Thank you for this Audrey, A little bit 'late' for me this - my understanding of machinery of all kinds very sketchy and I was struggling with the idea of power looms in a private dwelling, even in an outhouse of some kind. However, this reply "that many very small places like farms had 3 or 4 looms and would use water power but created a small lodge to hold water until needed so that the flow would be even", received from someone with a good knowledge of the industrial history of this area, seems to tie in with the information you provided. I have got a couple more contacts to try and will see if they agree that this is possible for this area. If so it is the first time I have heard of it here, not being mentioned in any general history books about the area or those on industrial archaeology. Thanks again for your trouble, Barbara -----Original Message----- From: norman lee [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 12 December 2006 23:44 To: Barbara; [email protected] Com Subject: Re: [OEL] Power looms? Dear Barbara I have a copy of a privately published book by William Radcliffe called "The Origin of Power Loom Weaving" published in 1828. It is hard reading but, as far as I can tell, because he took exception to English and Scottish yarn being sold to European finishers to manufacture, i.e. handloom weave it, as he felt that English weavers should have the benefit of the yarn, decided to try and solve the trouble with the large amounts of spun cotton and too few weavers to make the finished pieces. This was partly because it was quicker to produce the yarn as it was then made by a mechanical process powered either by water or steam rather than the days when the yarn was spun by one member of a family in cottage industry situation and woven by another member of the family, with the children taking part by carding etc. He decided to first of all bring weavers and potential weavers together into his factory where he was already spinning yarn in order to train up as many men as he could to the trade of cotton weaving. He also began, with the help of others, to invent various other machines to perform some of the preliminary processes, e.g. warping and dressing. Then he invented a way of taking up the finished material by winding it onto a beam by means of what he called a "lathe" but may not have been quite what we understand as a lathe today. This was somehow able to be done mechanically as the handloom weaver wove the material by hand. In other words, he could also operate the winding process at the same time. This improved the finished article. There is a lot about how he had to patent machines and processes and what he had to go through in order to do it and how he felt the need, with others, to protect the English trade and workers against the theft of industrial secrets and it is not at all easy to select the wood from the trees. However, his idea seems to have been to train up the handloom weavers to work with what he called the power looms which they should then take back into their homes to use there. Clearly these are not the later power looms as only part of the process was mechanised and seems to have depended upon the action of the man to work it rather than power from water or steam. I don't know if any of this explains what you have found happening in your locality. Most of this was going on in Stockport and the areas roundabout as William Radcliffe was based in Stockport while he was doing this but he was putting out yarn and warps to the cottages over the three counties that border onto the countryside around Stockport - Derbyshire, Cheshire and Lancashire. This was, in effect, a transitional phase between hand operated looms and the fully powered looms in factory situations. Audrey