The Lancashire Textile Project 2013

LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT

TAPE 78/SC/1

THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON DECEMBER 9TH, 1978 AT CHURCH LANE, MELLOR, LANCS. THE INFORMANT IS JOHN COOKE, RETIRED MILL MANAGER. THE INTERVIEWER IS MARY HUNTER.



Now Mr Cooke, what’s your full name?

R-John Cooke.

And when….

R-Oh I haven’t, I can go back a lot further than that.

Well, you are going to in a minute so that’s all right. When were you born?

R-September the 10th, 1896.

And where?

R-In this lane, Church Lane or Hob Green, that’s its real name it was the vicar that called it Church Lane.

So it was called Hob Green before?

R-Hob Green until recently when they put these notices up.

Have you lived all your life in Church Lane then?

R-Yes, except for a very short time when I bought a cottage in Mellor Lane waiting for this. You see, just that short time, otherwise I lived in this lane all my life excepting war time.

What was your occupation?

Well, at first I was a clerk, then a preparation manager, then I was a salesman, then sales and production manager and later became a director in charge of sales and production.

Was this all in the same firm?

R-All in the same firm, John Smalley and Sons Ltd. In Mellor, just at the top of Hob Green.

What was the name of your father?

R-Noah Cooke. My mother was Margaret Cooke, she came from Revidge in Blackburn.

Was your father born locally?

R-Yes, his father was John Cooke and his grandfather and great grandfather were John Cooke. My great great grandfather died in 1830 aged 91 and most of his children were over 80. One of his children, I have got his will, was crossed off in a codicil because he had been transported, it didn’t say what for.

How did your father and mother meet?

I don’t know, they never told me, she came from Revidge but he was in the Mellor band and whether it was at a dance or something like that I don’t know. Now my great great grandfather was one of those who were responsible for putting the first Mellor Methodist Church up. Not the present one, that’s new, but the previous one.

What was your father’s occupation.

R-He was a weaver at the beginning. In his will, my great great grandfather was called a yeoman. Now succeeding generations were called weavers because they had looms in their houses, they were hand loom weavers.

They owned the looms?

R-Oh yes. My grandmother’s, my grandfather’s house was at the corner of Nicky Lane and Mellor Lane and that was a six loom shop.

That was quite a big one.

R-Yes, and my mother’s house, just up the road, we’ve just sold the next door to it, was also a six loom shop. My sister died a few months ago and we have sold the house to the people who lived next door who bought my mother’s house.

Can you still see where the looms were hung?

R-Oh no, they were on the floor you know and the houses have been altered.

Where were you educated?

R-Until I was ten I was at Mellor School then the rest of the time, Blackburn Grammar School.

Did you win a scholarship for there?

R-Yes, the first that was, we didn’t know about scholarships in Mellor till then and we got a new headmaster, Mr Collinson and he was very successful and I was the first to get a scholarship.

Were you pleased that you managed to get to grammar school?

R-Oh yes, it’s done me a lot of good in my life of course.

What age were you when you left?

R-Sixteen and I went straight to being a clerk from there.

What sort of work did you do when you were a clerk?

R-Oh, wages, receiving yarn, booking cloth out, that sort of thing.

So you were in weaving straight away, and was it the same firm?

R-Oh yes. Then I went to Technical College at night for five years to learn all the business. Mr Smalley, he sent for me to go and work there and ten he wanted me to learn the practical and technical side of weaving.

So you started from the bottom and worked your way right through and presumably that experience stood you in good stead?

R-Right, oh absolutely. I had to walk to Blackburn you know, I walked five years to the grammar school and five years to the technical college at night, not in summer. Four miles each way.

That’s dedication!

R-Well we all, we’d people coming to the mill from Preston every day and a lot from Blackburn.

You’re talking about 1910 or 1920?

R-Well, oh no, after the war and up to the last war but only a few then. As a matter of fact, when buses first started we provided three buses and paid the fares from Blackburn. That would be about 100 people, we employed 450.

That would be a fairly new idea providing transport for the workers?

R-Yes, well we were out in the country you see, four miles from the nearest town and we had to have specially trained weavers for the type of cloth we wove. Take for instance, that [chair cover that] Stanley’s sat on, well I doubt if anyone in Blackburn could weave it even now. There were only eight firms in the country that could make Lenos, Aertex. We were the first people in the world to weave it on automatic looms.

Was the mill called Smalleys?

R-Elswick Mill. It was built in 1874 and always wove fancies. Now Mr Smalley, John Smalley who started it, they had a cottage, Ross Cottage and it was a warehouse. They supplied hand loom weavers with yarn who wove the cloth for them. Then they built the mill and all these hand loom weavers went to work in the mill. Now I think the mill was built where it is because there’s a remarkably good water supply, two big lodges fed from springs even though it’s on the top of the hill. It must come from the Pennines or somewhere I think.

Which you used in the washing and dyeing?

R-No, we don’t dye or wash. The water was for the power, for the steam engine, all driven by steam. But in 1902 the mill was electrified for all it’s lighting, in 1902 with a steam engine. That was long before, 30 years before they got electric light in Mellor. So it was apparently a very go-ahead firm.

When did it cease to be steam driven.

R-It was partly steam driven when we closed, it had a wonderful engine. It was still going but we had extra electricity from the grid but for the main alleys we produced our own electricity.

So until the day it closed the looms were driven by steam were they?

R-Yes, by the steam engine.

[Later research: MILL AT MELLOR. [Is this Elswick mil MELLOR l?]
Engineer Mr W. A. Duxbury. 400hp cross compound engine by Clayton and Goodfellow, 1878. 26”HP, ?”LP X 3ft 6” stroke. Originally all slide valve but a new Corliss valve cylinder installed by Yates and Thom in 1919. 130psi, 76rpm. 18ft flywheel, 38” X 111ft belt drive. Horizontal condenser behind LP cylinder. [Information from Peter Barnes, June 2009. “To my knowledge there was only one mill in Mellor, which was a weaving shed. If I remember right it was this one that was called Elswick. There was a spinning mill down the hill at Mellor Brook. (My Barnes ancestors were handloom weavers in Mellor in the 1800s.”)]

You only used the grid for lighting?

R-That’s right, yes. And we only used the grid for the lights over the looms. In all the main alleys it was our own [electricity] so that when we switched off from the grid we’d still got our own supply to show the people in and out. [pilot lights] Or for repairs, we had a room full of huge batteries you see, storing it, that we made with the engine. And that was a steam engine run with the main engine. [This is slightly confusing but what it amounts to is that they had a separate engine driving a generator for DC current which they used to light the alleys and charge batteries to give pilot lighting when the plant was stopped.]

How long were you a clerk?

R-Until I joined the army when I was 18, two years.

You served during the First World War?

R-yes, four and a half years I was over there.

Tell me how you came back to work in the mill.

R-Well, Mr Smalley got me out of the army because they were absolutely stuck for staff so I came back as preparation manager.

How many staff did you have under you?

50 winders, 10 warpers, 4 tapers, 13 drawers in, 26 reachers in for the drawers in and that was my lot as preparation manager.

You were 22 years old, how did you cope with all that lot?

R-Oh, I didn’t at first, they led me a dance but in a kindly way. We never had a strike of any sort, we never stopped for a strike or bad trade or anything. When all the mills were on strike or bad trade after the war you know we were running all the time.

Tell me some of the things the workers did to lead you a dance.

R-Oh putting their hook or their toe on the scales so that instead of getting paid for 45lbs they got 50 on their wages. Depending on the counts, the preparation workers got paid so much for every 50lbs Now if it was 100’s count they’d get five times as much as they would for 20’s. You see in 100’s count there’s 840 times a hundred yards in a pound, in tens there’s 84 times a hundred yards in a pound. The higher the count, the finer the yarn and the more yardage in a pound hence the higher wage.

So they were trying to cut you short in other words.

R-Oh yes and some of them did for a time till I found out. I must have counted and analysed thousands of samples of cloth. From 1924, when John Willie Smith left, they took him to Longridge , I costed every cloth that went out of Mellor for 36 years, that was part of my job as salesman, we didn’t have a costing clerk. You counted the threads in a 2” square of cloth and weighed it with a tiny pocket balance and from this you calculated the cost of the yarn and then the cost of weaving a hundred yards which was a very intricate business. The weaving price alone was very intricate.

Did you learn all this from practice or did you learn some of it at night school?

R-Oh a lot of it from when we were going to night school and a lot in the mill from experience. I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been to night school. Not all of it. Well I didn’t, I got all the practical at night school because I never did any weaving did I, I could weave but not to make a living, it’s a very skilled job is weaving fancies.

Were most of the preparation workers women?

R-They were all women. All the 50 winders were women, the ten warpers were women, The tapers with drawers were men and all the drawers in bar one were men. They all had two school leavers, half time, pushing the threads through from the back so they could draw them in. It’s difficult to explain unless you’ve seen it done.

How long were you preparation manager before you got promotion.

R-Six years, 1924 when John Willie Smith left He was the same as I finished up with except he wasn’t a director as they weren’t a limited company then. His son, Jack Smith, had got married and he wanted a lot more wage and there wasn’t room for that. He got married to somebody that they thought was wealthy and anyway, John Willie Smith left and they bought a mill at Longridge and were very successful. That’s when I got his job as salesman and later as sales manager and production manager. It gradually came. When John Willie left I was working for twelve months until nine at night. We got a man from Nelson who had been a weaver and had been to technical college but unfortunately he had only worked at a plain mill and didn’t know the first thing about fancies. He died young after a few years. I had to teach him my job and do John Willie’s job. John Willie Smith was very kind to me, he gave me all his books that had costings in which gave me a lot of knowledge how to do it. I felt sorry for Arthur Shackleton because he couldn’t do his job, which, at the time, put a lot of extra work on me. I said to Mr Smalley more than once that it was a mess, if I’m ill nobody can count these clots. Oh he said, You’re never ill Johnny! I wasn’t fortunately but it was a very happy time and I’m always glad to meet these old people and have a chat with them. It was a community and when there was anything wrong or they had a complaint the weaver’s representative, the shop steward nowadays, was Fred Howard and they’d go to Fred if they had a complaint. He’d say We’ll go and see John Cooke. If they had a genuine complaint it was made right, they didn’t come quarrelling because if they did it tended to get your back up. They were a grand lot and they gave me a nice present, I didn’t know a thing about it. Sadie did, she knew all about it, they’d been down to ask what she thought I’d want. Well then they bought me an automatic garden syringe that still works well, and a lovely garden seat because I’m very keen on my garden.

This was when the mill closed?

R-This was when the mill closed, well, it was a month or two before it closed as we were weaving down. We used to have a turkey do every Christmas, a turkey dinner, right good do and beer and what have you and a dance. And then we took them to Blackpool to a show and a dinner every year, a right good do.

The firm’s outing.

R-The firm’s outing and the firm’s dinner at Christmas. Now is there anything else you want to know? If you put all that down you are going to take a fortnight.

Doing what?

R-Reading it all out!


SCG/03 December 2000
2375 words