Passage 8/15

simon66 — 3 years ago

In 1873, Henry Mason built ‘Victoria Works’ to manufacture worsted coatings and dress goods. One of four significant mills in Bradford, (Salts, Lister’s, Drummonds and Victoria Works), initially it was a fully integrated (or vertical) mill – the wool arriving on the top floor and all the processes took place on site from wool to finished cloth. The weaving shed was almost two acres in size. The produce was exported worldwide. According to Cudworth, by 1876 the big four worsted firms in Shipley, namely, Hargreaves, Salt’s, Mason’s and Denby’s were in total employing 6,900 workers. In 1888, Mason’s ‘New’ Mill was built. This was a sign that business was booming! At the same time Old Mill was enlarged by carefully adding another floor and changing the roof style from pitched to “Northern Lights”. In 1930, Henry Mason was living at Bankfield House (now the Mercure Hotel) near Cottingley. He arrived daily in a carriage drawn by four white horses and personally greeted his workers who held him in high regard. Solomon Jerome, who had commenced trading as a cloth merchant in 1930 which laid the foundations for the Jerome Group. It was during 1959 that Jerome’s acquired the Mills still producing high quality worsted cloth. In this period, post WW2, record production helped offset rising costs. The wool textile industry earned £800 million more that the aircraft industry between 1950 and 1959. Keighley, M, 2007