The Textile Mills of Earlston

For over 200 years, textile production was an important part 

of the Earlston economy.  

We have one of the earliest descriptions of the village  in "The First Statistical Account of Scotland, 1791-1799," edited by Sir John Sinclair, where  Parish Minister Rev.  Lawrence Johnston wrote:

 "The principal manufacture is linen cloth.  There are between 40 and 50 weaver looms mostly employed weaving linen........ We have only one woollen manufacturer,  though no place could be better  situated for carrying out that branch of trade.   The Leader Water runs along the west and there is plenty of wool to supply 20 manufacturers."

Later, a cauld (or weir)  on the Leader Water came to provide the mill lade with the water to power both Rhymers Mill and Mid Mill.

In the 18th century, RHYMER'S MILL was  a corn mill before being transformed by the Whale family into a textile mill where  the  manufacture of gingham was introduced by Thomas Whale.    

A carved inscription on the old mill building, 

with  the names C & M Whale clearly visible.

The 1891 publication "Two Centuries Of Border Church Life V2   - with Biographies Of Leading Men And Sketches Of The Social Condition Of The People On The Eastern Border",  by James Tait.  includes a paragraph  on the Whales Family.  

"Thomas Whale died on the 11th March 1814, aged 74 years; and his widow died two years afterward;  but the business was carried on with great skill and success by their daughters,  Chritian was the elder, and was a very clever woman, but she modestly gave the first place to her younger sister Marion and the designation of the firm was "Marion Whale Co,"   The gingham was manufactured of cotton and the weaving was done in private houses;  in some of which there was a factory containing twenty or thirty looms.  The colours were woven into the cloth, not printed as is now generally done;  and everything was of the best material  One of the sisters travelled to Edinburgh, along the Northumberland coast and even to London, which was very inaccessible in those days.  After a life of great activity and usefulness, Christian Whale died on the 22nd July 1872, aged 75 years, and is designated on her tombstone "late manufacturer of Earlston". 

The 1851 Census identified Christian  Whale as a 64 year old manufacturer of gingham and cotton, employing 60 workers, mainly weavers and winders of cotton. Also in the business was her sister Marion aged 56.   Ten years on in 1861 Christian, now aged 7)  and Marion 56, were both described as Gingham Manufacturers.

How usual was it in mid Victorian times for women entrepreneurs to head a business?  

There were  close connections  with the Clendinnin family.  The 1851 census recorded that Elizabeth Clendinnen. aged 39 and a widow was a "manufacturer of plaids", and her son was named Thomas Whale Clenddinnen.   Other family members were employed in the mill with 15 year old Lancelot described as a "cotton warper".  

In Slater's 1903 Directory of Berwickshire,  Thomas Clendinnen & Sons,  are named  as "gingham manufacturers, tailors and drapers".  They also had a shop on the High Street.

Rutherfurd’s 1866 Directory of the Southern Counties, published in nearby Kelso,   commented :

 “Earlston produces quantities of the Earlston ginghams. There is no other place in the country where the same class of gingham is made”.

Two surviving examples of the Earlston Gingham  in the collection of Auld Earlston.

Rhymer's Mill later became a dye works run by a firm called Sanderson and the path  alongside the Leader WAter is still referred to as "The Tenters" where the dyed wool was hung out to dry.  In 1911 the premises were taken over by John Rutherford & Sons,  agricultural engineers, who operated at the mill until the business closed down in 2014. 

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The photograph below from  the Auld Earlston collection is captioned:   

"Thomas Gray, (1856-1910), Manufacturer of Gingham - a cotton fabric originally made in India Gray.  He  lived in Earlston and was a well-known Border fiddler"

Unfortunately efforts to trace any further information on this Thomas Gray with those dates have met with limited  success.   An entry in the 1881 census for Earlston lists a Thomas Gray, a gingham manufacturer born in Earlston, living on his own at Kilknowe Head, but his age is given as 85, so born c.1786.  Records of the Berwickshire Naturalists Club  refer to him as a noted antiquarian, known as "Tam of Earlston"  or "Gingham Tam".  Some more research is  needed here to identify the Thomas Greys. 

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At MID MILL Charles Wilson & Sons  manufactured  blankets and tweeds. The 1851 census described him as a "of the firm of Charles Wilson & sons,  blankets and plaiding manufacturers employing 18 men 7 women and 19 girls".  Ten years on, the business had extended to making tweeds, and employed  "28 men and 44 women, boys and young women". 

Slater's Commercial Directory of 1882 recorded Roberts, Dun & Company as Tweed Manufacturers at Mid Mill.    Subsequently Simpson and Fairbairn took over the business and greatly extended its operations.  A 1903 Directory described Simpson & Fairbairn  as a tweed manufacturer and dyers at Mid Mills.   

It appears that the firm later adopted the name of Rhymer's Mill, as in the photographs below.

Always at the mercy of  the dictates of fashion and economics, Border woollen manufacturers between the wars  had a hard and stressful time.  The global depression, tariff barriers and instability especially in Eastern and Central Europe made export markets difficult.  Cheaper competition from areas like Yorkshire and North America plus the reduced  purchasing power of the unemployed resulted  in idle plants and closures.  In Galashiels a third of the manufacturing capacity of the town was lost in the 1930's 

 Mill Road houses, built for the workers.

However Simpson and Fairbairn  weathered the storm,  although short time working was often prevalent.  During World War Two, the mill was fully employed on service and  utility clothing  and after the war it was a boom time for the Borders as world wide stocks of clothes had to be replaced, with the firm employing more than 300 workers. 
making it  the economic mainstay of Earlston. 

But by the late 1950's and early '60's, the old problems of cheaper competitors and vulnerability to changing fashions had returned.  The   firm tried  to innovate by making cellular blankets and moving into  ladies' wear. 

On 13th June 1961 "The Southern Reporter" headline read "Closing of Earlston mill shocks 200 workers",  with a skeleton staff retained in the  hope the mill could re-open, once orders were forthcoming. The tidal wave of workers coming up Mill Road was reduced to a trickle.   After a few months, the mill did restart with the weaving and finishing department only and in 1966 a Mr Claridge (a textile designer) took over and oversaw a brief period of expansion.  

But the decline could not be stemmed.  The mill finally closed in 1969 when a workforce of almost 100 was made redundant.  Some of the workers went to Wilson & Glenny of Hawick who like Simpson & Fairbairn were part of  Scottish Worsteds & Woolens Group.  But they in turn closed along with William Brown of Galashiels who were also part of this group.

Earlston's role in the  Borders textile industry came to an end. 

 Today a street name sign reminds us of the village's past.
 

 Two photographs taken in 1974  of the Derelict Rhymer's Mill

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Notes:
Earlston census returns for the mid 19th century identified workers in the following occupations:
 
Cotton Weaver, Cotton Winder, Cotton Warper, Cotton Gingham Weaver, Clerk in Gingham Warehouse. Agent for a Gingham Warehouse  
Piecer in a Woollen Factory   (a 13 year old boy) 
Machine Feeder in a Woollen Factory (15 year old girl) 
Steam Loom Weaver of Wool (18 year old girl) 
Blanket Weaver, Power Loom Weaver, Hand Loom Weaver,  Wool Carder, Wool Picker, 
Overseer in Woollen Factory, Power Loom Tuner, Spinner in Woollen Factory 


You May Also Like to Read:   
Earlston's Gingham Tam - Thomas Gray.

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Thank you to everyone who has  donated or loaned old photographs for Auld Earlston.  We  welcome all contributions on the village's past  -  contact us on  auldearlston@aol.com or via the comments box below.  

For more photographs on village life,  
look at our associated Facebook page  Lost Earlston

An Evening of Nostalgia in Earlston

The Auld Earlston Group  hosted an evening of nostalgia recently when a capacity audience in the Church Hall enjoyed the annual Slide Show and Exhibition. 

The emphasis this year was on photographs, new to our collection, from the post war years, depicting events at the Church, Sunday School, Civic Week, sports occasions, amateur theatre  performances and the ever popular school groups.    

Fancy Dress Parade at Earlston Civic Week

 The Young Women's Group, "Good Old Days" Show,  1985

 Bringing back more memories were scenes of winter snow and floods. 

The Cauld at Mill Meadow, 

A "Then and Now" theme let us see how Earlston street scenes had changed over the decades,  if not the century.  Ending the sequence of over 600 slides, were recent views of the Earlston countryside  from the Black Hill and in Cowdenknowes Wood.

Brief presentations followed on Auld Earlston's  other activities such as the Sharing Memories project to record memories of older resident on growing up in the village;  and the press cuttings collection of all things Earlston that feature in local newspapers.

For our latest project, we are waiting to hear the success of our application to the    Scottish Borders Council Borders Railway Celebration  Fund. For it is hoped to produce framed mounted and laminated vintage photographs of the local railway for display in local shops and outlets. The response from businesses contacted has been very encouraging, with the schools also  very supportive of our idea.  So watch this space - or read the local press - for further information n the project and how the community will be involved.  

Winter 1947

Following  the slide presentation.   the audience spent time browsing through photographs in more detail along with more village memorabilia in a  themed exhibition in the lesser hall. 

Thank you to all for a successful evening on Auld Earlston.

If you would like to involved in the group, or can let us have. even just   on loan  photographs and other material from Earlston's past, do please get in touch. 

Via E-Mail:  auldearlston@aol.com 

Auld Earlston Annual Slide Show & Exhibition

AULD  EARLSTON

Valuing the History of our Village
for Future Generations

 

ANNUAL SLIDE SHOW

Bringing the Past to Life

With new slides on village events

 from the 1950's-1980's

on Tuesday October 20th at 7pm

in the Church Hall 

Entry £2.00 - Raffle  

ALL WELCOME

e-mail:  auldarlston@aol.com

Web:  https://www.facebook.com/LostEarlston

Blog:  http://auldearlston.blogspot.co.uk

Earlston - Then and Now

Four  sets of views of Earlston taken in the early 1900's  and over a hundred years  later in 2015 - not too much has changed. 

WEST END OF THE HIGH STREET 

 

 

KIDGATE 

                          

 The biggest change here is the Health Centre built on the land on the left in 1983 and extended in 1994.

MARKET SQUARE 

The building with the Clock Tower was the Corn Exchange, built in 1868  and once used for social events in the village (now the local pharmacy), with the larger building on the right, the  Red Lion Hotel, once a coaching inn. 

The house in between in the old picture  was at one time a shop, but taken down  in in the 1930's for the building of  a Masonic Hall.  Unfortunately the project was beset with problems  and came to naught.     A road was put through the site in 1951-52, with the building of new housing on the hill to the north of the High Street. 
  The postcard view can be dated prior to 1920, as it depicts  a horse and cart at the village pump well on the right.  The well, with a trough for horses and cattle to drink from,  was demolished to became the site of the village's War Memorial, unveiled in 1921.  

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Thank you to everyone who has  donated or loaned old photographs for scanning.

Auld Earlston welcomes all contributions on the village's past  - contact us on  auldearlston@aol.com or via the comments box below.  

For more photographs on village life,   look at our associated Facebook page  Lost Earlston

Earlston's Friend & Benefactor - Isabella Wallace

Plaque on the gates to the park at Mill Meadow

Researching Earlston's Friend and Benefactor,  Isabella Wallace  proved to be a Tale of One Name, Three People and Two Wills.  

Two  plaques around the village acknowledge the generosity of Isabella Wallace. Hearsay also  spoke of the fact that Isabella Wallace had died in the 1920's, leaving money to be  used for  local projects.

This struck me as a straightforward  local history challenge, but it proved to be not quite as easy as I thought.

I began the search on the family history site ScotlandsPeople website and immediately hit a stumbling block   - there were three Isabella Wallaces in Earlston during the late 19th century.   But which one was the village's generous benefactor?  I set out to trace the family of each Isabella. 

(1)  Isabella Wallace , born 20 Jan 1850 to Henry Wallace  (Master Shoemaker) and Elizabeth Swan. 

In the 1851 census,  young Isabella was with her parents and brother David.  But ten years later  her father was a widower with three children at home - David, Robert and daughter Elizabeth.  Their mother had died in 1857, aged 32.  Isabella was with her widowed aunt Helen Mercer and her cousin William Mercer.  In the 1871 census,  Isabella,  described as "companion",  was still living with her aunt, and following her death, she became housekeeper to her cousin William. 

 
Isabella remained single all her life and died 20th March 1927.  It is important to note that, unlike their English equivalent,  Scottish death certificates give the name of the parents, so I knew here that I had traced the death certificate of  the Isabella who was daughter of Henry and Elizabeth - and not the other Isabella Wallace's in Earlston at this time. She was buried in Earlston Churchyard (right).   

To my delight I discovered  she had left a will - surely an indication of money to leave to relatives and charitable causes! 

Wills provide such a wealth of information for family historians with bequests to family members, here notably nieces and nephews and sisters in law:  - to "my nephews Thomas Wallace and Robert Swan Wallace, and niece Ruth Wallace, all children of my deceased brother David Wallace".......to my brother Robert Swan Wallace, draper, Paisley....to Janet Ross or Wallace, wife of the said Robert Swan Wallace" .   

The will also confirmed that "the late William Mercer, draper, Earlston, bequeathed  all his estate heritable and moveable to me".  So here was confirmation of  the source of Isabella's  wealth. 

    
Specific bequests highlighted what were regarded as important possessions - "my  eight day clock.....my silver tea set...... my best china tea service.......my cream jug ....my next best china tea service....my piano...... half dozen silver spoons, sugar spoon, silver sugar sifter  and tongs.

Of course primarily I was looking for an indication of money left to the parish. But the only reference was to some shares in Earlston Corn Exchange Company, with the income to be used   in "keeping the burial ground and tombstone in Earlston Churchyard in order".  It seemed that, despite my initial high hopes. this Isabella may not be the benefactor I was looking for.

(2) Isabella Wallace, born 18th November 1850, to George Wallace (Innkeeper at the Commercial Inn)  and Agnes Hudson.
In the 1851 census,  the young Isabella was with her parents, older brother William and one servant. By 1861 the family had grown further with siblings, Helen, Agnes, John and George, to be later joined by Elizabeth and Janet - a family of eight in seventeen years. All the family were still at home in 1871.

Isabella could not be traced in the 1881 census and could well have married by this time - or died. but I was unable to trace  any entries in the Scottish records.  So I discounted this Isabella in my search for Earlston's benefactor. 

(3) Isabella Wallace, born c.1854, to John Wallace (master joiner) and Martha Stewart Brown.  
I was unable to trace a birth or baptism record for Isabella - this was surprising, as although compulsory registration in Scotland was not introduced until  1855 (1837 in England & Wales), the practice was becoming more and more prevalent in the lead up to that date. 

In 1861, Isabella,  aged  7, was with her parents and siblings in Market Square, Earlston - John 18, Robert 14, Hannah 12, Janet 10, George 5 and Francis 1, plus Mary Brown (mother in law).   Her father John was described as  a master joiner employing 3 apprentices.

Earlston's Market Square c.early 1900's

Twenty years on In the 1881 census, Isabella  was housekeeper to her brother George, also a joiner and his nephew James.  The 1891, 1901 and 1911 census returns showed her continuing in this role, latterly in a house which had eight rooms with windows - surely indicating status and money.

Isabella died 2nd June 1920, with the informant her niece Agnes  and her parents confirmed as John and Martha.  Again to my delight I traced a will on ScotlandsPeople. 

The will left heritable property "to Wilfred Wallace, residing in America, son of my late brother Frank";  "to Agnes Waddell Wallace, daughter of my late brother John my whole household furniture, every kind of wearing apparel and jewellery and all personal articles" plus a legacy of £50 per annum";  "to Janet Fairbairn Wallace,  daughter of my late brother Robert   £100"; "to Martha Stewart Brown Wallace, daughter of my late brother John - income from investments".   

The residue of Isabella's estate, she bequeathed to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

But notably -   the sum of £3250 was left to Earlston Parish Council  "For the purpose of improving the amenities of the Town of Earlston including footpaths, paving,  and lighting, and similar objects".

 
I had identified the correct Isabella! 

A visit to the Heritage Hub at Hawick was called for,  where I consulted the unique material not easily available elsewhere.: 

• Berwickshire County Council - West District Minutes
• Berwickshire County Council Finance Committee Minutes
• Earlston Parish Council Minutes
• Earlston Lighting and Scavenging Account

In  the years I looked at, the records confirmed that the Isabella Wallace Fund was used for the provision of  lighting, the upgrading of the Square, with  railings around the War Memorial,  the removal of an air raid shelter, and a gateway  and railings at the riverside park at Mill Meadow.  

A winter view of the park at Mill Meadow by the  Leader Water. 

Below two more early photographs of the  Market Square, Earlston, taken  before the unveiling of the War Memorial in 1921, and  the provision of railings and creation of a garden paid for from the Isabella Wallace Fund.  

 

The pump and horse well on the right were demolished in 1920 to make way for the erection of the War Memorial.

To the right of the War Memorial can be seen a small plinth

which features the plaque (below)  to Isabella Wallace - benefactor of Earlston 

 

A  poignant story is linked to Isabella's decision to grant this money to her home village. Local anecdotes recall  that her father's home and business in the Market Square was devastated by a fire. Local people rallied  round with great generosity to help the family - something that Isabella never forgot.  

Isabella Wallace  repaid   this through her will.  to become "Earlston's Friend and Benefactor"  

With thanks to the Auld Earlston Group and its associated website Lost Earlston  

for the old photographs of the village.