MARRINER'S YARNS

[Stanley]

MARRINER'S YARNS

10 June 2004.

1997 was a good year for anyone who has an interest in the textile industry, water power or industrial archaeology. Dr George Ingle of Ilkley published his book ‘Yorkshire Cotton’, an account of the Yorkshire Cotton Industry 1780–1835. This was, for me at least, a surprising book because it laid out clearly the importance of Yorkshire in the early cotton industry. It came as something of a shock to realise that at one point there were more water-powered cotton mills in Yorkshire than Lancashire. I learned much that was new, was triggered into new areas of research and thanks to George, can now avoid many of the errors unwittingly made in the past by historians who had completely ignored Yorkshire’s role in the early history of the textile industry.
Earlier this year Chris Aspin of Helmshore brought his master work, 'The Water Spinners' which introduced a vast amount of new and previously unpublished material expanding our knowledge of water powered spinning of cotton.
I’m pleased to be able to tell you that the flow of goodies hasn’t stopped. Last week George Ingle sent me a review copy of his new book, ‘Marriner's Yarns, the story of the Keighley Knitting Wool Spinners’. The title is slightly misleading as this is in fact the story of a Keighley firm of cotton spinners which started manufacturing in 1784 and eventually followed the rest of the Yorkshire textile industry into concentration on wool yarns. More particularly they became famous for their ‘Marriner’ brand of fingering and knitting yarns. There can be few of us older end alive today who haven’t at one time or another worn something knitted by our mothers from Marriner Yarns.
My only claim to any competence in reviewing this book is that I think I’ve read just about everything that has ever been published on the textile industry. In a way this is a disadvantage because I can’t say anything meaningful about the readability of the book as this is my passion, I have been known to read statistical tables with pleasure if they related to textiles! However, I feel I might have some slight qualification when it comes to judging the content and the depth and quality of the research.
Quite simply this is a tour de force of closely focussed research and collation of records. It is backed up by a broad appreciation of the textile industry as a whole in Yorkshire and the result is one of the finest accounts of a single firm from inception to eventual demise into a brand name operated by another firm that I have ever read. This is industrial history at its best and must be destined to become an essential reference book on the water powered industry apart from its role as a specific company history.
This is the first time I have ever seen direct evidence for the fact that a firm which ‘put out’ yarn to weavers might also have supplied reeds for special cloths and rented out looms and other preparation machinery. I have always suspected that this might have been the case but have never seen evidence of it.
In his account of the effects of the failure of a large firm and its affect on the rest of the town, George also alerts us to the fact that this happened in a year which combined general economic depression and was also a drought year, a serious matter for a water powered industry. This is but one example of how George has brought a wide variety of research and intimate knowledge together to give us the most comprehensive description of what was happening. It is typical of the way he has treated the rest of the book, there are numerous references to parallel matters which, whilst separate from the main narrative, have a bearing on the outcome.
Finally, George has not neglected the human side of the story. Apart from looking closely at the condition of the workers and including contemporary accounts he has shown clearly the division inside the family which led to the eventual break up of the firm. Once again, this is essential detail if we are to understand the whole.
This book is well worth seeking out and reading. I don’t see how any serious student of the early water powered industry can fail to want one for the bookshelf. I don’t suppose we will ever see it reviewed in the literary press, works such as these are not judged to be commercial. My advice is to find a copy today and make sure you have a first edition, you will not regret it.

10 June 2004.