The explosion in house and mill building in Barlick came to an abrupt end in 1914 with the outbreak of the Great War. Work on the last shed, Bancroft, had started but was stopped and it wasn't to be finished until 1920. During the war production in the other Barlick mills was hit by a shortage of materials as raw cotton was a feedstock for the explosives industry. 'Gun-cotton' was the favourite propellant for artillery guns.
As the end of the war approached in 1918 the manufacturers fully expected trade to rapidly get back to pre-war levels and for the removal of wartime labour restrictions to result in a surplus of labour and the opportunity to drive wages down to pre-war levels. In other words, happy times are here again! For a while, immediately after the war, it looked as though they were correct. Trade boomed due to the demand for cloth as merchants and the retail trade re-stocked, but this was an illusion. The disruption of trade during the war and in particular the changes in flows of wealth globally had stimulated the textile industries in countries that actually grew the cotton and they had expanded their industries. This was particularly true of India which had been one of our major markets. In 1920 (just as Bancroft was starting up) commodity prices started to rise, the re-stocking boom fizzled out and thanks to research in the Craven Bank archives at Liverpool I can put a date on the tipping point, it was July 1920.
This was the start of the long decline in the mills and contrary to the manufacturer's expectations it never recovered. The immediate consequence was a sharp drop in economic activity in the town. A secondary effect was that in other parts of the country, the new industries, largely connected to light engineering and the motor trade, boomed. Many workers saw the writing on the wall and migrated, particularly to the Midlands. There was no demand for housing and no new money to finance it anyway and apart from a few infills, no new houses were built in Barlick for over thirty years from 1914 to 1945 and the demand for existing houses fell sharply. The outlook for the town was bleak as there was no government assistance and no new industry.
Salvation came from an unlikely source, Adolph Hitler and the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. During the inter-war years the activities of the German Zeppelin Hindenburg had been suspicious, in the course of its transatlantic voyages it seemed to take different routes across Britain and (quite correctly as it turned out) it was suspected that aerial photographs were being taken. By the start of the war the Germans knew the exact location of many of our most important manufacturing plants, especially those connected with the aero industry. The Luftwaffe knew where to strike and as soon as the war started, put this intelligence to good use. It looked as though disaster was inevitable!
Bancroft Shed. The last mill to be built in Barlick.
