buildings but also the child labour could be transferred readily from silk to cotton. Henry Marsland, a cotton manufacturer at Bosden near Stockport, who had been one of the first to set the new spinning frames to work by horse-power, acquired in 1783 the Stockport silk-mill with the manorial water-rights, and became the first large cotton spinner in the town. There were already smaller cotton spinners at work, and Stockport was becoming a seat of machine-making and invention.[1]
The new warehouse having been opened in March 1784 and a connexion already formed amongst the weavers of the district by his manager, on 21 July Oldknow rode over to Stockport, taking with him a £50 banknote and £225 in bills, which was half the purchase money of a house and land situate in the Hillgate, Stockport, belonging to Mr. Giles Walmsley. The other half of the price was to be paid within six months. Fourteen years later, when Oldknow's property at Stockport was offered for sale by auction, it was described in the following terms:
Lot 1. All those extensive PREMISES, late in the occupation of Mr. Oldknow and now occupied by Messrs. Parker, Sykes and Co., pleasantly situated in the Higher Hillgate, Stockport; consisting of a good House, Stabling, Offices, Garden, and commodious Buildings five stories high, now used for Spinning, and the Manufacture of Muslins and other Piece Goods and has every necessary Convenience for making One Thousand Pieces per Week; the site of which contains about 7,640 square yards, part freehold and part lease-hold for long terms of years. Together with an excellent STEAM ENGINE of Messrs. Boulton and Watts' constructing; and many valuable Fixtures which will be sold therewith.
Lot 2. Five good, substantial BRICK DWELLINGS, with a Picking-room and Loom-House standing on lands held for ninety-nine years under the Rector of Stockport, adjoining the above.
The first of these lots is let for £520 a year and the second for £80; making together a neat rent of £600 a year.
It was in these premises or part of them that William Radcliffe, two or three years later, made what he claimed to be the first practical beginning of power-loom weaving. But apart from the application of power in weaving, the factory system in every other aspect had already, as the above notice shows, been applied to the production of cotton goods with spinning as a subsidiary process, by Samuel Oldknow on the same spot. This achievement, which belongs mainly to the years 1786–92, involved such a further acquisition of land, such an increased investment in buildings and machinery, that, at the completion of the process the rent of the property was more than its capital value had
- ↑ Wheeler, Manchester Chronicle, 19 October 1782, letter signed Senex; and Manchester Mercury, 18 February 1783, advertisement of W. Mycock.
