Since the early 2000s, staff based in Archaeological Research Services Ltd’s Manchester office have worked on a number of redevelopment and construction schemes in Greater Manchester. This is the first in a series of reports on our archaeological discoveries about Manchester’s industrial past.
Manchester: the world’s first industrial city
Manchester is renowned as the world’s first industrial city. It was at the centre of the 18th – early 19th century industrial revolution: nowhere else was more made in obvious revolutionary ways. Today, the 18th century canal system, warehouses and 19th century textile mills survive as testimony to Manchester’s former industrial prowess.
The invention of machines for spinning and weaving cotton in south-east Lancashire in the 1730s – 1760s facilitated factory-based production. Successive inventions and innovative practices resulted in the first multi-storey factories housing over 1,000 machines and operatives being built in Manchester in the late 1790s. The drive to make industrial processes more efficient was underway. Archaeological excavations of 18th and early 19th century industrial sites provide a way of finding out about the pioneering industrial developments that shaped the modern world.
Cotton mills
The first factories for spinning and weaving cotton were essentially stone or brick-built structures with each floor being an open space filled with machines linked to a single power source. Originally powered by water, steam engines were installed from the late 19th century onwards. Textile mills were constantly evolving following developments in textile machinery and steam power.
Urban regeneration of the Ordsall area of Salford has provided the opportunity to investigate a number of early 19th century industrial sites. One of these sites, a former steam-powered cotton mill built by the early 19th century, despite later disturbance provided an insight into how both Manchester and Salford were growing at a phenomenal pace. We uncovered part of an engine house and chimney installed by the mid-1840s to replace the earlier steam engine. The mill was also extended to the east, more-or-less doubling its size and thus manufacturing output. This coincided with a 30-year period in the mid-19th century when Manchester’s population more than doubled from 125,000 to 305,000.
> See part 2 of our series (bleach and dye works) here.