Tag: fustian

A small town in Yorkshire

The small town is Hebden Bridge, in West Yorkshire.

Politics doesn’t have a big part to play in this post. The focus is history, and a soon-to-be-published book that I’ve written. My aim has been to convey something of what life was like in a small industrial town, not all that long ago. We tend to think of our own world, our own time, as the only world, the only time that ever existed. We are wrapped up in our present – as they were then, in their own very powerful present, 150 years ago.

The book is entitled ‘A Place Apart: Hebden Bridge’, with the subtitle ‘as seen through the eyes of the Spencer family in the late nineteenth century’.

Hebden Bridge is well-known today for several very good reasons, but back then it won renown as the site of extraordinary growth, focused around the manufacture and sale of fustian, a kind of hardwearing cloth much used by miners and labourers. It became known as ‘Fustianopolis’. Out of this came many success stories as new mills and a wide variety of businesses flourished, and among them successful retailers such as my great grandfather, Joseph Spencer, a tailor and outfitter.

If your interested read further. What follows is the blurb on the back of the book. To order the book check out ‘A Place Apart: Hebden Bridge’ on Amazon. Or you should be able to order through a bookseller. The publication date is 1st March, so no copies available before then.

‘A Place Apart’ tells the story of the town through the experiences of three generations of the Spencer family. Mills dominated the landscape, along with the non-conformist chapels which gave a moral compass to people’s lives. Education was opened to everyone and, as working hours relaxed, people had time to relax and enjoy themselves.

‘The textile industry in the nineteenth century opened the Pennines to the world, and one small Yorkshire town which made its mark was Hebden Bridge. Sheltering below the moors, at a junction of two rivers, it excelled at making clothes for working men.

The book provides a valuable perspective on life and attitudes during the Victorian era, brought into an unfortunate focus in 1901 when the daughter of Joseph Spencer, a successful local tailor, found herself pregnant by a local lad. Reputations had to be preserved and the family left town. The business held on, but finally closed in 1907.

This wide-ranging portrait of the area’s social and industrial history is written by a descendant of the Spencer family, and features first-hand accounts, authoritative source material and contemporary illustrations. It provides an engaging, well-researched study of a town and its people at a time of immense change.’

**

‘This book offers a vivid account of the life of a small entrepreneur in a textile town providing an insight into the lives of those who rarely receive the attention of historians.’

Alan Fowler, formerly Principal Lecturer of Economic and Social History, Manchester Metropolitan University

‘Brilliant piece of writing. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down. A really interesting story told in great detail and with passion and pride.’

Michael Peel, local Hebden Bridge historian

**

Mill country – from Hebden Bridge to Stroud

[The first paragraphs of this blog originally appeared as the blog, ‘One cheer for enterprise and two for poor’. I’d taken my cue from EM Forster’s short book from 1950, Two Cheers for Democracy. I’ve decided rather late that both title and allusion are too obscure – but there still is a story to tell.]

Back in 1907 there was a creditors’ meeting in Manchester. A low-key winding-up. Not such an unusual occurrence. In this case it was ‘Mr Joseph Spencer, carrying on business… as tailor and outfitter’. He was my great-grandfather.

You saw an opportunity, you seized it, ‘set up shop’, a mill maybe – or literally a shop. That’s what Joseph Spencer did, in Hebden Bridge in Upper Calderdale, that hybrid seriously-Yorkshire but edging-Lancashire area which, with the Rochdale Canal sneaking through the Pennines, linked to Manchester as much as Halifax, and manufactured cotton goods (especially fustian) which traded on the Manchester Exchange.

In the 1890s he looked west, across the border, and opened further shops in Burnley, Accrington and Oldham, and in 1901 transferred his main business to Deansgate Arcade in Manchester. His son, my grandfather, Thomas, aged 22, stayed behind to run the Hebden Bridge business.

I will need to research further whether Joseph simply over-traded and ran out of money, or whether there was a wider slump. Either way, it’s in the nature of enterprise. Our lives run on enterprise, our own, or that of others. Small traders live on the edge, big businesses ossify. Get taken over, or in extremis, they collapse. Shipbuilding and steel. Coal. BHS, Arcadia, Debenhams.

My house in Stroud, in Gloucestershire, is next to the old Severn-Thames canal. An abundance of Cotswold wool, fast-flowing rivers in the ‘five valleys’ and, later, coal brought up the Severn, drove a multitude of mills, many of which, re-purposed, still survive.  It seems I can’t escape from mills, though it was wool in Stroud, and cotton (and especially fustian) in Hebden Bridge.

Across the canal from my house a mill turned out military uniforms, and a few yards to the west two mills co-existed with the railway viaduct which sweeps over both the canal and the river Frome. To the north, up on the hill, was the workhouse, a substantial structure, an ever-present reminder of how the wheel of fortune goes up, and also comes down.

It’s a peaceful landscape now. As indeed is Hebden Bridge. Both places, as I’m finding, have remarkable stories to tell. Once upon a time they were all energy, and noise, the endless working out of success and failure. All has leaked away downriver. (In Hebden Bridge’s case with an occasional big flood. The Frome in Stroud runs a deeper channel.) Downriver – and overseas.

There are many remarkable personal stories to tell. My great-grandfather’s being one. He was fortunate. He wasn’t brought low by his bankruptcy. But it’s a useful reminder to me (if Covid wasn’t enough!) how fickle fortune can be.