Mills Across The Pond: Quarry Bank at Styal
Before the inception of textile mills in New England in the 17th century, mills in the Midlands villages of Georgian England were a booming operation. The early Industrial Age of the 1700s ushered in new water-driven and steam-driven machinery. While this greatly increased textile output, it came at a cost to the cottage weavers and spinsters who quickly found themselves redundant.
1706 saw a devastating war between England and France, followed quickly by the deadly Great Frost of 1709 which killed crops, froze people and their livestock, and even froze birds in the sky. So when the new mills opened in the mid-1700s, throngs of impoverished rural workers streamed into the mill villages desperate for work.
So desperate for work were they that they were willing to work under any conditions so they could have a bit of food and shelter for themselves and their children. Children as young as eight worked under the same dangerous conditions as adults. Squalid conditions greeted the new mill workers, with little or no sanitation and minimal food and wages. Life expectancy for those early millworkers was 18-20 years of age.
Needing even more labor, children as young as five were brought into the mills from the poorhouses, working the same long hours and six-day week. Children could scurry quickly and crawl under the spinning machines with ease.
By the late 1700s, some mill owners became “enlightened” to the conditions the older mills presented and worked to ameliorate the situation. When Samuel Gregg opened his Quarry Bank Mill near Styal, England in 1784, he found that the village of Styal did not have a sufficient labor force to support the operation. So Greg recruited workers from other areas and built up the village that still thrives today. He converted farm buildings to house workers and provided a Methodist chapel.
Greg did acquire some of his workforce in the form of children from workhouses in nearby Manchester. However, he did provide some rudimentary education, separate housing and a garden for fruits and vegetables. At some times, fully one-third of the workers at Quarry Mill were children. Greg’s wife, Hannah Lightbody, was behind some of the so-called improvements in conditions for the children and other workers.
By 1860, Quarry Bank was the biggest producer of cotton products in the United Kingdom. Greg’s mill became a model for textile mill villages even across the pond in America.
Quarry Bank Mill was given to the National Trust System in 1939 by Samuel Greg’s descendants and is open to visit. Inquire here for details: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/quarry-bank