Industrial Revolution

Traditional Industry in Chester
Early evidence for "industry" in Chester points to leather, lead and linen as significant commodities traded here. Remains from Roman Chester include lead ingots, one being inscribed IMP•VESP•AVGV•T•IMP•III (the word DECEANGI appears on the side, pointing to a source in North Wales) which means it can be dated to AD74.

During the 13th and 14th century, Chester was the largest and busiest port in the north-west, trading with ports throughout the British Isles and Europe. Chester claimed that it "lived by trade".



In medieval Chester the main industry was leather. There were skinners, tanners, glovers, shoemakers and saddlers in profusion. Local landmarks include "Shoemakers Row" and the "Gloverstone". As well as leather from dairy farming pelts and skins were imported on a huge scale. Both tanned and raw hides were sent from Ireland to Chester, together with tallow used in waterproofing, but skins were considerably more numerous. In 1525-6, for example, Chester received some 2,200 hides, over 13,000 lambskins, 10,200 sheepskins, 2,300 badger pelts, 1,100 calfskins, 640 marten and otter skins, 300 fox skins, 90 goatskins, and 50 hart skins. Alum and oil, used by Glovers and Tawyers to prepare light leathers, also came from Ireland. Prices for skins in the luxury market rose fast between 1500 and 1550, marten tripling in price and otter quadrupling, and Irish skins were sold in London after preparation in Chester. In 1536 Chester was brought into the national customs system for leather and in 1537-8 customs duties were paid on 10,681 tanned hides in five Spanish and five Chester ships. Figures for later years ranged from 700 to 1,600 hides, with Spanish merchants exporting the larger share. The privileges of the various trades and their asssociated guilds were jealously guarded (see: "Charters") - in 1433, the Mayor and Sheriffs of Chester were ordered to find and punish all ‘foreigners’ who used the trade of skinner and shoemaker within the liberties of Chester.

As usual (see: Charters) Chester did everything to hang onto its monopolies even outside of the City. During the reign of Elizabeth central government treated Liverpool as part of a large customs district which included the ports of North Wales, and had its centre at Chester. Orders of various sorts were frequently transmitted to the Mayor of Liverpool through the Mayor of Chester. At times Liverpool and Chester were treated as a single port, or Liverpool was actually catalogued with Chester and 'Ilbrye' as one of the ports of Cheshire. This supported a claim on the part of Chester to superiority over Liverpool as the Mayor of Chester was viceadmiral of Lancashire and Cheshire and Chester claimed (in 1565) that Liverpool was only "a creek within its port" such that all ships entering the Mersey should pay dues through Chester.

In the 18th century, Chester traded in raw hide with the Americas and even sent slave ships to Africa. Grain and wine were also major imports. Until the start of the 14th Century, the ancient city walls provided adequate defence to the port (the navigable River used to extend as far as Watergate). Silting of the River Dee had become a serious problem, leading to a loss of maritime trade to rival ports such as Liverpool. In response, the River Dee Company was formed and the Old Port area was developed as a new port for the City. A cut was formed which allowed easier navigation and led to the construction of Crane Wharf. Improvements to the river Weaver after 1730 served to channel trade from central Cheshire away from Chester to the Mersey, and the Trent and Mersey Canal Act of 1766 threatened to strengthen still further the dominance of Liverpool over the Dee. By the late 18th Century the port further waned, and focus shifted to linking it with the canal network, resulting in the construction of the Dee basin and Tower Wharf. Chester Canal became known as "England's first unsuccessful canal", after its failure to bring heavy industry to Chester.

2009 saw the closure of "Shuttleworths" in Bridge Street.

Sources and Links

 * Shuttleworths, as it was.

Broader Context
The "Industrial Revolution" was the emergence of improved manufacturing processes during the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. Developments included, among others:
 * the canal network: (see: Canal and Boatyard);
 * hand production methods being replaced by the increased use of machines, including the development of machine tools. Mechanised cotton spinning powered by steam or water increased the output of a worker by a factor of about 1000. The power loom increased the output of a worker by a factor of over 40. The cotton gin increased productivity of removing seed from cotton by a factor of 50. Gains in productivity also occurred in spinning and weaving of the Chester "staples" wool and linen, but they were not as great as in cotton.
 * new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes;
 * improved efficiency of water power;
 * the increasing use of steam power: following it's introduction the efficiency of steam engines increased so that they used between one-fifth and one-tenth as much fuel. Steam allowed the development and expansion of railways (see: Chester Station), leading to a Railway "Mania" humourously recollected in the "Hunting of the Snark" (..They threatened its life with a railway share..);
 * the change from wood and other (mostly renewable) bio-fuels to coal: for a given amount of heat, coal required much less labour to mine than cutting wood, and coal was more abundant than wood.
 * Urbanisation, as workers moved from agriculture to better-paid factory work.

Cast Iron
Cast iron was a known form of iron at the time of the Industrial Revolution and had previously been used to make weaponry, such as cannon and cannon-balls as well as other heat-resistant articles. Cast iron was traditionally prepared using a mixture of charcoal, iron ore and limestone. The heat supplied by the charcoal reduces the ore to the metal and the impurities are removed by the limestone to form a "slag". With the growth of the Royal Navy from Henry VIII onwards, more cast iron was needed than could be supplied using traditional sources of charcoal (the Sussex Weald and Forest of Dean), and the problem was made worse by the consumption of suitable (slow-growing) hardwood in building and the construction of Naval vessels - the Industrial Revolution and the Royal Navy cost Britain much of its natural woodland. Today, with just under 12% of land under woodland cover, the UK is one of the least wooded countries in Europe.

Coke, made from coal, was the only available solution. Only some forms of coke were suitable: it must support the burden of the furnace charge without crumbling and at Coakbrookdale, Abraham Darby found a suitable source of coke (Shropshire 'clod coal' - as well as local iron-ore and limestone) and built his original furnace in 1707. Darby was granted a patent by Queen Anne for the novel process of casting iron using sand, as opposed to loam or clay (the actual inventor, a welshman named John Thomas, is largely unremembered but appears to have been well-rewarded by Darby). The introduction of the patent (380) reads as follows:


 * "Anne, by grace of God, to all to whom these presents shall come, greeting. WHEREAS our trusty and welbeloved ABRAHAM DARBY....hath by his petition humbly represented unto us that by his study and industry and expense he hath found out and brought to perfection A NEW WAY OF CASTING IRON BELLIED POTS, AND OTHER IRON BELLIED WARE IN SAND ONLY, WITHOUT LOAM OR CLAY, BY WHICH IRON POTS AND OTHER WARE MAY BE CAST FINE AND WITH MORE EASE AND EXPEDITION, AND MAY BE MORE AFFORDED THAN THEY CAN BE BY THE WAY COMMONLY USED, AND IN REGARD TO THIS MAY BE OF GREAT ADVANTAGE TO THE POORE OF THIS OUR KINGDOME, WHO FOR THE MOST PART USE SUCH WARE, AND IN ALL PROBABILITY WILL PREVENT THE MERCHANTS OF ENGLAND GOING TO FORREIGN MARKETS FOR SUCH WARE, FROM WHENCE GREAT QUANTITIES ARE IMPORTED, AND LIKEWISE MAY IN TIME SUPPLY FOREIGN MARKETS WITH THAT MANUFACTURE OF OUR OWN DOMINIONS, and hath humbly prayed us to grant him our Letters Patents for the sole use and benefit of the said Invention for the terme of fourteen years."

Darby used his iron for the production of pots ("Dutch Ovens" - at the time supplied from the Netherlands), pans, firebacks and other hardware for hearths. The first commercial steam-engines became available around 1712, and by 1781 James Watt patented a steam engine that produced continuous rotative motion using a cast iron cylinder. The stationary steam engine was a key component of the Industrial Revolution, allowing factories to locate where water power was unavailable, while the level of power available from the self-propelled steam engine facillitated the development of the railways.

In Chester
By 1700 Chester was on the verge of losing its dominance as a regional economic hub, as nearby towns, especially the industrial and mill towns in south Lancashire and around Telford began to specialize in trade or manufacturing. The reopening of the River Dee in 1737 did not halt Chester's decline as a port. In 1701 Chester shipowners had 25 vessels, and in the early 1710s the total tonnage, no more than 3,400, was less than half that owned at Liverpool where the worlds first enclosed commercial dock was built 1709-1715. By the 1730s it had fallen to around 1,650 tons (a tenth of Liverpool's total) and in the late 1750s Chester's 1,000-1,400 tons was scarcely a twentieth of Liverpool's fleet. Efforts were made to improve the Dee by dredging a "new cut" in the estuary and cutting the canal, but the decline of traditional industry and trade continued.

A leadworks was established by the canal in 1799; its shot tower, which was used for making lead shot for the Napoleonic Wars, is the oldest remaining shot tower in the UK. However, at the end of the 18th century, industrialisation of the Lancashire and Manchester mill towns saw Cheshire farms abandoned as workers sought a better living in the industrial towns. These lands were absorbed into bigger estates culminating in 98% of Cheshire land belonging to only 26% of the population. Other developments moved the center of industry away from Chester itself. The completion of the Trent and Mersey Canal in 1777 and innovations such as the Anderton Boat Lift, allowed Cheshire cheese and salt to become major county exports - but not through Chester. The silk industry was developing in Macclesfield, triggered by Charles Roe building a watermill in Macclesfield in 1744. The railways came through Cheshire in the 1830s. The Grand Junction Railway designed by George Stephenson and Joseph Locke, opened for business on 4 July 1837, running for 82 miles (132 km) from Birmingham through Wolverhampton, Stafford, Crewe, Hartford and Warrington, then via the pre-existing Warrington and Newton Railway to join the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The GJR established its chief engineering works at Crewe, moving there from Edge Hill, in Liverpool. In 1874, industrialist John Brunner and chemist Ludwig Mond founded Brunner Mond in Winnington near Northwich and started manufacturing soda ash (to meet the burgeoning demand for alkali in the soap, textile, and glass industries) by the Solvay Process using Cheshire's salt deposits as a main raw material.

The plans for a Chester and Holyhead Railway were prepared and canvassed between 1838 and 1842, almost scuppered in 1843, and eventually given Royal Assent on 4 July 1844. The route chosen was George Stephenson's proposal through Chester, despite the complications this entailed through "gaps" which needed to be bridged at the Menai Straight and Conwy estuary. The resident engineer in Chester was William Moorsom. The project had significant political overtones. Ireland was then an integral part of Britain but suffering greatly from crop blight and the exactions of absentee landlords. Moreover, there was little coal to support industry. A glance at the 1872 OS Map shows that Chester has barely outgrown its City Walls by this time, but that the railways had definitely arrived.

In Chester the number of male manufacturing workers remained almost static between 1871 and 1911, but there was a great change in the work they did. The proportion employed in the traditional and handicraft sector dropped from 61% to 43% with the most dramatic fall in shoemaking. The footwear trade became more concentrated in specialist towns like Stafford, Northampton, and Leicester, and mechanized factory production progressively eliminated traditional hand-work.

Boots and Shoes
As the footwear trade became more concentrated in specialist towns like Stafford, Northampton, and Leicester, mechanized factory production progressively eliminated hand-work, so shoemaking as domestic outwork declined in Chester. Attempts were made to move to factory production there, notably by William Collinson and his various partners. He traded from premises in Watergate Street from the mid 1840s, and later opened a shop in Eastgate Street. Between 1864 and 1866 he also started a large new factory at the canal bridge on City Road, housing 'vast amounts of machinery' and employing 250 hands who turned out 2,000-3,000 pairs of boots a week. Collinson did not, however, stay in manufacturing. Around 1875 the factory was taken over by Alfred Bostock & Co., a Stafford shoe firm, but by 1892 Bostocks had left and the premises were occupied by a rope and twine manufacturer. Another member of the same Stafford family, Edwin Bostock, opened a small shoe factory in King Street in the 1860s, but it closed between 1902 and 1906. Factory production of footwear failed to establish itself in Chester, and by 1911 the number of shoemakers had dropped to a third of the 1871 level.

Decline
The prosperity of Chester's shops and services depended to a large extent on custom from the City itself. Demand from outside enabled it to support a larger range than its own population would have justified, but perhaps 60-65% of Chester's trade came from residents of the city and its suburbs. Conflicting economic factors applied:
 * Chester's restricted manufacturing base weakened the local service economy, since the city was deficient in both an industrial middle class and a skilled working class, two groups with significant purchasing power in the late Victorian economy.
 * Improved railway connexions allowed the wealthy from Liverpool, Manchester, and other towns to choose the city as an elegant place of residence: in 1899 it was asserted that only four of 75 occupiers in Hoole Road derived their living from Chester. Chester also attracted a class living off inherited wealth and investment income, who perhaps formed 5% of the population by the Edwardian period.

Browns' monopoly had been broken in the late 19thC. by the growth of three other stores which exploited the increased spending power of the middle classes (and to a lesser extent working people):
 * Richard Jones's drapery business was founded in Watergate Street in the 1850s, and expanded into larger premises in Bridge Street in the 1860s. It diversified into furnishings and grew rapidly from the 1890s, and in 1900 opened a new clothing shop in Eastgate Street, by which time it was second only to Browns in importance.
 * The Chester Co-operative Society opened a grocery in Black Diamond Street in 1884, moved into the city centre in the 1890s, and by 1905 the Foregate Street premises had developed into a large department store.
 * Burrells was also a newcomer: Thomas Gaze Burrell, a Norfolk man working in London, was advised in 1877 that Chester was growing in importance as a shopping centre and would be an ideal place to start a business. He bought an existing haberdashery shop at no. 32 Foregate Street and renamed it the 'Little Wonder'. By 1890 he had opened men's, women's, and children's clothing shops and in 1899 expanded into furnishings.

The grocery trade changed greatly between 1890 and 1914. New shops were dispersed in the suburbs and the number of city-centre grocers fell. The chain stores of Liptons, Home & Colonial, Maypole, and Pegrams established branches in Chester, and their branded, packaged goods started to supplant the shop-blended and shoppacked provisions typical of the older and often more exclusive retailers. By 1910 there were c. 20 chain stores in the city, including Boots, Marks & Spencer, and Hepworths, but Chester remained a shopping centre dominated by local businesses often biased towards a wealthy and socially select clientele.

An upswing in the service economy performance after the 1890's led to even more of the City Center being rebuilt in the "Mock Tudor" style. Eastgate Street remained the heart of commerce, but developments of the ends of Bridge Street, Northgate Street and to some extent Watergate Street radiating from the High Cross as desirable locations pushed out the smaller shops. The story was different in lower Bridge Street and much of Watergate Street where buildings became subdivided and in some cases ruinous.



Behind the "Mock Tudor" facades of The Rows living conditions in the "Courts" remained appalling. While this "core of rottenness" became a subject of debate and these "foul and filthy dens" were seen as "the resorts of thieves, prostitutes and drunkards" (Chester Chronicle, 29th Nov 1879). Commercial pressures were to lead to the clearance of many of these inner city slums.

Relative growth of the "Service Economy"
The general rise in the standard of living which occurred during the later C.19th century led to relative growth in Chester's shops and services. That is, the proportion of people working in the service sector grew, but there was little underlying growth. Employment in shops, services, and transport almost doubled from 26 per cent of the working population in 1861 to 42 per cent in 1911, when nationally only 35 per cent of the labour force worked in service employments. While Chester had a relatively large service sector by the early 1870s, it did not grow particularly quickly before 1914, and less rapidly than in the country as a whole, growing by 58% between 1871 and 1911 compared with a national growth rate of 68%. The generally depressed period between 1873 and the 1890s seems to have hit Chester's most prestigious shop, Brown, Holmes & Co., where sales in real terms stagnated after 1870, and there were some particularly bad years, notably 1871-2 and between 1879 and 1884.

The "Long Depression" led (in 1879) to a reduction of wages in the Chester engineering trade, and the cheese market of 1879 was described as 'the deadest for 30 years'. Chester's private banks were badly affected by the national banking crisis of 1878/9, itself a reflection of the depression. Dixon & Co. was forced into amalgamation with Parr's Bank, and although the "Chester Old Bank", Williams & Co., survived, it remained weak during the 1880s. In the run on the bank by depositors of the "North and South Wales Bank" (with an office in Eastgate Street) a then staggering one million (a fifth of the total deposits) was withdrawn in a few days following the spectacular collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank in 1878. Chester's banking sector would see nothing so bad until the global banking crisis of the early C.21st.