Flax mill

Flax Mills are mills concerned with the manufacture of flax. The earliest mills were ones for spinning yarn for the linen industry.

John Kendrew (an optician) and Thomas Porthouse (a clockmaker), both of Darlington developed the process from Richard Arkwright's water frame, and patented it in 1787. The first machine was set up in Low Mill on the River Skerne at Darlington, which Kendrew used to grind glass. They then each set up a mill of their own, Kendrew near Houghton (presumably Houghton le Spring) and Porthouse near Coatham, both on the same river. [A. J. Wardey, "The linen trade: ancient and modern" (1864; repr. 1967), 690-92]

They also granted permits, enabling others to build mills, including in northeast Scotland, where early mills included those at Douglastown in Kinnettles, Bervie, Dundee. [Wardey, 692 and "passim". ] Others were built at Leeds. Matthew Murray moved from Darlington to set up a mill at Adel near Leeds, where Murray built an improved spinning machine for John Marshall. In 1791, Marshall built another mill at Holbeck in Leeds. Murray went on to became a noted textile engineer, as a partner in Fenton, Murray, and Wood. [W. English, "The Textile Industry" (Longmans, London 1969), 158-60. ]

Ditherington Flax Mill at Shrewsbury was built by Marshall and Benyons of Leeds in 1797 and was the first iron-framed textile mill anywhere. [A. W. Skempton and H. R. Johnson, 'The First Iron Frames' "Archiectural Review" (March 1962); repr. in R. J. M. Sutherland, "Structral Iron 1750-1850" (Ashgate, Aldershot 1997), 25-36. ]

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