Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Industrialisation - The Cotton, Wool and Linen Industires - Coggle Diagram
Industrialisation - The Cotton, Wool and Linen Industires
Introduction
Belfast lacked elements for large scale shipbuilding which included no tradition of wooden ship building, the city's geography (River Lagan), lacked skilled workers and key raw materials weren't locally available (iron, steel, coal)
Belfast was a centre of shipbuilding, in 1920s contributed 10% of Britain's merchant shipping output
Belfast went under a lot of transformation in the first half of the 19th century named "Linenopolis"
There was dramatic population growth from 37,000 in 1821 to 120,000 in the 1860s and was 350,000 by the end of the century (partly due to famine)
Protestants dominated skilled trades and Catholics unskilled trades due to discriminatory hiring practices (Orange Lodges) leading to sectarian riots
-
History of Linen
-
-
-
Much of the linen was manufactured in the 'Linen Triangle' which included Belfast, Dungannon and Newry
Growing flax supported may families incomes with women and children spinning and fathers and sons harvesting, most of the linen process was done on the farm
But new industrial techniques could not be used to manufacture linen as the flax was too brittle so it was replaced by the production of cotton from the 1790s1820s
Introduction of cotton
Inventions
The water-frame was invented also in the 1760s by Arkwright later which substituted human power for water
-
All these inventions allowed more the mechanised spinning of cotton meaning more efficiency and lower costs
Invention of Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney and cheap cotton from slave plantations in US made cotton more popular and fashionable
-
-
-
-
By 1811 50,000 people were employed in the cotton industry and there was 21 cotton mills in Belfast by 1826
-
Moving back to linen
-
Employment in flax mills rose from 3,00 people to over 21,000 between 1835 and 1850
-
By late 19th century linen had become Ireland's most important industry with a net value of £4.8 million in the early 1900s
By the end of the 1830s the 3 east Ulster counties (Antrim, Armagh, Down) accounted for 30 of the 40 mills in Ireland and 80% of the employment
-
-
Andrew Mullholland
He was a leading commercial cotton spinner who moved away from cotton to the spinning of linen flax he was a pioneer of this
-
His father alongside his two sons had a calico weaving business which was called Thomas Mullholland & CO and this was changed to T. & A. Mullholland after their father died
After the lifting of the tariffs in 1824 (their father died in 1821) there business was under threat
The factory burnt down in June 1828 and therefore they seized this opportunity to rebuild their factory for the linen thread after visiting linen factories in the North of England
Their new mill opened in Spring 1830 and was the largest to use the new process and was also the first in Ulster to be completely powered by steam engines
By 1837 there were 3 huge engines in a 5 story building in York Street with over 900 workers and 15,300 spindles - a revolution to the linen industry
1864 his company became the York Street Flax Spinning Company and was the largest linen mill in Ulster covering 4 acres
-
-
Railways
-
-
The IRC proposed a coordinated railway system for Ireland to enhance prosperity and industrial growth
-
The line was extended in stages opening to Lurgan in 1841, Portadown in 1842 and Armagh in 1848
However, by 1845 there was still not even 70 miles of railway in operation and it wasn't until the late 19th century that the railways significantly expanded (2,000 miles by 1872)
-