When King Cotton reigned supreme

The Chronicles of Alda

ALDA truly wishes he could attribute this week’s title to those fantastic sporting teams of the town — the Roughyeds and the Latics.

Both have done Oldham proud over the years but, alas, are presently languishing somewhat in the lower reaches of their respective professional leagues.

With regards to true world champion status, however, our borough has had one real and undisputed world championship title – and the trophy was, of course, made of pure cotton.

It vexes Alda that this fact is not proudly proclaimed or properly remembered in the town.

Fed up am I of reading and hearing about Bolton or Manchester as having been the King of Cotton — it is just not true. Oldham was the world’s biggest spinner of cotton by an absolutely huge margin.

In 1913 we had over 17 million spindles in 320 mills — our nearest rival, Bolton, had a mere seven million spindles. To put it into a global context, we had one eighth of the world’s spindleage.

Across Lancashire they were casting envious glances at our borough and, as they used to say about Shaw, “this no other place surpasses — spinning yarn for Blackburn lasses”.

It is almost impossible to comprehend the enormous impact that cotton production had in these parts — but a good illustration is given by looking at population growth in the old town of Oldham itself. From just over 12,000 people in 1801, it had increased to over 137,000 a century later in 1901.

A dramatic example of the cotton frenzy is to be found in an account from the annals of the Black Swan Inn. This fine inn still stands proudly at the Mumps end of Huddersfield Road.

In past times, it was a favourite haunt of cotton waste dealers and was a regular stage for stock issues regarding newly formed mill companies.

It was in January, 1875, at the Black Swan when a staggering 11,666 £5 shares in the Swan Mill Company were taken up in just 20 frantic minutes. The cotton boom had a knock on effect; banking, for example, flourished in this era and if you are a user of the beautiful HSBC bank building on Union Street you have cotton to thank — it was built in 1892 as the head office of the Oldham Joint Stock Bank.

The cotton industry had a language of its own and many older readers will, no doubt, be aware of the meaning of those strange words scutching, slubbing and roving, piecing and doffing!

Oldham also developed a world famous engineering industry, strongly linked to the cotton industry. Platt Brothers developed large works on two sites — at Hartford Works, Greenacres, and Hartford New Works at Werneth. Platt’s became the largest textile machine makers in the world employing over 15,000 people, twice the size of their nearest rivals, Dobson & Barlow in Bolton and Asa Lees at Greenacres.

I wonder if any current readers worked at Platt’s or Asa Lees — if they did, it would be great to hear their stories.

So fellow Oldhamers, be absolutely proud of these facts.

Our borough gets a lot of stick, but via the enterprise, grit and sheer determination of its proud people, it ascended to be the undisputed world champion of cotton spinning within the proverbial blink of an eye — a phenomenal success story.

We only ceased to be the largest single centre of cotton spinning as recently as 1964 and the very last thread of mill cotton was spun in 1998 at the Elk Mill, Royton, now the site of a thoroughly depressing retail park. The borough really should hang its head in shame that there is no permanent and lasting tribute to the mighty industry that made us world champions and created the town we largely see today.


Author’s Footnote: The Chronicles of Alda are based on historic fact with a little conjecture and a sprinkling of poetic licence.