by Samuel Crompton. The self-acting (automatic) mule was patented by Richard Roberts in 1825. At its peak there were 50,000,000 mule spindles in Lancashire alone. Modern versions are still in niche production and are used to spin woollen yarns from noble fibres such as cashmere, ultra-fine merino and alpaca for the knitware market.
Cotton-spinning machinery refers to machines which process prepared cotton roving into workable yarn or thread. Such machinery can be dated back centuries. During the 18th and 19th centuries, as part of the Industrial Revolution cotton-spinning machinery was developed to bring mass production to the cotton industry. Cotton spinning machinery was installed in large factories, commonly known as cotton mills.
Thomas Highs (1718–1803), of Leigh, Lancashire, was a reed-maker and manufacturer of cotton carding and spinning engines in the 1780s, during the Industrial Revolution. He is known for claiming patents on a spinning jenny, a carding machine and the throstle.
John Wyatt, an English inventor, was born near Lichfield and was related to Sarah Ford, Doctor Johnson's mother. A carpenter by trade he began work in Birmingham on the development of a spinning machine. In 1733 he was working in the mill at New Forge (Powells) Pool, Sutton Coldfield attempting to spin the first cotton thread ever spun by mechanical means.
Lewis Paul was the original inventor of roller spinning, the basis of the water frame for spinning cotton in a cotton mill.
Thomas Warren was an English bookseller, printer, publisher and businessman.
Ring spinning is a method of spinning fibres, such as cotton, flax or wool, to make a yarn. The ring frame developed from the throstle frame, which in its turn was a descendant of Arkwright's water frame. Ring spinning is a continuous process, unlike mule spinning which uses an intermittent action. In ring spinning, the roving is first attenuated by using drawing rollers, then spun and wound around a rotating spindle which in its turn is contained within an independently rotating ring flyer. Traditionally ring frames could only be used for the coarser counts, but they could be attended by semi-skilled labour.
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.
The Upper Priory Cotton Mill, opened in Birmingham, England in the summer of 1741, was the world's first mechanised cotton-spinning factory or cotton mill. Established by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt in a former warehouse in the Upper Priory, near Paul's house in Old Square, it was the first of the Paul-Wyatt cotton mills that used the roller spinning machinery that they had developed and that had been patented by Paul in 1738, that for the first time enabled the spinning of cotton "without the aid of human fingers". Wyatt had realised that this machinery would enable several machines to be powered from a single source of power: foreseeing the development of the factory system, he envisaged "a kind of mill, with wheels turned either by horses, water or wind."
Daniel Bourn was an English inventor, who took out a patent for a carding machine with rotating cylinders in 1748.
Robert Peel, commonly known as Parsley Peel, was an influential Cotton mill owner and grandfather to Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, future prime minister of the United Kingdom. Peel started life as a yeoman farmer but experimented with calico printing, eventually creating a parsley leaf pattern which would become his trademark. Despite losing a number of machines during riots, Peel's company became the largest in the textile sector by the time of his death, with 23 factories.
The Paul-Wyatt cotton mills were the world's first mechanised cotton spinning factories. Operating from 1741 until 1764 they were built to house the roller spinning machinery invented by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt. They were not very profitable but they span cotton successfully for several decades.
Pinsley Mill, also known as Etnam Street Mill, is a former watermill in Leominster, Herefordshire, England.
Samuel Touchet was an English cotton merchant, manufacturer and politician.