Sough Mill loomed large in my life in the late 1950s. Keeping the shop next door at what was then 99 Colne Road, Sough meant that the trade from the workers next door was a welcome boost to our takings. I can remember at the time being quite intrigued by the fact that one of the firms was making small crawler tractors. Somehow this didn’t seem to fit in with the usual manufactures of the district.
Over the years I have amassed quite a bit of information about the mill and it seems to be a good time to drag some of it together. Remember what I always say, there is a built-in health warning, the research never stops and I shall make mistakes and get some things wrong. Having said that, I believe I have a pretty good picture now so here goes.
I have to say right away that I don’t know exactly when the mill was built. It isn’t on the 1853 OS map and all I have are two entries in Barrett’s Directories for 1887 and 1896 noting that Nathan Smallpage and Son were cotton manufacturers there. Bracewell Hartley and Company are cited as being at Sough in the 1902 Barrett. What is certain, because I have copies of the order book, is that the Universal Metallic Packing Company of Bradford supplied two of their duplex packings for the 500hp Robert’s gear drive tandem engine described by Newton Pickles as being in there when he knew it.
These packings were usually fitted as replacements for the original soft packings so the engine was older than 1912. The contractor who fitted them was Henry Brown and Sons of Albion Street, Earby and the invoice was presented to the owners of the mill, The Kelbrook Mill Company. So, it looks as though Sough Bridge was built as room and power by a shed company. If this is the case the most likely date for the building of the mill would be about the mid 1880s.
In the Manchester Exchange Directory of 1912 Nutter and Turner had 252 looms and H G Wilkinson was the salesman. The East End Manufacturing Company had 268 looms and the salesman was Edward Henry Baldwin.
In 1928 the second motion shaft carrying the drive from the engine to the mill broke and stopped production. Henry Brown and Son had expanded by then and had a larger workshop at Wellhouse Mill in Barlick. They made a new shaft and fitted it and my picture this week shows it laid in the thoroughfare at Sough Mill ready to be re-installed.
The engineer at the mill between the wars was Jim Pickles, uncle to Johnny Pickles. Johnny spent a lot of time with his uncle at Sough and it was this experience that decided him to run away when he was put to work in an office. Jim must have had a word with Henry Brown because Johnny went down to the Albion Street workshop and served his apprenticeship there. After a brief spell working in Burnley he came back to Browns as foreman and eventually restarted the firm when Browns liquidated in 1929. This was the genesis of Henry Brown Sons and Pickles of Barlick who at one time had over 150 engines on their books.
Fred Inman told me that up to 1930 Joe Foulds had looms in Sough and Nutter Brothers had most of the shed. In 1932 the Nutter Brothers interests collapsed and over 4,000 looms stopped in Earby. This was a disaster for the town but ‘cometh the hour, cometh the man’.
Nutter Brothers had the whole of Grove Shed in Earby up to the liquidation and the manager and Manchester Man was called Wilkinson. He had an assistant called Percy Lowe and in 1979 Horace Thornton told me that he was a good man and trained an even better one in Percy. When Nutter Brothers went under, Percy Lowe inaugurated a scheme whereby weavers could buy their looms for £2 each and start up as cooperative enterprises. One started in Victoria Mill and another one at Sough where the weavers traded from June 1932 as Nutters (Kelbrook) Ltd. It looks as though either Nutter Brothers rescued something from the crash or their name was taken by a cooperative because the 1938 directory records Nutter Brothers as having 1,152 looms in Grove Shed.
Because they were a self-help shed, the Sough firm carried on trading through the 1932 strikes over wage reductions of 10%. 7,000 workers were out in Barlick, Earby and Skipton and 80% of the mills between Skipton and Preston were stopped. There was a nasty incident on the 29th of August outside Sough mill when a crowd gathered to picket. Ernie Roberts told me that one of the main instigators of the protests was James Rushton who was a founder member of the Barnoldswick Communist Party in 1931. The police had brought extra men in from the West Riding specifically to act as strike breakers and they baton-charged the picket scattering them across the fields. The incident was serious enough for the Barnoldswick Urban District Council and the Weavers Association to protest to the Home office on the grounds of police violence. Two men were arrested.
These were hard times in the cotton industry and the first permanent closures started, the biggest being at Bankfield Shed in Barlick which never wove again. The self-help firm in Sough Mill survived until at least 1938, Worrall’s directory records them as having 520 looms and H Lord was secretary. The cooperative venture in Victoria mill had a different fate. By 1938 their 870 looms had been bought out by what was then called Johnsons Fabrics Ltd and the manager, secretary and salesman was Percy Lowe. They wove on until 2000.
However, international events were to change everything. Herr Hitler started on the course that was to lead to World War Two and this was going to change Sough Bridge Mill for ever.
SCG/30 April 2003
The new second motion shaft ready to be fitted at Sough Bridge mill.