Robin Longbottom looks at the growth of one of the town’s earliest industries

UNTIL the last decades of the 20th century, many long-established industries in Keighley still referred to departments within the business as ‘shops’.

Textile mills had a mechanics shop employing men who maintained the machinery, foundries had a fettlers shop where the rough castings were cleaned up, and metal stampers had a press shop, also known by the operatives as the finger end shop due to occasional accidents.

The term ‘shop’ harked back to the beginning of the industrial revolution when towns had a host of small workshops from where craftsmen plied their trades. In the first decades of the 19th century, one of the early industries was machine making. Machine makers were specialists who built spinning frames and associated textile machinery. They purchased the machine parts from the independent workshops and employed a handful of mechanics to assemble them.

From around 1830 one machine maker in Keighley began employing tradesmen instead of buying from them. He was William Smith and his business, William Smith & Sons, was the first in the town to bring the different workshops together under one roof. The premises for this new style of large workshop became known as a ‘works’, and the distinct trade units in them were known as ‘shops’. By the middle of the 19th century Keighley had several ‘works’ making spinning frames, machine tools, power looms and washing machines.

William Smith was originally a clockmaker and had worked from a small ‘homestead’ known as Wagon Fold, in Market Street. He had leased the property from Lord George Cavendish around the time of his marriage in 1794. It consisted of a house, barn, outbuildings and some two acres of land. As a clockmaker he was also periodically engaged in setting up gearing systems in mills and in building spinning machinery. By 1820 he and his eldest sons had begun making spindles, fliers and drafting rollers for worsted spinning frames and by the end of the decade they had progressed to making complete machines. It was at this stage that they began to bring the different trades within the scope of the business.

By 1835 the partnership consisted of William senior and his five sons – James, Lawrence, William junior, Prince and George. Together they expanded the business at Market Street to include the spindle, flier and roller shop, a blacksmiths shop, a tinsmiths shop, a nut and bolt shop, a joiners shop and a machine shop. They also opened an iron foundry on the site with a fettling shop where the rough cast iron machine ends, and gear wheels, were cleaned up. The foundry also cast the brass bushes that the machine parts ran on, and they were cleaned and polished in a brass finishing shop. For power they installed a 25hp beam engine and two Cornish boilers, and the works were lit by gas produced in their retort house and stored in a small gasometer.

After the death of William Smith senior in 1851 the business traded until 1869 when the partnership was dissolved. When it closed it was the biggest works in the town, with the main business in Market Street and a second works, Worth Valley Works, in Pitt Street.

After the closure Prince Smith, the fourth of the brothers, started a new business at Burlington Shed in Keighley. The shed was a former machine woolcombers and is now the site of Asda supermarket. Known as Prinny’s, it became one of the biggest worsted power loom makers in the world. Many departments were still known as ‘shops’ when Prinny’s closed in 1979. However, today the word is only used in respect of the shopfloor, which describes the production area in a factory and for shop steward, the person elected by factory workers to represent them at management meetings.