SPRING MILL EARBY. MAIL FROM BOB KING.

[Stanley]

SPRING MILL EARBY. MAIL FROM BOB KING.
15 September 2004

Afternoon Stanley, I did enjoy your tapes with Fred Inman, I knew Fred for many years and his wife Marjorie worked for me at Spring Mill from 1958 until 1965 as a weaver. Just a couple of small corrections to his tapes. 1 I bought Spring Mill for a company called A Speak & Co.Ltd in 1958 but it was run as C.W.Bailey and Co.Ltd until 1961 when the looms were broken up under the Cotton re-organisation scheme. All the looms were broken and moved out for scrap. 2 Booth and Speak was formed by a Mr Job Booth and a Mr Geoffrey Speak (the son of the owner of A Speak & Co.Ltd) They had bought a mixed collection of Lancashire looms from around Lancashire, the good ones went into Albion Mill Earby (some new W B White Looms included)to weave Viscose Linings and the other 420 looms came into Spring Mill to weave Twills, Sateens, 3 shaft Jeans and pocket linings. Because neither Booth nor Speak knew the front of a loom from the back they didn’t understand what they’d bought, the spare part situation was a disaster, the take up motions were not all standard so the calculation of the pick wheels was a job in itself, and the looms were in a parlous state. I must say that the 7 tacklers, the ancillary staff like the trappers, the sweepers and oilers and the weavers did a marvellous job in bringing the looms into production. I think Bob Taylor the Blacksmith at Earby thought all his birthdays had come at once with the work that we gave him and I was almost permanently at Rushworth’s at Colne looking for spare parts. By 1964 I had had enough and right out of the blue I was offered a Mill Manager’s job in New Zealand, so I severed my connections with Booth and Speak and emigrated. The Cotton Re-organisation scheme did not serve it’s purpose. The manufacturers received 100 pounds per loom to scrap them,(They didn’t reinvest the money in new industries) most of the looms were over 60 years of age. They also got the buildings to sell which was a bonus. The workers got peanuts - a small pittance for the years they’d been in the industry. This one stroke of the pen, flattened Blackburn, Burnley, Nelson, Colne, Barlick and Earby. No wonder the district even now looks like a disaster has hit it.

Regards Bob King

[Stanley]

Bumped

[Stanley]

This communication from Bob King is pure gold in terms of prime source historical evidence.